Plague in the Mirror

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There’s a certain kind of silence when you wake in the deep of night, in a strange bed, knowing that someone has entered the room.

You don’t know how you know. Your eyes are closed, and whoever it is hasn’t made a sound.

But the silence is thicker than usual; it weighs more, in the way that a withholding friend is worse than one who’s just neglecting you.

With that weight, that knowing, on her chest, May opens her eyes to find a figure at the foot of the canopy bed.

At first, she can’t make out more than a luminous outline, but as her eyes adjust in the dark, she sees it’s a girl, looking as surprised as May feels.

The intruder’s hands hang at her sides, and the folds of an old-fashioned gown puddle on the Tuscan tile at her feet. May has the urge to clap her hands over her eyes the way you do when you’re a kid and think blindness and invisibility are the same thing.

You can’t see me.

Me.

Because as the other girl walks forward in the moonlight, it’s like looking in a mirror. The ghostly stranger might be her identical twin or a fainter version of May, who can’t look away or cry out or move.

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