A bargain

You know how they tell you not to whistle in the house — bad luck. Or stay away from people carrying empty buckets for the same reason. Or touch wood when… at any given moment, really. Feeling eerie? Touch wood; it’ll calm the bad shit down. My parents had a particular dislike for flea markets. Mom used to say they made her feel dirty. She would never touch anything there, not even hover her hand over a glass box with an assortment of antique rings. Her flea market visits were entirely devoid of any kinaesthetic experience, yet afterward she would still spend a good five minutes washing her hands at a nearby gas station or restaurant WC, as if she had centuries-old dust under her fingernails. Dad used to joke that half of the goods there were long overdue in use — read: garbage — and the other half was cursed, so there wasn’t much point wasting time in places like those. Still, we weren’t lucky enough financially to skip the occasional flea market visit. Firstly, there was always a real market operating alongside — a very average farmers’ market where you could get almost any seasonal veggies at half the grocery store price. Secondly, there were all those ordinary traders, not selling anything used but making money on bulk-selling low-quality goods. Need a belt for your school jeans? Buy ten for the price of three! That sort of thing. And we made use of both: the veggie stalls and the bulk buying. But never, never ever anything else — either because of Mom’s squeamishness or Dad’s jokes about curses that only stoked her nerves further. I enjoyed flea markets, though. They were fun — and never dirtier than the pigsty that was my room back then. As for the curses, they only made things sound more interesting! Why wouldn’t anyone want to have a real cursed doll, for instance? Or a painting! You could brag about it all you liked. You’d probably be that one cool kid at school everyone wanted to come visit — to see the “real thing.” Or so I thought. School came and went without us ever acquiring anything worth my classmates’ visit. I moved out of my parents’ home into another city and started my first year at university. True to my roots, I didn’t have money for any other accommodation but the cheapest dorm they had, which meant a double room with a bathroom shared among nearly a dozen other students. Our room, though, was quite spacious, and we tried our best to make it cozy by all means available to us. A Sunday flea market was one of them — and that’s how we bought the mirror. It was a bargain. Not even IKEA could boast a full-length mirror at that price, and IKEA would never dream of an intricate design like this antique had. Unlike many things at the market, it looked clean — almost new — and didn’t give you the urge to scrub it down with soap and brush. Its flaws were minor: a missing petal or two on one of the metal frame’s flowers and a thin web of cracks at the bottom of the glass — too low to distort our reflections when we tried on new party outfits in front of it. It was a good thing. Until someone knocked on it from the inside. It started at night, as all scary stories do. Jenny, my roommate, was out at her boyfriend’s. When the knocking came, I rushed out of bed to open the door for her, but to my surprise there was no one there — neither at the door, nor in the corridor. I think I was too sleepy to pay much attention, and the last thing I would have done was blame the mirror. So, I got back into bed, cursing the noisy neighbours. Knock-knock. Knock-knock-knock. I grabbed my earplugs and didn’t hear anything until morning. It happened again and again, always when I was alone at night (that is to say, Jenny was a hell of a pretty girl, so she was out more often than not). And each time, I just put in my earplugs and went to sleep. But one night, when I’d left a coverlet hanging over the mirror, the knocking came again — this time, muffled. That was when the realization hit me: the sound was coming from inside the mirror. It sent shivers down my spine, yet for some strange reason I didn’t panic right away. I wish I would, though. Now I know. Instead, I removed the coverlet from the glass surface and, true to a horror movie pattern, knocked back. I swear I did it as gently as I could, but perhaps the mirror was too old. The thin web of cracks gave way, spreading in every direction like the rays of some evil sun. Everything in that delicate, tingling noise screamed at me of how wrong, how surreal, how dangerous this moment was. I thought I was scared, but when I looked at my reflection — or what I thought was my reflection — I saw it smiling. I swear I wasn’t.

***

I don’t remember what happened after that. My memories have been drifting lately, so I’m trying to write things down, even though mirror writing is a new skill to learn, as is writing with my left hand. Everything is upside down here, so to speak. This mirror is no longer in the dorm room I used to share with Jenny. It’s in a storage room of sorts. I can tell because I’m always in the dark, but the space isn’t empty. There are plenty of old, forgotten things around me. I don’t really know what day it is today, though I’ve been trying to count. I don’t know if Jenny is still alive or if the doppelgänger got her too. I think there’s only one thing I’m certain of: Dad was right about the curses.