The Mirror's Gaze


Collecting antiques was my passion. From a young age, I was enthralled by the furniture and trinkets my grandparents showed me. These priceless items were much older than them, passed down from their grandparents and so on. My grandparents were the ones who took care of me after my parents were murdered one night when I was six. The suspect was never found, but it was believed that they were witnesses to a murder that occurred that same night, not far from where they were found—which was later revealed to be the work of a serial killer who had claimed the lives of seven others in five months. That case ran cold, and none of the victims received the justice they deserved in death. And their families, we all suffered an emptiness that would never truly heal.


An even deeper void lingered within me when the last two members of my family passed away within the same week, but I was at least glad to find out that I’d have their antiques with me to remember them by. A year later, I quit my job. I had saved enough money over time to start my own business, and it felt to me like the time was right. In honour of my grandparents, I opened an antique shop. Work was a little slow in the beginning, but within a year, I found myself lucky to see my shop become widely talked about both within the town and without. It was a dream come true. I just wished my family were around to see it.


As a couple more months passed, however, something strange happened. I received an antique mirror that somehow put me on edge whenever I approached it. It was an indescribable feeling cloaked in a chill that lay heavy upon the air. My grandparents used to say there were certain old objects that existed in the border between the worlds of the living and the dead—objects of unknown power and mysterious abilities that very few had ever come to witness or experience. I wondered if the mirror before me was such an object.


I stepped towards it and squinted, and what unravelled before my eyes was something I could have never imagined. The mirror showed me a woman jumping out of a car and running into an alley as she was pursued by a cloaked assailant. And I recognised the street! It was… It was… Fear gripped my entire being, holding me in place as I watched the man corner the woman and stab her multiple times until her lifeless body fell back and crashed into a dumpster. And then I saw them—Mom and Dad. They were just passing by when they witnessed the murder, and they paid the price for it. The assailant pulled out a gun and fired a volley of bullets at them. They were on the ground in mere seconds.


“Please… Help us…” A familiar voice echoed from the mirror. It was Mom.


“Son, you have to let the police know,” Dad said.


“Please, I have two children who’ll be no older than you today. Please don’t let this monster run free.” The other victim spoke as well, her voice ringing louder than those of my parents.


My body was shaking as I stood there, a swirl of thoughts racing through my mind. I took a deep breath and agreed. Our discussion lasted for over three hours, going beyond the case before us and just talking about how life had been over the past decades. Mom and Dad said they were proud of who I had become, of how much I had grown as a person. I was in tears by the time we concluded our talk. That night, I couldn’t fall asleep. When morning came, I prepared myself and rushed to the police, providing them with all the leads they needed to hunt down the killer. It was not something they took seriously at first, but given that I was able to provide information that was withheld from the public, they were interested in hearing out what I had to say.


Those leads were enough to reopen the case and resume the hunt. The murderer was caught within a month. He had fled town three months after the night he killed my parents, and had been living in the countryside without raising any suspicion towards him. It later came out that he had continued his work further away from his new hometown, periodically visiting different locations to prey on the vulnerable.

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