The Shifts

If there’s anyone out there reading this, please help me. I heard that this community seems to have a fascination with this kind of thing, so maybe… maybe someone has some information that could help me. Maybe they’ve experienced the same problem I have. I’ve contacted other sites and people about my situation Thanks in advance for any help you can offer me.

I should probably set the stage here. I work in a mirror factory, as an inspector. Most of the work in making a mirror is already automated, but it’s always up to a human eye to determine whether or not a mirror’s reflection is up to standards. Hence my position, checking for any bubbles or cracks or such when a pane is complete.

In the factory itself, there’s probably only about thirty of us in total. We tend to ship out a lot more large mirror panes than actually cutting or designing some mirrors, the kind you might find in a gym or such – an industrial supplier, you might call us. And as I said, it was my job, along with some others, to check these panes for faults.

Everything at work was going fine, that is until about a month ago. At that time there had been a break in during the night for the first time since I had gotten my job over two years ago. But the weird thing about the break in was that nothing was stolen, and nothing was broken – save for one door’s lock that led outside, leading to the security alarm’s activation. The only thing the intruder had seemingly done was open the silver vat – mirrors are reflective thanks to silver, if you weren’t aware, but the silver we use is already in liquid form. They must not have known that or just couldn’t get any, and decided to take off.

Security footage was useless, as it was too dark to tell who it had been, or what discernible features they might have had that would give them away. Regardless, the police did their investigating and couldn’t come up with anything, so my boss hired some security guards to keep watch during the night.

Work continued as normal by day, but then, the very next night, there was another break in. One of the guards was hospitalized, and though I never got to see him myself, word spread that his arm had been snapped in three places. The image was not pleasing to think about. This time, once again, nothing had been touched, but now not even the silver vat had been opened. And just as before, there were no clues as to who had done it.

Some of the workers became a little concerned, but my boss calmed them down and assured them that there was nothing to worry about, as it only happened during the night. Everyone just returned to their work, myself included, a bit skeptical of the safety of the factory.

After the second incident though, I began to notice something strange while doing my inspections. The mirror just didn’t seem to be properly reflecting what was happening. One time my friend Greg passed behind me while I was working and called my name. I turned to wave to him, but upon looking back, I thought my reflection waved a little longer – and it seemed to be waving at me. I shrugged it off as just a trick of the eye. It was also summer time, and I was working in a factory after all, so the possibility of heat stroke had crossed my mind.

Another time, I was walking along the length of a pane when my reflection… it almost seemed to stop for a moment, like it was inspecting a part of the mirror. I blinked and shook my head, and when I opened my eyes my reflection was looking right back at me, plain as day.

The “tricks” became more common, and soon I would find myself staring into a mirror for minutes, and minutes turned into hours, trying to catch the other me acting out, before someone would come over and pull me from the trance, usually it was my boss. I’d apologize and get back to work, having to stay later into the evening to make up my lack of inspections throughout the day. Though when he could, Greg would stay with me and help check some of the panes.

One evening, while Greg was helping me out, I thought that I had seen my reflection knock on the glass in front of me. Granted, I didn’t hear anything, but the sudden movement was enough to startle me. I shouted and, in an act of pure frightened instinct, punched the pane. Needless to say, the whole thing shattered. Greg ran over and helped wrap my bleeding hand, then sat me down.

He asked me what was going on. “You just stand there, staring into the mirrors now. Is there something wrong with your panes, do they feel weird or something? Should we get someone to look at the machines?”

I shook my head. They didn’t feel any different than usual, they had the same typical smoothness with little to no smudging, the glass reflective exterior that people purchased from us for. I debated on whether or not I should tell him about my hallucinations, but decided against it out of fear for losing my job – Greg was a good friend, but he’d report my unhealthy mental state in a heartbeat. I told him it was just a lack of sleep, and we cleaned up my mess.

I began to lose sleep for real, not just as I had lied to Greg. I lived alone, so there was no one waiting for me to comfort me, to hold me and tell me it was just my imagination. The thoughts of whether or not what I had seen was real kept me up into the early hours of the morning, and any time I closed my eyes, the scene of my reflection knocking on the mirror would wake me – only now, in the dream, there was a dull sound of the fist knocking on glass.

Work became a lot more difficult to get through. The inconsistencies occurred more often, or at least appeared that way to me. Sometimes things happened that I knew were not right, like my reflection being on the opposite end of the pane before coming back after a blink. Or perhaps the time that my reflection actually walked, yes, WALKED, down the length of the mirror to reach me. I passed out after that incident.

Other times though, other times were just my own fault, and these were arguably more frightening. Sometimes I’d be holding a cup of coffee in the mirror, and I wouldn’t be able to feel the cup, so I would stand paralyzed in terror to avoid looking at my own hand to see if the cup was actually there or not. I couldn’t even trust myself, let alone my reflection, to tell me what reality was really like anymore.

I blamed it more on my increasing insomnia at that point, but the incidents would only feed my obsession. Eventually my work had become so minimal my boss asked me to see him in his office. I tried to come up with some story that eventually led to extreme lack of sleep, but he just waved me off and told me that if I didn’t shape up soon that he’d fire me; I’d accidentally let a few bubbles get through inspection, and some buyers had called in to voice their disappointment. The now existing threat of losing my job only compounded to my mental well-being.

Another break in occurred, with the same details as the last two. But this time, one of the guards went missing. The police searched for days, but in the end there wasn’t a trace of him left. More workers began to get spooked, and a few even quit. I was particularly terrified, and now had even more fuel for my insomnia. My boss finally got the message and decided to hire more guards, as well as assigning a group for day time patrols. Everyone seemed happy enough with that.

I returned home from another unproductive day at work to find something interesting on the news: apparently, a suspect had been turned in regarding the first break in at the factory. It turned out that had been a teenage boy and his two friends who initially entered the factory, supposedly just out of “curiosity”, which clearly meant they were up to no good. The other two boys had decided against breaking in at the last moment, but the third went through with the plan and snuck inside.

The boys then explained that after their friend returned, he seemed very different. His behavior was more exaggerated than how he usually acted. Last night, the boy apparently attacked his friends, and after they had subdued him, they called the police. The third boy was still under interrogation and wouldn’t answer a thing. I had no idea what could have possibly caused this boy to change in such a manner so quickly - after all, my behavior changed over the course of a couple of days, not minutes. I shrugged it off, and had another sleepless evening.

A few days later, just two weeks after all of this strangeness started, there was a scream during work hours that pulled me out of my usual trance. It was in my area of the factory, so I rushed over to find the source of the scream. It was another co-worker of mine, Julianne, and she was pointing at something, to which I turned and tried not to scream myself. Greg was dead, sprawled over a worktable, with his neck cut open, and broken pieces of mirror scattered all around him, floating in a pool of blood.

The police returned, probably getting quite used to the place, and began asking questions. None of the guards or anyone in the factory had seen anything, but they had immediately responded to Julianne’s scream. Makes sense, as our group of inspectors were off in one corner of the factory, and none of us were particularly easy to see without coming right over to talk to us due to the mirror’s reflections and the factory’s machinery.

We were all given time off until the investigation had been completed. I had hoped I would be able to make up for lost sleep, but of course that didn’t happen. In fact, the image of Greg’s corpse had burned into my mind, and every time I so much as blinked, there he was, his glazed over eyes rolling towards the back of his head, the torn skin and muscle of his neck standing out in the memory. Since I couldn’t sleep, I tried to get my mind off of the weird things in my life by filling the time with gaming, mostly shooters. They were mindless and easy to play, and acted as a great stress reliever, especially when you could mow down an entire enemy team of noobs.

I’m getting side tracked. Greg’s death was eventually ruled as a suicide, seeing as how no one else was witness to a suspect and the broken mirror suggested the tool used. But Greg was usually a very chipper and kind person, he never gave off the vibe that he would off himself like that. Then, when my paranoia had finally reached its peak, a new idea, an insane idea, dawned on me: what if there was someone on the other side? What if Greg had been killed by his reflection?

I began doing some research on the idea of alternate dimensions being accessible through mirrors, but all I got back were either some terrible stories written on this sit - I imagine out of an estranged interest in the matter, or the most occult level shit you could imagine. This, as you can imagine, just made my mental state worse.

I was now a complete mess; I couldn’t focus, and I was scared to stand in front of a mirror just out of the paranoid fear that the “other me” would reach out and switch places with me. I had even removed all the mirrors in my own home, either putting them in the trash… or, for those fixed into the building, smashing them. Rumors began spreading about me, whispers that I was having some kind of psychotic breakdown. Mirrors were barely coming out inspected from my station, and eventually my boss fired me.

Disheartened, I went home and turned on the TV to try and relax. As if I was cursed to be haunted by strange occurrences, my heart stopped as the news came on. It was a report on a recent suicide. The victim had leapt off of a bridge into very shallow water, breaking his neck upon impact. They claimed that no one had ID’d the body yet, but upon showing an image of the corpse I took a sharp breath. It was Greg.

I immediately went into a frenzy. This couldn’t be possible, Greg already died in the factory, it was a suicide! So why was the news reporting he had jumped off a bridge? The mirror theory made its way back into the spotlight: to me, a crazy paranoid mess of a man, it made perfect sense. Greg’s reflection had come out, broken the mirror, killed the real Greg, and then left… because no one could tell the difference. But what about the sound of the mirror breaking? Perhaps, it broke one on the other side first? Yes, and then we wouldn’t be able to hear it – the knocking! The knocking, the knocking! I hadn’t heard my reflection knock. Then it came through a different pane and killed Greg. But then why did it kill itself? Maybe guilt?

I decided there was only one course of action I could take: to infiltrate the factory and test my theory. I waited until night, and then using a work key I had “forgotten” to turn back in, I made my way towards the inspection area. As I came running around the corner with a small flashlight I had brought, I could see my reflection in one of the panes. But something was off about it, the light wasn’t bouncing back – the mirror had absorbed the light.

As I approached the mirror pane, I could see my reflection more clearly: it was smiling at me. I almost shouted in surprise, and my reflection noticed that. It began to talk, as its lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear anything so I cautiously pressed my ear up to the glass.

A pair of lips grazed my ear: “Thanks for touching the glass.”

A hand grabbed my arm, and we began to get into a scuffle. At some point I dropped my flashlight, but the two of us falling in and out between the two mirrors. My reflection seemed determined to always keep one part of either of us between both worlds, and constantly tried to fight me off and get into my world. The mirror became like a warm liquid as I flailed in and out between our worlds.

As the fight continued, I grew more and more infuriated, and a rage boiled inside me. All the stress, the paranoia, my grief for Greg, all compounded into one raging outburst. I took my copycat by the head, and began slamming it into the cement floor. He stopped moving after the third hit. It felt... kinda good to let all of that out.

Breathing heavily, I threw him over to his side, and then scrambled for the flashlight on my side. I then threw the flashlight at the mirror. It shattered on impact, and I immediately got up and made my escape as guards rushed to the scene. When I got home, I rushed to bed and hid under my covers, squeezing my eyes shut. I eventually fell asleep, and it was the first good sleep I'd had in weeks.

I was awoken by the ringing of my phone. I groaned, then moved over and reached for it on my night table drawer. “Hello?” I answered groggily.

“Hey, Trevor? You hear about the factory yet?”

The deepest chill slivered down my backbone. It was Greg. I couldn’t respond, so I simply listened. “I guess not. Well, it seems it was broken into during the night, so the police are investigating. The place won’t be open again for a few days. You wanna hang out? I’ve got some paper stuff to fill out, but when I’m done I’ll come over to your place, how does that sound? Won’t be two, maybe three… yeah, better make it three hours. Okay, bud?”

My throat was in a knot, but I managed to swallow. “O-o-okay then… s-see you soon…” I hung up, then sat in bed holding my head, the realization sinking in. I made a mistake. I had made a terrible, irreversible mistake. And not long after, I realized something else: there was more than just one other side. And, they weren’t all break ins… the guards, passing the mirrors at night, they didn’t know… and then their copies came out, and they… they broke out of the factory.

I wandered around my house for a while, trying to come to terms with what was happening. You know how people joke about people breaking into their homes and replacing everything with an exact replica of itself? I got that feeling from everything - it was uncomfortable and upsetting, as if I were trying to pretend that someone else's house was in fact my own.

I grew furious once again, and smashed a vase off the kitchen counter. It shattered, but it didn't feel right. I screamed savagely and grabbed a chair, smashing it around off the walls and floors. The wood splintered, but it didn't feel right. I ran the sinks until they overflowed, the water running across the floor and wetting my feet. It didn't feel right. Ripping open the fridge and scarfing down as much of my favorite food as I had. Didn't feel right. Eventually, my legs gave out, and I slumped to the floor, holding my face and crying. But whether I was laughing or sobbing, I couldn't tell. It just felt good to destroy something.

Eventually, once I had calmed down enough to think somewhat rationally, I tried to figure out how I'd get back. That's when I remembered all of you on the internet, turned on my computer, and began writing this post.

With that, we've come full circle, and now you know my story. But you see, as I was writing this, reliving these memories of a mad man, I began to think: maybe being on YOUR side isn’t so bad. After all, they’re not really my friends and family, they’re all just copies. All of you are nothing but copies.

I’m still feeling a little stressed out too. Maybe I’ll have some fun on this side, fun that I could never have over there. Maybe that’s why the copies were coming through the mirror: they realized the truth too, they realized that through the looking glass, there wasn’t a white rabbit, or talking caterpillars or a red neck queen. There were seven billion lives, seven billion copies, which they could play with however they pleased.

So no need to send me links on how to get back to my world or any of that nonsense. Just consider this message… a warning. I have to go now, Greg will be over any minute… and this time, he’s going to stay dead…

Farewell.