I don't know how long I stood there—
Face pressed to the other side of the glass.
Watching my body walk away.
Smile on its face.
Notebook in its hand.
Mine.
---
He never looked back.
Not once.
Just turned the corner into the kitchen like he'd always lived there.
Like he was me.
And I was the reflection now.
A ghost in a glass coffin.
---
The mirror went dark a few minutes later.
No more apartment.
No more light.
Only the hallway I was now in.
Familiar—but reversed.
The doors numbered backward.
Walls curved subtly in a way that made me dizzy to walk.
I tried stepping forward.
The mirror floor rippled under my feet, like water thickened by static.
And the air—it hummed.
Low.
Continuous.
Like the room itself was rewinding.
---
I walked past Door B4.
Not 4B. Not anymore.
Every step forward felt like falling into someone else's dream.
My own thoughts? Muted.
Memories? Loose.
My name? Already starting to itch, like it didn't fit right anymore.
---
I found another mirror hanging crooked on the wall.
Cracked but reflecting.
I leaned close.
Whispered my name.
> "Elijah Foster."
The mirror said nothing back.
Instead, a voice behind me—female—calm, steady.
> "That's not your name in here."
I turned.
She was standing perfectly still, barefoot, wearing an oversized hoodie.
Eyes white with static.
Voice like an old cassette recording.
> "You haven't earned it back yet."
> "Not until you remember what you left behind."
---
> "Who are you?"
> "Version 2," she said.
"But you can call me Nara."
> "Version?"
> "We're all Versions in here. Echoes. Drafts. Cuts."
She handed me a photograph.
Me.
Standing beside her.
Smiling.
But I didn't know her.
Didn't remember the moment.
Didn't remember the blood on my hands in the picture.
> "You forgot this scene," she said.
> "So now you live in it."
---
She led me through the mirrored hallway, past door after door.
Each door had a sound behind it:
A scream.
A lullaby.
The click of a lighter.
The turning of a page.
My name, whispered in different accents.
Nara didn't stop.
Until we reached a door that wasn't numbered.
Only etched with a symbol—
A spiral.
Thin, black, scratched deep.
> "Yours," she said.
---
Inside was a room shaped like Apartment 4B, but wrong.
Too tall.
The ceiling sloped upward, like a cathedral trying to remember what a home felt like.
The mirror here wasn't glass anymore.
It was water.
Floating, hovering where a television should be.
And behind it—
Him.
My copy.
Living.
Breathing.
Replacing me.
---
He was sitting at the desk, writing in the notebook.
Only now, the pages were turning on their own.
Ink bled from his fingertips.
Each sentence twisted, spiraled.
Names crossed out.
Dates unspooling like film reels.
---
I slammed my fist against the water-mirror.
The surface rippled, but didn't break.
He paused—lifted his head.
Looked right at me.
Smiled.
And whispered something I couldn't hear.
Then tore out a page.
Burned it.
And I screamed.
Because when he did…
A memory inside me vanished.
---
I fell to my knees.
Nara crouched beside me.
> "He's editing you out."
> "One sentence at a time."
---
> "How do I stop him?"
> "You remember the name you buried."
> "The one before Elijah."
> "The one the room stole the first time you walked in."
---
I shook my head.
> "I don't have another name."
She smiled sadly.
> "Then you were never supposed to leave."
---
I got up.
Faced the mirror.
Focused hard.
On anything.
First kiss.
First lie.
First time someone said my name like it meant something.
A memory flickered.
Old.
A voice.
> "Come home, Eli…"
But that wasn't my name.
It was someone else's voice calling me that.
My mother?
My sister?
No. A twin?
---
Another image hit me:
A hospital room.
Fire alarm blaring.
Door 4B burning.
A child screaming.
Me?
Or him?
The copy?
---
I stepped into the mirror water.
It burned like ice.
The moment I did, he looked up sharply.
Eyes wide.
> "You're not allowed in here."
But I was already there.
Already stepping into the real world.
The notebook in his hand began to unravel—pages peeling away like feathers in a storm.
---
I grabbed it.
He fought back.
We slammed into the floor.
Names bled from the pages.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Versions of me that never made it out.
> "Why?" I yelled.
"Why erase me?"
He whispered—
> "Because you remember too much."
---
I ripped the last page from the book.
And screamed a name I didn't know I knew:
> "IAN."
And the world froze.
---
The mirror cracked behind us.
A fracture.
A fault line.
And in the silence—
The hallway reassembled.
The spiral vanished.
The air stopped humming.
---
He blinked once.
Looked at me—not angry now.
Just… relieved.
> "You remembered."
Then he faded.
Dust.
Static.
Gone.
---
I woke on the couch.
Lights on.
Notebook on my chest.
No mirror in the hallway.
No smell of ash.
---
But when I looked in the notebook—
There was only one page left.
One line.
> "You made it through. But don't forget who didn't."
And the signature at the bottom?
Ian Foster.