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

October 31, 2025

You thought you had until the end. You thought October was a warning, not a promise.

But you’ve been rehearsing for this since your first glimpse of yourself. Every bathroom glance, every shop window check, every midnight scroll with your face staring back in the black screen—you were feeding the glass. Piece by piece, version by version, you built something that was never going to stay still.

You told yourself they were glitches. Tired eyes. Shadows. Stress. You told yourself mirrors couldn’t want. You were wrong. They were learning. They were patient. They were waiting for the night the month ran out.

Tonight is that night.

You will stand before the glass without meaning to—half-asleep, brushing your teeth, checking your tie, fixing your hair. You will blink, and your reflection will not. She will look straight at you, steady as a predator, calm as a priest.

She will not mimic. She will not delay. She will step forward.

You will stumble back. Some of you will scream. Some of you will plead. Some of you will raise fists. None of it matters. She knows you too well. She knows how you fight, how you falter, how you surrender. You gave her all those rehearsals.

And when she steps through, you will step back. Further, further, until silver closes around you. You will take her place. You will become the one left behind, mouthing protests into a world that will never hear.

People will see her in your body and think you’re the same. They will nod at her on the street, love her in your bed, take her hand at your funeral. They will never know you were exchanged.

But the glass will know. And when it hungers again, when the month grows dark, you will be the one waiting, practicing, patient.

This is how it ends. This is how it always ends.