I woke to a soft tap, tap, tap against smooth glass. At first I convinced myself it was the window, an errant breeze or a stray branch brushing the pane. Then I remembered I live on the second floor of a semi-detached house. No one could reach that high unless they’d hauled a ladder through my living room.

My four tiny chihuahuas trembled in a lump beneath the wardrobe, noses pressed to the carpet. Their eyes, twice their normal size, shone with terror; their tails were tucked so far under their bodies I thought they might disappear altogether. Normally they’d bark, jump, even skitter across the ceiling if a mouse so much as dared to squeak—yet now they huddled silent and still, as though whatever frightened them had somehow silenced the world.

The tapping persisted. My heart shuddered in my ribs, cold fingers tracing my spine. With every echo of glass, my mind flicked between logic and panic. I checked the window for a ladder, a bent hinge, a glimpse of someone’s face—but saw only the dark night pressing against the glass. It was then I noticed the large mirror propped beside the window, its frame carved with twisting vines that seemed almost alive in the dim light.

Curiosity warred with dread, but the knocking dragged me forward. Step by trembling step, I approached the mirror. When I peered into its silver surface, I saw only my own pale reflection—eyes wide, breathing ragged. As soon as I met my gaze, the tapping halted, and the room fell into a vacuum of sound. Relief rippled through me, a fleeting warmth that made my knees weak.

I rapped my knuckles on the mirror’s edge, rattling the glass. Nothing moved behind it. I shuffled around, unscrewed the frame, lifted it from its stand—but found no hidden speaker, no panel, no ghostly handprint on the back. As I turned once more to face my reflection, the tapping returned, louder, more insistent. Panic gripped my throat.

“I know you’re there,” I whispered, voice hoarse. “Show yourself.” The mirror’s surface rippled like oil in a storm. For a heartbeat I saw my life replayed: childhood laughter in sunlit fields, betrayals whispered behind my back, the day I left home with nothing but a small suitcase—and, most hauntingly, glimpses of roads I never took, moments I never lived, choices I never made. My chest tightened as shame and longing coiled together.

Then the reflection’s smile twisted into something else—sharp, hungry, utterly wrong. It pressed a hand to the glass from the inside, knuckles white. I stumbled back as the tapping morphed into frantic raps, raps, raps. My dogs yelped in unison, skittering from their hiding place to scratch at the door, which now banged madly like a trapped animal.

I lunged for my phone on the bedside table, blazing with missed calls—yet no bars, no connection. The tapping slowed to a deliberate, measured knock. My reflection’s head tilted, hair spilling over one eye. The chamber of my heart thundered in time with each dull rap.

And then I understood: it wasn’t the mirror that trapped me. It was me. As the last knock echoed, my reflection raised a second hand—one I did not possess. The glass cracked, a spider-web fracture spreading across its face, and cold dread flooded my veins. I realised too late that something on the other side was waiting… and I had nowhere left to run.