STORY: "THE GRIN"

 "It started with a smile that wasn’t mine." 

In the thinning hours before dawn, when the world forgets how to breathe, Elijah Carrick sat motionless in his townhouse bathroom. The mirror in front of him was fogged around the edges from a shower that ended forty-five minutes ago. Yet his reflection remained perfectly clear—too clear. The air was cold now. Too cold for May in Louisiana. But it wasn't the chill that made Elijah tremble.

It was the grin.

His face in the mirror grinned at him.

And he didn’t.

Three weeks earlier…

"Sir? Sir, we're closing."

The barista, a young man with acne scars and the voice of someone unsure of where he belonged in the world, tapped Elijah on the shoulder. Elijah jolted upright, knocking his half cup of  latte onto the polished oak tabletop.

"Shit - I'm sorry. I lost track of time."

"You were muttering to yourself - kinda loud." The barista chuckled nervously. "Honestly, thought you were... praying or something. Maybe not."

Elijah rubbed his eyes, chalked with fatigue, and tried to laugh. "I think I was dreaming with my eyes open. Again."

"You should get some sleep, man."

Elijah just looked at him and wearily nodded. "Yeah. I should."

But he knew he wouldn’t.

Because Elijah Carrick hadn’t slept in six days.

He wasn’t an insomniac. Not in the usual sense. The pills didn’t work - not Ambien, not Temazepam, not even the sedative cocktail his desperate therapist had prescribed. They’d knock him out, sure. His heart rate would slow. His eyelids would flutter. He’d lie there like a corpse.

But he wouldn’t sleep.

Because something waited for him there.

It began three weeks ago, on an otherwise forgettable Tuesday, with a dream that was too vivid, too real. He was standing in his apartment, looking in the mirror, shaving. Only - he wasn't holding the razor.

The man in the mirror was.

And he was smiling.

Wide. Like a child who just learned how to lie.

Elijah poured himself a cup of black coffee as the morning sun tried to crawl through his blinds. His hands trembled. It had gotten worse last night. The dream had returned—but it wasn’t a dream.

He’d gone to brush his teeth and caught something in the reflection. A flicker. A delay.

His own mouth had curled upward when he knew he wasn’t smiling.

This time, the reflection winked.

"You're not real," Elijah whispered to the mirror.

"You’re not awake," the reflection mouthed silently.

Elijah saw a psychiatrist, Dr. Leona Marris. She was practical. Grounded. A worn plaid jacket and soft voice kind of woman. She asked gentle questions and wrote in a little leather bound notebook. She didn’t believe in ghosts, demons, or mirror-people. That made one of them.

"Have you experienced hallucinations before?" she asked.

"No. But... this doesn’t feel like a hallucination."

"Tell me what it feels like."

He stared at the floor. "It feels like I’m... not alone. Not in my head. Not even in my own body."

Leona tapped her pen, then set it down. “Derealization can do that. Extreme sleep deprivation warps perception. The mind pulls at the edges of reality.”

“I know what derealization is. I read the textbooks. This is different. It’s… personal. Like something’s trying to come through.”

Leona leaned back. “Come through where?”

Elijah hesitated.

“Through the mirror.”

That night, Elijah stayed away from all reflective surfaces. No mirror in the hallway. None in the bathroom. He even covered his microwave with duct tape and paper. But mirrors, he learned, aren’t just glass.

They live in black laptop screens, dark TV panels, still puddles of water.

It was in his coffee, for God’s sake.

He looked down into the mug, and the surface grinned back.

The next night, it spoke.

It didn’t speak with words. Not at first. Its mouth moved like his, but wrong. Delayed. Then too fast. Then too slow. And then:

"You’re empty, Elijah."

He stumbled back. His chest clenched with ice.

"You know how I know that?" the reflection said, smiling like a wound. "Because I’m full. I’m what fills you."

Elijah screamed. Punched the glass.

It didn’t crack.

But his knuckles did.

Blood dripped down the sink. The thing in the mirror raised its hand and licked a clean, unbloodied knuckle.

The next day, Leona called him.

“You missed your appointment, Elijah.”

“I can’t go outside anymore.”

“Elijah, you need help. You sound—”

“I see it when I close my eyes now.”

A pause. “What do you see?”

“A face. My face. Smiling. But it has too many teeth.”

Another pause. But this time, something was different.

The voice on the phone clicked oddly, like an old VHS tape.

“Dr. Marris?” Elijah asked.

Her voice came back. But it was deeper now. Distorted.

“Elijah,” she said, in that new voice, “you’re beginning to see the truth.”

Elijah tore through his apartment that night, smashing every glass surface. He tore his television from the wall. Smashed his phone. Broke every frame. Then he curled in the bathtub, hands around his ears, humming.

The lights flickered.

And from the shards in the sink came a whisper:

"Let me in."

By dawn, Elijah had a plan.

He would go to the old psychiatric wing of Mercy General—the one they shut down after the fire in '78. It still had the old “mirror room” used for patient observation.

Two-way glass. A place where reflection was manipulated.

If the thing wanted out, maybe Elijah could trap it instead.

The hospital smelled of mildew and old rust. The mirror room was still intact. Elijah dragged a metal chair inside and sat facing the two-way glass. Behind it, a forgotten hallway. Nothing else.

He waited.

And waited.

Hours passed.

Until the lights behind the mirror flickered on.

It was him - his reflection.

But he wasn’t sitting.

He was standing.

Upside down.

Feet planted on the ceiling.

Grinning.

"Why now?" Elijah screamed, pounding the glass.

The thing mouthed something.

He couldn’t hear it.

"WHY NOW!?"

This time, the words were clear. Spoken not through the glass, but behind him.

"Because now, you believe."

Elijah turned.

There was no one there.

But the room was mirrored.

And in every direction, he was surrounded.

By himself.

All smiling.

All stepping closer.

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