“It worked! Oh my god, I didn’t think it would work but it did work. I’m in… hey, this is the real world, right?” the girl head said.

Gabe had once again fallen on his butt after confirming that he did, in fact, have two heads now. Now this, this is surely just an extended nightmare.

“Hey. I’m sorry if I gave you a shock. Please don’t ignore me. I’m real. I really am here. I can’t believe it. I have to tell the guys about this. Hey! Hey! Can you take a look at the mirror again? I wanna confirm something. Wait, you can hear me, right?”

“That wasn’t real.” Gabe whispered to himself.

“But it is real! This is real!”

“Okay, Gabe. You’re dreaming. That’s the most logical reason to this.”

“You’re not! You were dreaming. That’s how I got you. I mean, that’s how you and me got acquainted. Sorry about that. We haven’t seen anybody in quite a while and that place radiated, you know? Was that your house?” the voice answered. “Hey! You can hear me, right? Don’t be scared! I won’t bite. Okay, I did bite. That was me. But I won’t bite you again.”

Don’t answer it. Don’t answer it. It can hear you, Gabe thought. If it exists, he corrected himself. Which it most certainly doesn’t. He slowly turned his eyes towards the side where the head sprouted from. Nothing. Just shoulder. His hands were shaking. He gingerly placed a hand on his shoulder to feel for anything out of the ordinary. Again, nothing. Just a plain, smooth shoulder without any neck stumps or additional heads. Nothing weird, just a couple of scratches from… Oh. Teddy saw it. That’s why it wanted to kill him!

Or was it it’s all just a coincidence? Maybe the cat just wanted to attack him at that moment for some reason.

“Heyyy! Get up, Mister. I’m trying to prove to you that I exist. Ask me things! I know you saw me. And I’m super sure you can hear me.”

Gabe considered his options. He wanted to look at the mirror again just to prove it was all a trick of his mind. An ongoing trick of his mind, since the head still wouldn’t stop talking. What if he looked at it and the head was still there? That would confirm he was having some sort of mental breakdown. He needed to go to a shrink. Definitely. He’d been under too much stress at work and it’s been messing with his mind. It took him a couple of moments to remember the previous night. Did he have drinks? Just a beer while he was watching playing some online shooters. Nothing that would get him drunk enough to induce a full-on mental breakdown.

“CANNNN YOUUU HEARRRR MEEEEE!!! HEYYYY MISTERRRRR!!!!” the voice was insistent now. It was a girl voice. But not too young. Like a teenage girl’s voice. He was briefly, very briefly tempted to look at the mirror to see if the imaginary voice matched the imaginary face. If this is a breakdown, don’t I have to take notes for the psychiatrist? he asked himself.

From his position sitting on the bathroom tiles the mirror only reflected part of the ceiling. He could crawl out of the toilet and make that appointment to the shrink right away. He’s never been to one before, but if there was ever a pressing need for one, this’d be it.

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“Okay, fine. Do I know any shrinks?” he asked himself-- this time actually talking— at a higher volume than normal, mainly to drown out the girl’s voice. “I’ll have to google for one. But there won’t be any open ones at this time. Get myself an uber, too. Are there ER’s for mental stuff? Maybe Andre can recommend a guy.”

“Oh, I got it! You can google me! I know, you can google me and that will prove this isn’t you going crazy, Mister. It’s Sarah. I think I used to live in Canada.”

This was just his mind throwing random data at him now, Gabe realized. Synapses misfiring. Maybe if he calmed himself enough or meditated, maybe the neurons would sort themselves out. Slowly, he breathed in as deeply as he could. Kept the air in for a two-count, then exhaled.

He carefully stood with his gaze kept on the floor. He won’t be looking at the mirror. Not yet. The voice was gone. Did he do it? Did he manage to calm himself back to relative sanity? He felt the beginning of relief.

“Wow. I look old. What year is it, Mister? And what’s your name. You haven’t introduced yourself yet. As I said, I’m Sarah.”

He looked. There she was. He wondered if how she looked was from faces and traits his brain was cobbling together. She was pale, caucasian, looked to be fourteen or fifteen, and had chestnut brown, neck-length hair.

He scrutinized the part of the image where her neck joined his own. Part of her neck intersected the space where his neck and lower jaw was and extended just about an inch to the right. Her face was small and leaned roughly forty-five degrees to the side. Her hair didn’t seem affected by her head’s tilt and “fell” towards where her neck ended. Not counting the vaguely ghostlike paleness and the fact that she was a second head, she looked nothing too distinctive. The closest person she resembled from anyone he could recall was some teen actress from the 90s, but only partially.

He remembered the dream. She did resemble the girl creature—at least the parts that looked like a human and not the mouth-bitey monster parts.

She’d stopped talking at the moment as the two of them looked directly at each other’s eyes through the mirror. He lifted his left hand to touch his neck again. Earlier, there was nothing to touch. Just his own neck. But now…

Her eyes opened wide and with a snarl, the head bobbed forward as she snapped her mouth shut, in an attempt to bite his hand off.

He screamed in horror as he jerked his hand back and inspected it for blood and missing fingers. The hand was fine.

She laughed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist, Mister. Sorry, I know that wasn’t right but you looked so weird.”

“Fuck!”

“Hey, I’m sorry, okay? You don’t have to get rude about it.”

“Are you real?” Gabe asked, addressing the thing directly.

“I said I am. I’m real. That thing in the dream that bit you, that was me! Jerome and Ben helped me out and we thought we could all make the jump over if we hugged each other tight enough but I guess they’re still stuck inside. I hope they’re okay. We have to get them next time y—“

“This is insane. I’ve officially gone insane. I’m talking to a girl attached to my neck.”

“If you think this is weird, you haven’t seen nothing yet, Mister. Oh, that reminds me, I can’t keep on calling you just Mister, right? What’s your name?”

Gabe mustered enough courage to try tapping at his neck again. The hand, both in and out of the reflection simply passed through the space where her head was supposed to be. “Visual hallucination.”

“That’s a weird name, Mr. Visual Hallucination. I’m Sarah. This is the third time I said that,” she retorted before breaking into a smile. “I’m kidding. That’s a joke. Don’t be so uptight, okay? What’s your name? There’s no harm in telling me your name.”

“If I acknowledge you, I’m just digging myself deeper into a breakdown or, I dunno demonic possession. It’s just one of the two.” Gabe answered. “And what was that thing that happened in the dream? You were this hideous, nightmare, vaguely religiously iconographic, vampire thing! And god freaking dammit now that I remember it, that bite goddamn HURT!”

“Oh.” she answered. Her mouth hung open in surprise. She stammered through her next few words “Hey, I’m sorry about that. I can’t help it. I’m really, really sorry. That’s just how things get messed up there, you know. In the dream. We wouldn’t have done what we did if we had any other options.” she answered. “And also, I’m sorry if it hurt, what I did.”

Gabe stared at her again. For a fraction of a moment he forgot about the insanity of it all and had the feeling he was merely talking to a girl who was sorry and needed help.

“Okay. Fine. I’m Gabriel Santiago. You can call me Gabe. At least, during the course of this hopefully brief psychotic episode.”

The girl in the mirror smiled at him. “As I said, I’m Sarah. I’m going to be your guide.”