The Other Side of Infinity

I think this is something every kid has done at some point or another.

You take two different mirrors and line them up so they’re facing one another, and you make an infinite loop between the two reflections. It’s the simplest and safest science experiment any kid can conduct at any time.

It’s easiest to pull off when you have a medicine cabinet with those mirrored walls, and even more so if you have another mirror in the same room somewhere nearby. My grandmother had this setup herself in her own bathroom: one medicine cabinet with three thin mirrored doors propped above the sink, another, larger mirror set up beside in front of a seat, and on top of that she still had two hand mirrors of different sizes set aside in a cup nearby. I’m not sure if everyone’s grandmother has a setup like this or if it’s just mine, but it’s oddly impressive when you actually total up the numbers.

I remember when I was younger, when I was alone and bored to my wits end, I’d sometimes go into her bathroom and play with the mirrors. I’d usually bring a stuffed animal, plap it against one side or the other, or sit between the two sides and watch my reflections being tossed back and forth into infinity. I remember staring off through the infinite frames, desperately trying to find the end.

I wonder now though… did any other kid have the same paranoia doing this that I did? It’s hard for me to really put into words, but it feels… primal. Not like any fear that I’ve grown over time or anything I’ve been taught by someone else. It’s an instinctual reflex buried deep in my subconscious, where the minute I sit between the two infinite-facing mirrors a part of my brain just screams:

“Get out. Run away. Something is not right. You are not safe.”

I tried to think nothing of it, but it’s impossible to get out of your mind when mirrors have been so frighteningly integrated into your everyday life. Even in my own bedroom at my grandmother’s house there were mirrors waiting for me: a giant one set across the backboard of my dresser right at the foot of the bed, and a full-length mirror that sat behind my bedroom door. When I closed my door to sleep at night, both of them faced right towards me.

Every night those irrational thoughts and fears always pried at my mind. Nightmares plagued me all throughout my childhood years, and every one of them always surrounded the mirrors.

But there was one in particular that was always more vividly than the rest, and it came more frequently when paralysis first started to settle in.

I would lie awake in my bed, eyes open, but body unable to move. Everything always looked in its place, nothing stirred nor altered. But then, everything would fall deathly still and silent. If I fell asleep with my ceiling fan on, it would slowly start to lull before its blades then stopped spinning. The backyard porch light that shown into my room from the window would flicker, then fall dead and dark. The wind softly rushing against the windowpane, the rustling of leaves on the nearby tree, the lull of cars along distant streets and the occasional siren echoing in the distance…

It would all fall dead.

Nothing but silence and an eerie stillness.

I’d try to close my eyes, to shut out the disturbing lack of stimulus, to retreat back into the comfort of true sleep. But no matter how hard I’d try, my eyes would always stay open. I’d always stay “awake”.

It’s then that I would hear the whispers.

Incoherent, incomprehensible… garbles and hisses, fractures and fragments, linking together into some sort of language. But nothing of this time, let alone this planet.

All I could understand was… it was beckoning me. Beckoning me to look into the mirror.

At first I would try to resist, to look at anything else in the room: my closet door, the window, the ceiling, even the blankets covering my feet, but it never made a difference. I could never fully resist. As the whispers grew louder, more demanding, my eyes always betrayed me.

I’d meet my gaze in the mirror. A perfect reflection of what was staring forth.

Except… I was laying down, and my reflection was sitting up.

It would be sitting, staring at me. Eyes wide like headlights, bloodshot, ringed in glistening black. It would slowly rise from the blankets, pushing them off from its body. Somehow, I remember feeling the same chill as the blankets left my own. It crawled across the bed, fingers extending, arms stretching. It crouched like a cat at the end of its bed, leaping across to the surface of the dresser. My own would shake just as it’s.

Then, I’d watch as it would push its head through the mirror, arms stretching across its plane into my own.

Claw-like nails scrabbled and scraped, the glass of the mirror rippling like mercury pressed into a wooden frame. Piece by piece it would pass through to my side of the glass, and with every inch it passed, the reflection of my room on its side of the world slowly dimmed to black.

It was staring. Always staring. Gaze latched to mine like a vice. And no matter how hard I tried, I could never tear my own gaze away.

Fingers and joints creaked like the hinges of a door needing to be oiled, pressure of its steps pressing against my skin as it crept closer. Its voice was louder now, whispers echoing through the room and deep into my brain. It slowly grabbed my hand, giving it a tug. I couldn’t understand its garbled words, but I knew what it wanted.

It wanted me to come with it. To follow it. To go back with it through the mirror.

But I couldn’t, not even if I wanted. My body couldn’t move even if I wanted it to.

The creature tilted its head, if though not understanding. It pulled harder at my hand, words growing sharper. Insisting that I come, demanding that I follow. Still my body would not obey.

Impossibly wide eyes cut through the choking darkness. They stretched wider, as it took both of my hands and yanked them upwards, trying to force me to my feet. Its claws wrapped around my hands and wrists, its breath heaving and rattling. With each tug that failed, it grew more enraged.

Its grip grew stronger, tighter, fingers extending further. Its hands were snakes, constricting every drop of blood from my hands. The teeth of its viper limbs its edged, broken claws, biting deeper and deeper into my skin, piecing through, making me bleed.

Pearls of white dripped from its gaping eyes, draining like faucets against my exposed figure. Its whispers grew louder, angrier, more fierce and demanding. Even though I could not understand its words, I understood the message perfectly.

“Come with me to the other side.”

“Come with me to the other side.”

“Come with me to the other side.”

It’s only then I’d truly awake, drenched head to toe in sweat. The fan would be blowing, the light outside still glimmering with life, and the wind outside whistling its soft, sweet song. Everything right where it belongs.

That is, except for the serpentine marks snaked around my wrists.

And the nail-shaped cuts ripped across my skin.

I’m older now, and I’ve never since kept a mirror directly across from my bed. And when I do visit my grandmother, I drape a quilt across the length of the one at the bedside dresser. Of course I’ve still had run-ins with sleep paralysis even since then, but that same nightmare has yet to ever return.

I wonder sometimes… if that fear I feel when I stare down the infinite passes of mirror panes isn’t just some irrational discomfort, but some kind of premonition.

I’ve only done it once since my childhood, trying as I’ve always had to see if I could find the end. The further down I looked, the darker the panes became. I’d turn to the other mirror, and the darkness seemed closer than the last. I’d turn again, and closer still the darkness crept.

If I squint, I could swear that each time I turned that the distant reflection of the back of my head turned to look back at me, right as its pane tinted into black. And I could swear the bathroom light above my head started to flicker, if though compelled to fall dark and dead.

I wonder now, if what stares back at the mirror really is me.

Is it me, or something imitating me? Was it ever me at all?

When I turn my back on the mirror pane, does it turn its own as well? Or does it stare with those impossibly large eyes, waiting for me to lock our gaze so it can finally pull me in?

What’s waiting for me on the other side of the pane?

What lurks on the other side of infinity?