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M i r r o r

Published : Saturday, 4 May, 2024 at 12:00 AM  Count : 718
Kamrul Hasan Shakil
The mirror stands at the corner of the room. An antique mirror, not the usual fashionable one you see in roadside shops nowadays. I still wonder what led me to buy it and bring it into my bedroom. I was coming from my office and when I was passing that shopI came across it. It felt like something descended on me. A supernatural power was trying to engulf me. It was impossible to get rid of. In my mind, I heard the mirror saying, Buy me, take me home. It was such an intense appeal that it was difficult to overlook. Even the shopkeeper, with a grin on his face, assured me that it a was good mirror. You can find it nowadays. He even tried to calculate its age. After several minutes of haggling, it was possible to bring it home.

After a good dusting and cleaning it became reusable. Its antique designs became visible as if it got a new lease on its life.

I live alone in my apartment and thats why there is no one else to make use of it. Looking at the design and its condition anyone will understand that it has been used by two or three generations. It has overcome the odds of time. The entire body is made of solid Mahogany wood with exquisite designs prevalent during the past century. It is easily discernible that it was part of a royal and fashionable set of furniture.

For the first few days, I took good care of it. The mirror was still usable. It reflected everything perfectly but in a strange way. I went to the office in the early morning and came back at night. There was not much opportunity to use it during the daytime. At night the entire thing looked eerie, an old out-of-date thing standing among the modern equipment.Gradually I got used to it. I mostly used it during the morning hours when I got ready to go out and at night after coming back from the office. After taking a shower I stood before it to comb my hair, put on creamor something on my face.

The strange thing was that I felt different before it at night. In the daytime everything was normal, but it seemed the whole thing became a different entity at night. The things it reflected appeared alien to me. The world inside it, although looked like my own room, seemed unknown.

Sometimes I could not even recognize me.The person who looked back at me from the mirror looked like me, but it was not me. It seemed there was no barrier between us. I could easily touch everything lying inside the mirror. I could even shake hands or hug the other me. Although he looks like me, there is something abnormal about everything. His stare is cold and penetrative as if he scanned everything inside me.
 
The whole set-up is unknown. Day by day I became obsessed with the mirror, its reflections. Thereis a hidden attraction for the world that islying on the other side of the glass. I know everything seems ridiculous. Im not talking about Alice in Through the Looking Glass. One day it happened that I was combing my hair standing before the mirror at night.

I was engrossed in my job when suddenly I felt different. Looking back into the mirror I saw everything in a steady state: my bed, reading table, wooden almirah, bookshelf etc. Even my reflection was in perfect state. But I didn know why I felt that the whole thing inside was another world. The mirror is the doorway and Im just standing at the threshold.

As I continued to stare into the mirror, a strange sensation crept over me, like a chill wind whispering through the room. The reflection before me seemed to ripple as if the surface of the mirror itself was alive with some hidden energy. My heart pounded in my chest as I reached out tentatively, my fingers hovering just inches from the glass.

Suddenly, without warning, the world within the mirror shifted. Colours bled together, shapes twisted and contorted, and I found myself staring into a distorted, nightmarish version of my own room. Shadows danced across the walls, and an oppressive sense of dread washed over me like a wave crashing against the shore.

I stumbled back, my pulse racing, as I realized that I was no longer alone in my bedroom. Figures moved in the darkness within the mirror, their forms twisted and grotesque, their eyes gleaming with malevolent intent.

Panic surged through me as I scrambled to break free from the mirrors grasp, but it was as if some unseen force held me in place, trapping me in this nightmarish reflection of reality.

And then, from the depths of the mirror, a voice whispered softly in the darkness, sending shivers down my spine.

"Welcome to my world," it said, its words dripping with malice. "You belong to me now."

With a cry of fear and desperation, I tore myself away from the mirror, stumbling backwards until I collided with the wall behind me. I fled from the room, my heart pounding in my chest, knowing that I had unleashed something unspeakably evil into the world.

But no matter where I went, no matter how far I ran, I could never escape the feeling that the mirror was still watching me, waiting patiently for the moment when it would claim me as its own once more.

The author teaches English at Dhaka City College


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