The door slammed behind her as Casey arrived home. She didn’t realize she was angry until she slammed her keys on the counter. Maybe she could get a second opinion. The tests they performed were extensive but with something so grave, so terminal, she couldn’t simply trust their diagnosis, not so early in the process.

Her head started to buzz. She couldn’t decide if it was the caffeine or some symptom of the tumor in her head. What better time for the doctor to give her the bad news than after her morning breakfast. She looked at the mess on the counter, the speed in which she had left when they called showed in the residue from the coffee, discarded grounds everywhere. She knew she wouldn’t believe them, the doctor and his nurse, when she had left, and she refused to accept her fate even now.

The bathroom light was on. She didn’t remember leaving it on. She probably forgot that too when she left the apartment. Looking at her face in the mirror she saw her own eyes sunken with dark spots. The face was almost unfamiliar. The dimples on her cheeks were gone which made her frown even more. The tumor couldn’t change her complexion, could it? Or was it eating away at everything? Her confidence, her desire for wine or even food? Her motivation to do anything?

Time drifted away as she stared at the reflection. She prodded her lips and eyes, searching for discoloration. Her skin didn’t feel any different. She lifted her shirt and rubbed her stomach. Losing ten pounds in a month wasn’t abnormal.

“I can’t believe…” she stopped suddenly and gasped when she heard a soft reply.

“-elieve.” The echo seemed to resonate from the mirror itself.

She felt the glass softly and spoke again, “Hello?”

“-ello?” A voice echoed again. This time she knew she wasn’t crazy, even though the hair on her neck stood up. The bathroom was too small to create echoes, especially an echo so loud and clear. Her eyes darted around the edges of the mirror while she kept her palm on the reflection of her face. Nothing was out of the ordinary. When she squinted, to the point that her lightheadedness worsened, she almost felt like the image of herself was staring back. She knocked on the mirror and chuckled, walking away and finding it funny that she was already losing her mind.

In the hallway she had the powerful urge to turn around but she continued to the bedroom where she collapsed on the bed. The dizzy buzz she felt earlier had turned into a full-blown headache but she was too weak, and too pissed off at her own existence to find any way to make it better. She closed her eyes and let the numbing sensation carry her to sleep.

There was a doorway. There was darkness on the other side and she somehow knew that she wasn’t supposed to be here, like she didn’t belong but she approached it anyways. When her fingers reached the frame of the door, she could feel something watching her from within. She reached out, with a finger pointing, into the darkness.

Her eyes opened and she was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, pointing at the bathroom mirror. She turned and looked at the bedroom behind her. Even in her groggy state she shivered, terrified that she now had a new condition from the tumor: sleepwalking.

She turned to go back to bed since it was still dark out, and noticed something out of the corner of her eye. At first, she thought it was just a distortion or a glimmer off the reflective surface. In the mirror she saw her body turn to face the bathroom, slightly offset from her own movements. She stood there, her mouth hanging open, glaring with a furled brow. Each movement reflected back was slower than her own movements. She shivered again, not fully understanding what she was seeing.

She waved her hand and the reflection would perform the same motion, delayed, only by a millisecond. The reflection stared back with a stern expression. She turned her head slightly, the figure turned with her, again lagging behind.

With her head still buzzing, her temple filled with pressure, she stepped backwards, giving up on the apparent hallucination. Tomorrow she would call the hospital and tell them what she experienced. The figure, still in her peripheral vision, was turning also, but this time faster than her. She quickly turned back and so did her doppelganger, which became delayed again. She rolled her eyes, knowing there had to be some reasonable explanation for this.

The next morning she searched online for anyone else who’s gone through the same phenomenon but could only find stories about staring into a mirror for too long, when your own face becomes unrecognizable. It was explained away as a simple mental illusion.

After nearly giving up she found an article about the mirror universe theory, the concept that beyond the mirror was another dimension that copies our own, except backwards. She closed the laptop and rubbed her eyes. The research into brain tumors and the effects would have to wait. Other than the dizziness she had felt completely fine and had no other symptoms for the past few months. Of course, except for when she passed out in her living room, forcing her to go to the doctor in the first place.

Behind her, down the hall, she could feel the stares of a figure in her back. She rubbed her temple and refused to turn. If she did see another illusion or hallucination or whatever it was, she might be driven further into sadness and anger. The thoughts of the alternate dimension theory started to make her uneasy, no matter how hard she tried to push it from her mind. If there was another universe, or a portal to it in her bathroom, she didn’t want to know about it.

But as the minutes ticked by, she couldn’t help but feel her neck turn to the bathroom, straining to fight it. Her stomach became queasy as the hall came into view, and then the bathroom, and then the mirror. She collapsed onto the floor when she saw the figure, standing, staring back from the mirror. Crawling on the floor, hiding from the doppelganger’s gaze, she frantically grabbed the bedroom door and slammed it shut.

Several seconds passed, with her heart beating several hundred times, before she cracked the door open. The mirror was empty, reflecting only the hallway and the interior of the bathroom. She didn’t want to face the truth. The truth that she might be going insane or that she was on the verge of discovering some cosmic truth or alternate reality.

The bedroom door creaked open as the door in the reflection also opened, however her own shape was not reflected back. She crept forward, gingerly taking each measured step with care. The closer she came, the less unsure of her own reality as the mirror stayed blank. Was she dead? Was she ever alive? She knew she was tangible; she knew she was real based on the sweat that dripped down her forehead.

When she reached the mirror she could barely stand, her legs barely able to hold her shaking body. After splashing water on her face, she moved closer to the mirror and looked inside. As her head moved the reflection’s movements were also delayed. The perspective was slightly off. It was like looking through a TV that was trying to move in conjunction with her own head. She licked her dry lips trying to understand what was happening. It was a window, a window into an unknown realm. She moved her head faster and the distortions came faster. Inside the mirror she could see another strange distortion in the sink. The sink was moving, but not like any tangible object. It was like someone was removing a veil and then quickly putting it back. She shook her head back and forth trying to get a clearer image and saw that there were black marks on the sink, behind this illusionary veil. No, they were black splatters…Blood.

She gasped and fell towards the bathtub, pulling on the shower curtain. In the mirror, behind the curtain she saw her doppelganger lying in the tub, her eyes wide open with blood dripping down her cracked forehead. A shriek escaped her throat as she slipped on the water on the floor, slammed her head into the sink, and collapsed into the bathtub.