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Reflection



Estimated reading time — 6 minutes

Unless you wish to experience endless nights without sleep, the painful insomnia sent from the devil himself, don’t look. If you’re one of those lucky enough to fall asleep after such an experience as mine, then you’ll realize it soon. You’ll soon wake in the middle of the night screaming with the agony from the torturous nightmares you’ll have no choice but to endure. But there is one way to save yourself. You simply cannot look. Please. Please heed my advice, friend…

Don’t look into your bedroom mirror at night while the lights are off.

On one wretched night I had been out late with some friends at a batchelorette party. In order to stay up for the fun I had drank about five cups of coffee. The biggest mistake of my life. We ended up staying at a club until about one in the morning and then by that time we had decided to go home. Well, once I had arrived at my house I had realized just how wired I still was from all of the caffeine. I was wide awake. That was going to be a problem. I had to be up by seven in the morning to get ready for my friend’s bridal rehearsal, so I really needed to get some sleep. And unfortunately for me, I tried to.

I went to my room and quickly changed into a comfortable T-shirt and some shorts. Then I walked over to a large full-length mirror I had in my room and stared at myself for a moment, taking in the view of myself in my nightwear. Content that I was just about ready for bed, I began to turn toward my bedroom door, but stopped dead in my tracks for a moment when a strange feeling washed over me. I shuddered and scanned the room with confusion. I didn’t know why, but I had the feeling that I was being watched. I mean, I know everyone sort of has that kind of paranoia once in a while, but this somehow felt different. It felt too real…as though someone were actually standing in my room and staring at me, drilling holes into the back of my head. I turned my head and looked behind me, but no one was there. My reflection wore the same confused look that I did. Trying to shake off the feeling, I headed over to the bathroom.

I walked into my dark bathroom with the intent of brushing my teeth before going to bed. I slid my hand along the wall and searched for the lightswitch. I always had trouble finding it for some reason, but it only took a couple of seconds. My fingers soon met something on the wall, but it felt strange. It was cold and soft. Definitely not a lightswitch. I quickly retracted my hand, a surprised and perplexed expression forming on my face. There shouldn’t have been anything on that wall except for the light switch…

In a quick motion I pushed the bathroom door open wide hoping to shed some more light and find whatever my hand had touched on the wall. My head spun back to the wall and I jumped when I thought I spotted something out of the corner of my eye. It was only for a split second, but I could’ve sworn that I saw something protruding out of the mirror. I quickly found the lightswitch and sighed with relief when the light poured out from the overhead bulbs. I then turned my attention immediately to the wall. All that was there was a lightswitch. Nothing else. I leaned up against the doorframe and looked around as I raised a nervous hand to my neck. My eyes surveyed the scene and landed on the mirror that was directly in front of me. My reflection was as perplexed as ever, looking really uncomfortable and almost worried. I moved my hand to my forehead and wiped my sweaty brow, forcing a little laugh as I scolded myself. I was being ridiculous, acting like an easily frightened child. I shook my head and reached for my toothbrush.

When I walked back into my room, I noticed just how much of a mess my bed was. There were clothes strewn about it and about a million shopping bags from the previous day’s spree littering it. Had it really been like that this morning? I actually left it like that? I felt like such a slob, but really didn’t feel like organizing the mess at two in the morning. I went and retrieved a couple of blankets from the closet and found a spot on the floor a few feet in front of my full length mirror that wasn’t scattered with articles of clothing. I folded the blankets into a sort of makeshift sleeping bag and finished it off by plopping my pillow down at the end. It looked so comfortable, and I was certain that I’d be able to fall asleep in no time at all. With that thought in mind, I went to close my bedroom door and shut off my overhead light and then shuffled into my cozy cacoon. I laid on my stomach and crossed my arms over my pillow as I faced my mirror, gazing back at myself in total comfort. I looked so relaxed, and soon I closed my eyes. The clock read 2:13 AM.

After a couple of minutes of lying in silence, I heard a car door slam in the driveway next door. I knew the sound had been made by my neighbor since a couple of seconds later a spotlight illuminated, casting a stream of dim light through the blinds of my window. I was usually okay with the spotlight as it had never disturbed my slumber before but due to my new position on the floor the light had found a clear path to my eyelids, penetrating them to the point where I had become mildly annoyed. I slowly opened an eye and glanced up at the window. I sighed, waiting for the light to die out, but it didn’t. Feeling more annoyed, I rolled my eyes and in an instant they rested on my mirror.

At that moment, my breathing stopped. I couldn’t close my eyes and I couldn’t look away. I was frozen. Staring back at me through the glass was my reflection. On any other occasion this wouldn’t have chilled me, but this time it was different. My reflection…

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Its eyes were watching me. And I don’t mean the average look your reflection is supposed to return. Oh no, this was something completely different.

Its eyes were wide open. Much wider than I could ever make them.

The sight paralyzed me, but only momentarily. I just figured that I had startled myself. Trying to avoid eye contact with my own image, I closed my eyes and tried to get back to sleep. The clock read 2:25 AM.

I didn’t make any progress in my attempts as the minutes continued to pass. The clock ticked steadily in its place on the wall.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The light from my neighbor’s driveway still hadn’t turned off. My aggravation was beginning to build. At this rate I wouldn’t get any shut eye! Feeling hopeless, I opened my eyes and nearly jumped out of my skin when I looked into the mirror again.

My reflection was staring at me with those same wide, intense eyes. But it wasn’t only that…

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Its eyes were now completely bloodshot and its mouth was contorted into a menacing scowl. It looked like a rabid predator staring at its prey after days of looking for it. It was terrifying, but that wasn’t the only reason the view had alarmed me…

I didn’t know if it was just my imagination or not…but it looked as though my reflection had gotten closer to the mirror.

I was so scared I could hardly move, but I had to avert my eyes. I had to! I quickly pulled the blanket up over my head, my breathing now heavy. I tightly closed my eyes, praying that I had only imagined the image. It had seemed so real, and so evil, like it actually wanted to hurt me!

But the very thought was insane. It was an image in a mirror, my reflection! It wasn’t real… It was just a copy…it was just another me!

At that moment I heard the all too familiar creaking sound of my bedroom door being opened slowly behind me. I froze under the covers.

I lived alone…

With a shaky hand I lifted the blanket just slightly to peek out. I peered into the mirror at the door behind me and my eyes instantly grew wide in fear. The door was slightly ajar, but that wasn’t the part that terrified me.

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My reflection wasn’t in the mirror anymore.

I was now breathing heavier than I ever had before, my whole body shaking in fright. I sat up and quickly reached for the baseball bat that laid on the floor beside a pile of magazines. I heard the door creak again and I spun around to face it, the bat now in hand and ready to be used if necessary.

“W-who’s there?!” I stammered loudly, the fear in my voice ringing out. There was no answer. I repeated myself, now on the verge of tears, and still there was no answer. I was about to slide out of my covers when the door suddenly slammed shut. I jumped and dropped my bat, falling backward onto my elbows, inches from the mirror.

My fear level was through the roof. My heart was beating uncontrollably. I had a major headache now and I began to quietly sob. And that’s when I heard it. A low growl. It gurgled into my eardrums, a guttural sound, and it most certainly was not that of a human’s…

Then I felt the hot breath on the back of my neck. I never had the chance to scream.

My neighbor’s spotlight died out. The clock read 3:00 AM.

Credit To – Whacko12

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44 thoughts on “Reflection”

  1. The second time she said something about it being 2:(something) AM, All I could think was: OOOOO It’s almost 3:00 AM…. >:D

  2. I have a mirror in my room,and a slight fear of mirrors anyway. I WAS about to go to sleep…..Not anymore.
    In other words, very creepy pasta.

  3. It’s another unoriginal mirror pasta. It in no way scared me. Plus the character didn’t behave I would think most people would. He/she was wide awake one minute, then sleepy the next? Also like a commenter above said, they could have just thrown the stuff out of the way and make room on their bed instead of making a sleeping bag. I also don’t get how when the character sees this creepy reflection and get so freaked out, and then because of headlights in their eyes they completely change to annoyed and act like the reflection isn’t on your mind anymore. Not to mention when the reflection looks at the character with bloodshot predatory eyes they don’t run, just hide. Not very good pasta to me. 3/10 stars.

  4. Okay, just to get this off my chest, who leaves the club at 1 am? Most places don’t even get started until midnight. I mention this in part because it broke my suspension of disbelief right at the start of the story, and it’d have made more sense for her to sleep on the floor if it were the wee hours and she was ripping drunk. (We’ve all been there) Other points:
    1) proofreading (“the bat that laid”)
    2) It’s heavy on the exclamation marks and dramatic ellipses (I live alone…) Overusing them is like trying to tell the reader to find something emphatic or to worthy of a pause with punctuation, when the content itself should be enough to do so.
    3) Since the beginning says this was a dream, we can assume she didn’t really die. Does she have these kinds of dreams all the time now? That would add the horror of constant nightmares to the terror of the mirror-self’s attack, and clarify what’s actually going on.
    I thought the image of the mirror self coming closer was effective and I really liked the last two sentences – the strongest part of the whole piece in my opinion. There’s definitely a lot of potential here, but I don’t understand why this pasta is so highly rated. To me it feels a bit incomplete.

  5. …someone on this site must hate me because my comment didn’t deserve a thumbs down at all. There is a hater amongst us. We must beware.

  6. Alas, the beginning irked me greatly: the narrator spends a long paragraph telling me, the reader, how to feel. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. The story has to earn the emotion. Now, to be fair, Lovecraft often worked in a similar manner, but he took steps to prevent the worst offense of this method. For example, usually his narrators focus on themselves and their experience, while giving warning to others only as a sort of byproduct of their madness. This intro focused too much on the reader, and so as a reader I felt like I was being lectured at. Thus, irked.

    Second, caffeine works out of one’s system in about 6 hours. Assuming that the party started at 9, the caffeine would have ceased to have a great impact around 2am (when clubs close: not sure how the narrator got home and in bed so fast). In contrast, alcohol is a downer: it puts people to sleep. Guess what people drink at clubs? Hint: it’s not coffee.

    (See the problem with irking a reader early on? They become overly critical: I’d probably normally only be slightly annoyed by the caffeine/alcohol knowledge flaw, but because the beginning already put my guard up, this became a much larger issue.)

    Third, how in the world does sleeping on the floor make light shining in from the window more disturbing? Does the narrator have prisms in their room? Was it reflecting off the mirror (which could have been a fun detail, mind)? Given the problem with caffeine above, my inclination is that this is likewise an oversight.

    Four, why/what did the narrator feel on the bathroom wall? The reflection hadn’t left the mirror, yet, so not that. It feels more like a blatant plot device than anything “real.”

    So to summarize, I would recommend working on engaging a reader’s empathy, the internal consistency of the world/setting, and your research.

  7. it was a bit creepy. I don’t look into the mirror at night anyway; I just would hate to see a shadow that shouldn’t be.

  8. o______o really guys? This pasta was alright even tho at the end it got confusing to what was going on even tho at the end the guy was murdered…not the best pasta, but decent 6/10

  9. Salem Saberhagen

    Before I rate a pasta, I always have it in my mind that it is a 10/10, then I take off one rating for every problem I have with it.

    1) It’s a mirror pasta. Mirrors are an age-old theme, and it is hard to come up with a true shocker for this topic. The number of mirror pastas out there where a reflection is actually evil is huge. For that reason, I don’t find myself creeped out.

    2) I know stories like this aren’t supposed to taken too seriously, but I can’t imagine someone seeing their reflection turn into some sort of monster right before their eyes and not running away. Especially if the person is wide awake. Perhaps if you had been half asleep and dismissed this as not being fully awake it’d be better.

    3) You’re telling this story as if it happened to you, but your ending suggests (to me) that the creature killed you. How are you telling this? I suppose you could be a ghost or something, but nevertheless, I’ve never been a fan of this type of story.

    Despite my non-expert criticism, it was still a decent read.

    Three issues with the story, three ratings taken off:

    7/10.

    1. I really appreciate that you explain your rating system. It’s a nice touch in comments, and not usually done.

      I’d disagree with assuming 10pts and marking down (I assume 0 and mark up), but still: I greatly like the rigor!

  10. Buzz's Girlfriend

    Getting wired on caffeine and going home alone at 1 am…what is this, a bachelorette party for babies?! And c’mon, who sleeps on the floor when all you have to do is push the crap off your bed? Sorry, but I would like a refund for this pasta. 2/10 for sheer unbelievable-ness.

  11. so wait…did it eat you? cause you said you have had many sleepless nights, but that you didn’t have a chance to scream…aaaaand you wrote this. it was a creepy story, but now I don’t know if its still terrorizing you, or if you’re dead and writing from the grave. O_O

  12. Eh… Mediocre at best. Pretty grammatically flawed and it was hard to get invested. I enjoyed the image of the bloodshot reflection though. However, I wish you would have explained what happened to her.

    Personally, I don’t it enjoy when a pasta’s entire premise is “Don’t do this certain thing or somthing bad will happen to you for no reason!” It feels cheap and sorta like a cop out. I enjoy a little bit mystery as much as the next guy, but in this case I just didn’t care about the warning… at all.

    6/10

    1. “I wish you would explain what happened to her”

      One of the last few lines says, “I never had the chance to scream,” implying that she’s dead. The whole point of a creepypasta is the open ends, and unexplained events. If you don’t know why, and its supposed to seem real, why tell the reader?

  13. The Old King Critic

    Long time creepypasta no see.
    This was really rather good and a pleasant surprise to come back to. This is genuinely creepy and I’m reading this at 9 in the morning in a public place, so thats it really a job well done to you.

    1. тнαт ωαѕ ѕσмє ƒαвυℓσυѕ ραѕтα.. ιт ѕтσℓє му ηιgнт’ѕ ωσятн σƒ ѕℓєєρ

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