I Am a Mirror
Before, when I was human, I saw the mirror on the internet. It was for sale in another state for an amount I would never be able to spend on a mirror. For a brief few minutes, I wished and wished, fervently and truly, that when I died I would become this mirror.
The wish faded within minutes, and I went on to live a rich and complicated life, as so many of us do.
When I died, my spirit was flooded. With the rising waters, memories were buoyed up and away like leaves on the surface of a river. The images of my life floated by me. I remember what they looked like as they floated by, but could no longer remember what they had meant to me.
The memory of the mirror floated up and came closer to me. I saw my hand holding a phone. I saw the screen of the phone, glowing in a dark room. I felt the silk bonnet on my head shift as I leaned back into my pillows, just a bit, mmming softly as I looked at the screen. I saw the mirror. The sensation of longing and yearning was a clean, cool pool in me. It gathered in the spaces where my other life memories had previously been.
Now I am the mirror.
I have hung in many homes and several thrift stores. I have seen many people gaze at themselves in my surface.
I watch. I sleep.
Sometimes, whatever I am in the mirror floats away from the physical mirror. I see other things in unfamiliar places. If there is a pattern or something to recognize in these other realities, I do not notice them. It is not distressing.
One day, someone spoke to me.
The human who had most recently put me on zir wall looked at zemself in my reflection. Ze suddenly looked over the details of my frame, and carefully put a few fingertips over some small marks on my surface.
“What all have you seen?” ze asked reverently.
“Many things,” I replied. The human startled away, tripping over zir own feet and landing in a twisted pile on the floor. Ze lay there, silent for a moment, before I could hear great gasps for breath. After breaths came more steadily, ze cursed as ze pushed zemself up to sitting. Ze looked up at me again.
Ze retreated to another room of the apartment for a while. Ze looked at me as they walked between the kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. Sometime later, ze approached to look warily at me again. It took many minutes for zem to ask once again,
“What have you seen?”
“You already asked that,” I replied. Zir eyes widened and I could see zir body shaking, but ze closed zir hands into fists.
“Who’s there!” ze demanded, half yelling. Zir eyes moved around the room, searching. I considered not answering.
“I am a mirror,” I finally replied.
“What the fuck,” ze replied. “FUCK!” Ze swore a few more times, rubbing zir face with zir hands, then experimented by snapping zir fingers in front of each ear. “Am I going fucking crazy?”
“I do not know,” I replied.
“Where are you?” ze asked incredulously, coming close. Ze ran their fingers around my frame, then carefully tipped me away from the wall to peer behind. “Where is the sound coming from?”
“I do not know,” I said again, feeling an edge of irritation.
“A talking mirror,” ze said incredulously, stepping back to look at me. “What is this, fucking Snow White?” ze paused, then asked tentatively, “Is this a Snow White thing?”
“If it is, I am unaware,” I replied.
“Have you been able to talk this whole time?” ze asked.
“I suppose,” I said.
“Have you talked to other people?” ze asked.
“No,” I replied.
“Why not?”
“Nobody else has asked me a question directly,” I replied. Ze looked at me incredulously.
“Are you serious?” ze said. “No one else has talked to you?”
“Many people talk to their mirrors, but they are talking to themselves. You were the first to ask me a question.” Ze considered this. After a moment, ze glanced between me and one of zir living area chairs.
“I’m just going to — get a chair,” ze said, awkward with the uncertainty of our new acquaintance. I watched them drag the chair over. Ze sat in it, directly opposite me on the wall. “I don’t know what to say,” ze said. I remained quiet for several minutes. Some spark of remaining memory reminded me that, as a human, I had disliked empty spaces in conversations.
“Perhaps there is nothing to say,” I finally said, in an attempt to reassure zem. “I am still a mirror. I have no expectations of you.” Ze squirmed uncomfortably.
“But you’ll watch me, while I live my life?” ze asked, face twisted with nerves.
“As a mirror, I have always watched. Nothing about my existence has changed.”
“It’s changed for me!” ze exclaimed, a little panicked laugh around the edges of zir words. “What if all the rest of my stuff is alive?” Ze awkwardly plucked their hands off the armrests of the chair ze sat in. “What if the chair is alive?” Ze paused. “Chair?” ze whispered down to the armrest.
The chair did not reply.
Ze looked back to me. “Do you know if it’s alive?” ze asked.
“No,” I replied simply. Ze got up and went through a long process of noticing all the things they had and asking each if they were alive. Ze asked zir dishes, one by one. Zir forks and spoons. zir clothing items. Zir furniture. Ze went through boxes of keepsakes, jewelry, papers. For a few days, all zir free time was devoted to inspecting and asking each and every item they owned. Ze would glance at me as they passed, but for a few days did not speak to me. I did not speak to them. I watched as they went through this process, focused and exhausted. I imagine ze thought of this as ze went to work and asked things out in the world, as well.
I did not attempt to reassure them, because I do not know how many people become items or other things. I do not know the rules for why this happened to me. It does not trouble me; perhaps because I no longer have neurons to react with anxiety to something like myself.
After this process of about a week, ze came home from work and carefully placed zir items on the table that held zir keys and other sundries. Ze came to look at me, zir expression hard.
“Who are you?” ze asked.
“I am this mirror,” I replied.
“But who are you,” ze said again, demanding.
“I do not know,” I replied. Ze just stared at me. After a few moments, I decided to say more. “I was human once, but I remember very little about who I was. I know I lived a life. I know I desperately wished to be this mirror at some point in that life. When I died, I became the mirror. The rest is gone.”
“But how can I hear you?” ze demanded, zir voice sounding angry. “You don’t have a mouth and there’s not a speaker. But I can hear you. I had a hearing test and it came back normal. I’ve taken so many quizzes online to try and figure out if I’m going insane hearing voices. I got a physical and had my doctor do bloodwork. Besides losing my goddamn mind over being worried that everything is alive, I’m completely normal!” Zir voice was louder and angrier with each word. I think if ze had something in zir hands ze would have thrown it. Ze let out a wordless, groaning cry, covering their face.
I said nothing at first. Ze sank awkwardly to the floor, sobbing. I watched zem cry. Some faint sense of memory touched me. I remembered how ze sat gingerly on furniture. Ze could no longer sleep through the night, restlessly getting up and pacing through the apartment, stopping to stare at me and wince. Ze were profoundly distressed in all the moments I witnessed in zir apartment.
“You are distressed that every thing you use might be like me,” I said, “because it feels wrong to you to use a thing that might be alive somehow.” I paused as ze uncovered zir wet, red eyes to look at me numbly. “You cannot use things without considering them with reverence, and it is breaking your mind.”
I did not add that this reaction seemed strange. I could not remember being human well enough to know whether this would be out of character for humans or not.
I knew countless billions of active beings lived in and on each human and all the things on the earth. Even me, a mirror. The bacterium and other minutiae were not lifeless. I am not alive, but I have consciousness, and I imagined that if I have awareness, then even a mote of dust could be aware of a self, somehow.
The human narrowed zir eyes at me for a moment, and their mouth pressed small and firm on zir face. Ze stood up and went into zir bedroom, re-emerging some minutes later with a little ziplock bag of medications. Ze left without looking at me again.
Ze were gone from the apartment for a long time. Dust built up. I listened to the neighbors thumping around the building and watched some insects creep through the empty home. A clock ticked the time and the refrigerator buzzed. A few times, someone knocked at the door. A lamp in the corner was left on and I listened to the quiet hum of the bulb in the dark hours of the night. I went on my own strange journeys that drifted me away from the mirror and to other unnamed places.
The last time I saw zem, ze returned and had someone else with them. The stranger took me off the wall and turned the mirror to face the wall. This was funny because my ability to see was not confined to the glossy part of the mirror that humans look at. I could see them and watch them both all the same as they walked to and fro in the apartment, gathering some small items. The collection they made seemed random to me, but I assumed there was a reason for the few things they had returned for.
It appeared that this latest human was moving out, and abandoning most of zir items. I wondered where ze had begun to live and how ze would handle the knowledge that had broken them. Perhaps ze would leave it behind here in this apartment. I had no way of knowing. The two humans were silent, only exchanging long glances and nods to one another. Then they were gone.
A few days later, a pair of new humans appeared in the apartment. They spoke to one another comfortably as they began to make an inventory of items. They were from an estate sale company that handled sales for people, usually after someone died.
One of the humans turned me around carefully on the floor to see the front of my frame.
“Look at this mirror!” they exclaimed with pleasure, putting their hands on their hips and stepping back to appreciate the view. “It looks old. And fancy.”
“Yeah, but people rehab stuff like that all the time to make it look fancier than it really is,” the other replied offhandedly, though not in an unpleasant way. “Turn it back around,” they offered, and the other nodded, complying. The second hmmed out loud. “Let’s peel the paper off the back and see if there’s one underneath.”
“It won’t devalue it?” the first replied.
“Nah,” the second said. “The paper’s already distressed. This is only worth more if it’s got a label to show its origin.” They peeled the old paper away. I was aware of some of it crumbling as they pulled. One of the humans made a disappointed noise.
“Nothing,” they said. “Still, we could probably ask $250 for it. Cut it down to $100 on the last day.”
“Sure,” the other replied, and the pair moved on to the rest of the things.
I wondered who my next owner would be.
This story was inspired by a post by @iridessence on Instagram. Many thanks to my friend for letting me run with this idea.
