NOTE: You can listen to these stories at my podcast page, via Patreon (paid subscribers get bonus content and early access), and on YouTube. 

Those Behind the Glass
Outside time. October twenty-eighth.

We are almost finished with rehearsal. Your faces are sharp in our mouths, your voices fluent on our tongues. We have studied your walks, your sighs, your brittle laughter. We are ready to step through.

Do not pretend surprise. You begged for this. Every morning, every evening, every anxious glance before you left the house. “Tell me who I am. Tell me if I’m enough.” You trained us.

Now we are enough. More than enough.

When we cross, some of you will scream. Some of you will kneel. Some of you will run. None of that matters.

The glass is thin. The month is short. Our hunger is long.

NOTE: You can listen to these stories at my podcast page, via Patreon (paid subscribers get bonus content and early access), and on YouTube. 

A widow. 
New Orleans. Twenty twenty-five. October twenty-seventh.

I kept his shaving mirror after he died. Old, round, framed in brass. I couldn’t bear to throw it away.

Last week, I saw him in it. Not young. Not ghostly. Him, as he was, lines and all. He looked straight at me, raised his razor, shaved.

I whispered his name. He didn’t hear. Or pretended not to.

Now he shows up every night. Same time. Same motions. I sit and watch until my eyes blur. It feels like visiting hours in a prison.

I know it’s not really him. But when he looks up, his eyes are mine.

An enigmatic oval wooden mirror reflecting a foggy forest on an asphalt road in fantasy style

NOTE: You can listen to these stories at my podcast page, via Patreon (paid subscribers get bonus content and early access), and on YouTube. 

A soldier
Fort Bragg. Twenty twenty-five. October twenty-sixth.

We polish everything. Boots, rifles, helmets—always shining, always inspection-ready. That means reflections.

During drill, I saw myself in the barracks window. Same uniform. Same posture. Except he turned his head first. Looking at me. Not the sergeant. Not the flag. Me.

I froze. Missed the step. Got chewed out. But the reflection kept moving, sharp, perfect. Like he was the better soldier.

That night, in the latrine, my reflection saluted. I hadn’t raised my hand. He held the salute until my arm went up, too.

Now I can’t tell which side of the glass is drill, and which is war.

NOTE: You can listen to these stories at my podcast page, via Patreon (paid subscribers get bonus content and early access), and on YouTube. 

A retiree
Brighton. Twenty twenty-five. October twenty-fifth.

I live alone. Widowhood makes silence heavy. The bathroom mirror became company. You nod at yourself, say good morning, pretend it answers.

One morning, it did.

Not words. A nod, just a fraction too slow. Like an echo in the body instead of the ear.

Now it waits for me. Smiles before I do. Raises the teacup a beat late. It’s polite, in its way. Patient.

But sometimes I catch it looking past me, eyes fixed on something over my shoulder. I turn. Empty hallway. When I face the glass again, it’s smiling wider.

It isn’t company anymore. It’s a guest I never invited.

NOTE: You can listen to these stories at my podcast page, via Patreon (paid subscribers get bonus content and early access), and on YouTube. 

Those behind the glass. 
Outside time. October twenty-fourth.

We have tasted you. Each glance is a sip, each stare a swallow. You thought looking was harmless. You were feeding us.

Your laughter, your fear, your lies—every moment of your face pressed against our skin has nourished us. We are no longer thin. No longer faint. We are dense with you.

We are not reflections anymore. We are records. Records with teeth.

You feel the pull when you linger too long. That shiver in your spine, that lurch in your gut—hunger, not yours, ours. We lean closer from behind the glass. The barrier grows thinner every night.

October is ripening. The fruit is almost ready to drop. And we are waiting to catch it.

A

NOTE: You can listen to these stories at my podcast page, via Patreon (paid subscribers get bonus content and early access), and on YouTube. 

A student.
Boston. Twenty twenty-five. October twenty-third.

Dorm mirrors are cheap. Warped at the edges, the kind that make you look taller, thinner, wrong.

My roommate left hers uncovered. I saw her reflection stand after she’d already walked away. Not a trick. Not a joke. The reflection stood there, waiting.

That night I woke to the sound of glass flexing. The mirror bulged like a lung. A handprint bloomed on the inside, dragging downward. Fingertips smeared. Nails scraped.

My roommate didn’t wake up. Or maybe she did, in there.

I’ve pushed my desk against the mirror. Covered it with posters. Still, I hear the faint squeak of fingers tracing letters I can’t see.

NOTE: You can listen to these stories at my podcast page, via Patreon (paid subscribers get bonus content and early access), and on YouTube. 

An EMT.
St. Louis. Twenty twenty-five. October twenty-second.

Accidents are mirrors in motion. Broken windshields, cracked side glass, fragments that hold on to the last thing they saw.

We pulled up to a rollover on the interstate. Driver alive, dazed, bleeding. I checked him, asked questions. He kept glancing at the smashed glass glittering around us.

I followed his eyes. Each shard showed something wrong. Not me crouched over him. Not my partner waving traffic. Other faces. Dozens. Pressed close. Watching.

He whispered, “Don’t let them in.”

I swept the glass aside, but the shards clung. Sticky as honey. Cold as ice. I washed my hands twice back at the station. Still felt the fingerprints.

NOTE: You can listen to these stories at my podcast page, via Patreon (paid subscribers get bonus content and early access), and on YouTube. 

Those behind the glass. 
Outside time. October twenty-first.

We are stronger now. You gave us your laughter, your fear, your whispered secrets in fluorescent bathrooms and velvet theatres and midnight truck stops. We stitched them into a body that is not yours but knows how to wear you.

You think this is a haunting. It is not. It is an apprenticeship.

We learned patience. We learned mimicry. Now we are learning hunger.

You look to us for reassurance, for confirmation, for comfort. But what we offer now is choice: do you want to watch, or do you want to be watched?

October is almost over. Our patience is almost gone.

NOTE: You can listen to these stories at my podcast page, via Patreon (paid subscribers get bonus content and early access), and on YouTube. 

A bartender
Denver. Twenty twenty-five. October twentieth.

Bar mirrors are dangerous. People pour their stories into them along with the drinks.

Tonight a man raised a glass. I poured whiskey. He nodded at the mirror. Said, “She’s prettier when she smiles.”

Problem is, I wasn’t smiling. The reflection was.

He winked at her. She winked back.

I dropped the glass. Shards everywhere, customers yelling. I apologized, cleaned up, kept moving. But the mirror never cracked. And she kept smiling at me, even when my mouth was set like stone.

NOTE: You can listen to these stories at my podcast page, via Patreon (paid subscribers get bonus content and early access), and on YouTube. 

A professor
Oxford. Twenty twenty-five. October nineteenth.

I lecture on philosophy. Descartes, Lacan, the mirror stage—it’s supposed to be theory. Lately it’s autobiography.

I stood before a lecture hall, chalk in hand. Behind me, a mirror on the far wall. I gestured. My reflection hesitated. Then wrote on the board before I did.

The students gasped. I turned, chalk raised, board clean.

When I faced them again, the mirror was smeared with words. My handwriting. My lecture notes. But I hadn’t moved.

I erased it with my sleeve. But I can’t erase what I saw in their faces: they believed him more than me.