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ARA DID NOT interview her roommate before he moved in, and perhaps that’s where the issue lay. She just accepted his response to her desperate Craigslist ad—Wanted: Someone who can help pay rent for a two-bedroom apartment. Utilities not included. Background check required—and cruised through his background check without much interest. No arrests, no tickets, good credit—there was nothing for her to really gawk over. He was a recent college grad, however, and still unsecured in a career. He’d written on his application that he had prospective interviews in local businesses while he currently worked in the CVS downtown. It wasn’t promising, but he could pay the first two months’ rent upfront. Mark Dallon would have to do.
Within the first week, he’d made himself entirely at home. The dishes in the sink lingered a little more than she would have liked. His laundry piled in the living room on a chair, flannels and old faded tees becoming a part of the decor. His blonde mop of hair shed a lot more than she expected. But the real problem began when Kara caught him pissing with the door open to their bathroom. Wide open, giving Kara a full view of all he had to offer.
‘Dude!’ she yelped, turning her face. ‘Come on!’
‘Oops,’ he said half-heartedly. He didn’t reach for the door. ‘My bad.’
Kara wished that had been the only time. It happened twice more afterward.
She tried to just ignore his blunders and continue to coexist. He checked in with her daily, but didn’t really extend the conversation beyond that. They could both work in the same space without unnecessary noise or chatter. He did take over the whole couch in the living room, and his stuff was all over the dining room table, but Kara thought it to be more of a neatness issue than a boundary issue.
Even so, she called her sister to complain about his behaviour. ‘It’s not that he’s, like, terrible,’ she said over the phone, filing her nails while perched on the edge of the tub. ‘It’s just... not ideal.’
‘I’m still not comfortable with you living with a random dude,’ her older sister remarked. ‘You remember what happened to my friend Nat, right?’
‘No,’ said Kara, shifting the cell between her ear and her shoulder. ‘Remind me.’
‘My god, Kara, you definitely remember.’
Kara looked up at herself in the mirror and rolled her eyes. ‘I definitely don’t, so please remind me.’
‘She, like, lived with a guy she met online and he, like, kept stealing her underwear and sleeping with it under his pillow,’ her sister explained. ‘And then he became obsessed with her and Nat had to involve the police and the landlord and her parents flipped and-’
‘Fuck,’ interjected Kara. ‘What a creep.’
‘I know, right! Ended with a restraining order or something.’ Her sister sighed. ‘I don’t want something like that happening to you.’
‘He passed the background check, Steph. I think he’s fine. He’s just... sloppy.’
‘Peeing with the door open seems more than sloppy, especially since he just, like, had his dick on display for you,’ Steph pointed out. ‘That’s a creep move.’
‘I guess,’ Kara said, unconvinced. She wasn’t sure it was something to stress over. It was just weird and gross. The more Steph went on about it, though, the more uneasy she felt.
‘You have to talk to him, Kara.’ Steph’s tone left no room for argument.
‘Why?’
‘Because if you don’t, he could get worse,’ her sister said flatly. ‘What if he, like, I don’t know, tries to kill you while you sleep or something?’
‘You’re being overdramatic,’ Kara snorted.
‘Nat’s roommate crept into her room in the middle of the night.’
‘Yeah, but Nat is alive.’
‘Luckily!’ Steph sounded impatient. ‘Look, even if he doesn’t try to kill you, his behaviour’s only going to get more unbearable until you talk to him. Promise me you’ll talk to him?’
‘I promise,’ Kara said, though she had no intention of discussing the matter with Mark.
Kara emerged from the shower, glistening with humidity and the fresh smell of her lavender soap. She walked naked across the bathroom, heading towards the fogged mirror. She looked at it for a moment before swiping her hand across the glass. Her streaky reflection stared back. She tilted her chin, looking for the mole under her chin. It wasn’t there. She turned her cheek to the side, in case the spot from yesterday had burst. It wasn’t there, either, and no redness from the surrounding area hinted at its existence. She raised her brows at her mirrored face. Her new acne wash was probably more effective than the last.
A heavy knock came at the door. ‘Hey, Kara? I need the bathroom.’
Kara frowned at herself in the mirror. ‘We have another one by the kitchen.’
‘No, I need my shit that’s in there.’
She sighed. ‘Give me a minute.’ She reached for her towel from behind the door. As she did, the door started to swing open. ‘Dude! No!’ she yelped. She yanked the towel into place, crossing her arms across her chest. ‘The fuck?’
Mark stared at her from the hallway before quickly covering his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought you opened the door.’
She took a deep breath. ‘It’s whatever,’ she tried. ‘Just wait until I come out next time.’
‘You were in there for like forty-five minutes,’ he complained. ‘Can you take shorter showers?’
She blinked at him. ‘Are you... tracking my shower times?’
‘No, no, of course not,’ he assured her. He laughed nervously. ‘Why would you say that?’
‘I doubt I actually took forty-five minutes.’
‘I just don’t want to pay more than my fair share on the water bill. That’s all.’
Her mouth fell open in shock. ‘Seriously?’
‘Yeah?’ he offered, sliding his hand from his eyes. He couldn’t help himself from glancing at her barely covered body before looking back up at her. She lifted a brow. He coughed uncomfortably. ‘Sorry.’
She rolled her eyes at him. ‘I’ll take care of the water bill. You need to pay for the cable, though, since you’re the only one who uses it.’
He nodded, looking away. ‘Okay.’
They stood there in silence—Mark looking everywhere but at Kara, and Kara glaring directly at him. She needed to dry off and change. ‘Can you move so I can leave?’ she eventually sniped at him. He cast his gaze downwards and stepped aside. She quickly brushed by him, heading into her room and slamming the door behind her so hard that the mirror above her bed rattled.
Kara did not start taking shorter showers. Out of spite, she started to run the shower for a good fifteen minutes before she climbed in, and then let it keep running for another ten minutes after the water was cold. To add fuel to the fire, she started monopolising the community living room charger while she showered, as opposed to just bringing her own charger into the bathroom and letting it charge on the countertop.
Mark truly didn’t notice Kara’s passive-aggression until her cell phone went off while she was in the midst of another absurdly long shower. Her high-pitched ringtone—some sort of tune that came from a video game, certainly—rang throughout the living room, startling him. He stared at the phone in its little clear case. ‘Kara?’ he called, and all he heard was the shower running in response. He shrugged. ‘She’ll get it when she gets out, I guess.’
The phone stopped ringing. And then immediately, the ringtone played again.
Mark frowned. Shouldn’t they have left a voicemail?
He got up to look at who was calling Kara. Stephanie (Sister) flashed across the screen in little white letters. The phone stopped ringing again. He took a deep breath. Then it started ringing once more. Intrigued, Mark picked up the phone. ‘Uh, Kara’s phone,’ he said.
‘Where’s Kara?’ snapped a feminine voice on the other end.
‘She’s, uh, in the shower. Sorry. I noticed you kept calling, so I just—’
‘Yeah, no, whatever. As long as you didn’t murder her,’ she said, letting out a false laugh. Mark laughed with her, confused. ‘Can you tell her that her prescription’s filled?’
‘She’s sick?’ Mark asked. He looked around the room, as if he could spot the illness in the air. ‘Why didn’t she tell me?’
‘No, no,’ sighed the sister, irritably. ‘They’re not for a physical illness.’
‘Is she... crazy?’
‘No, idiot, she’s depressed. And I’d appreciate it if you refrain from words like crazy when talking about Kara,’ she said firmly.
‘Sorry,’ started Mark, fearing her reaction. ‘But, uh, she doesn’t seem depressed.’
‘Not now, obviously, because I keep getting her meds refilled,’ explained the sister. ‘Could be conflict of interest or whatever, but when she’s off them, she starts forgetting she’s real. Dissociates and all that. Thinks the world is a dream and nothing is real.’
‘Sounds scary,’ he said, genuinely.
‘Mmm. I’m sure it is. That’s why I need you to tell her I filled her prescription.’
‘Why not just leave a voicemail?’ he asked.
The sister sighed again. ‘She’s never cleared it out. Too many old messages to leave new ones. She blames the depression for that shit, but I think she’s just always been forgetful.’
‘Right,’ he agreed, not really knowing the correct answer. ‘Well, okay, then. I’ll tell her.’
‘Thanks, Matt,’ she said.
‘It’s Mark,’ he insisted, but the other line was dead. As soon as the call ended, it seemed, Kara opened the door to the bathroom, letting out a misting of steam in her wake. She turned towards the living room and stopped, spotting Mark holding her phone.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked slowly.
‘Oh, um, your sister called. Said she filled your prescription.’
Kara’s face darkened. ‘That’s not any of your business.’ She stormed towards him and grabbed the phone from his hand.
‘Uh, it kind of is, Kara!’ he called, as she stomped towards her room. She paused. ‘We live together, you know. If you’re struggling... I can help.’
‘Are you a therapist?’ she asked, not turning around.
‘Well, no, but I meant like pick up more or something. Cook dinner for us both. That sort of thing,’ he said.
She didn’t look back at him. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said, in a voice that suggested she didn’t think it was kind at all. ‘But I’ll tell you if I need your help. Don’t go sticking your nose into my business like that again.’
‘Fair,’ he muttered, and watched as she disappeared into her room.
Kara’s makeup brushes vanished from the bathroom counter a few weeks later. It wasn’t a big deal, at first, since she had got into the habit of using a sponge blender instead. She noticed, however, that they were first gone from the counter after Mark used the bathroom. Usually she wrote down when she moved things from their usual place, but there was no note in her phone about misplacing the makeup brushes.
‘Hey, Mark,’ she started. He was on the couch, sprawled across all three of the cushions. The TV remote sat loosely in his grip, his fingers lazily pushing buttons to flip between channels. It took him a moment to realise he was being confronted.
‘Yeah?’ he offered her a slight smile.
‘This is going to sound dumb, but did you move my makeup brushes?’
He frowned and glanced up at her. ‘No. I didn’t even know you did your makeup.’
Kara blinked at him. ‘Huh?’
‘I, uh, didn’t notice you doing your makeup.’
She gestured to her eyeliner. ‘You’ve seen me without this before.’
He squinted at her. ‘Huh. I guess so. Looks good.’
‘Thanks?’ she offered. She shook her head. ‘Anyway: the brushes.’
‘Haven’t seen them.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Okay. Cool. It’s not like they’ve been in a cup on the counter since you moved in.’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know what to tell you.’ Mark turned back to the TV. ‘Maybe you just misplaced them?’ There was something soft and understanding in his tone, but it just made Kara wrinkle her nose at him.
Kara didn’t know what she wanted to hear. Part of her felt ridiculous for accusing him right away—what could he possibly need the brushes for? So she texted her sister: Do you know why my roommate would take my brushes?
To which her sister replied, No, Kara. I think you probably just forgot where you put them. Followed by a second text: Did you pick up your meds?
And Kara, irritated, simply said: Of course. I’ll go look for them. Such was the end of the incident, despite the makeup brushes refusing to make themselves known in the apartment. Kara just moved on, using her blending sponge as usual, and pretending that it wasn’t as unordinary as it seemed.
Until her potted succulent disappeared from the console in the hallway.
‘We have succulents?’ was all Mark had to say about it.
Another text to her sister, and another demeaning: Kara, are you sure you’re taking your meds?
Then it was her phone charger, moved from the end table in her room onto the hallway floor. He didn’t even have the dignity to put it on the console. She stormed to his bedroom, furiously pounding on the door. ‘Stop moving my shit!’ she shouted at him through the door.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ he yelled back. She heard him lower the volume of whatever he had been listening to and shuffle towards the door. He threw it open unceremoniously, half-dressed in his ratty plain sweats. ‘What is it this time?’
‘My phone charger,’ she said, arms crossed. ‘Why was it on the floor in the hallway?’
‘You tell me,’ he said calmly. ‘I have my own in my room, and we share the one in the living room. I don’t touch yours.’
‘It was on my end table this morning. Then I couldn’t find it. And then I just found it on the floor. Not even on the console.’ Her words were laced with anger.
‘Kara,’ he said gently. ‘Are you suggesting I went into your room, took your phone charger, and then dropped it in the middle of the hallway? Isn’t it more likely that you were moving it... and then just... dropped it?’
She stared at him. He held her gaze, his expression neutral, unmoving. ‘Don’t fuck with me,’ she pleaded quietly. ‘If you’re doing these things, please don’t. It’s unkind.’
Mark said nothing. He just closed the door in her face.
Kara’s eyes glazed over her reflection. Through the mist on the mirror, she could just barely make out her features. Something didn’t quite sit right about her image. She studied her face, looking for anything she couldn’t recognise. Her eyes slid up, from her lips, over the bridge of her nose, past her eyebrows, and landed just above her forehead.
Her hair.
Her hair was dry.
Even though she had just stepped out of the shower.
She reached a hand toward her head. Her reflection did the same. Her hair definitely felt wet. Why didn’t it look wet? She moved closer, her hips pushing against the counter of the sink. The coolness of it dug into her skin. She stared at her own face. Was her nose really tilted at that angle? Were her eyebrows always so uneven?
She leaned back and rubbed her eyes. When she looked again, her hair was wet, but it looked darker than she thought it should. She huffed and opened the bathroom cabinet. Her pills weren’t in there. She didn’t remember where she placed them. She needed more sleep. Maybe she’d start sleeping earlier.
Why was her purse moved from the bedpost where it usually hung?
Mark didn’t know.
But he did find it in his room, on his vanity, seated comfortably under the mirror.
‘Kara, were you in my room?’ was all he had to ask.
Kara resisted the urge to smash his mirror.
You know, as you walk through the hallway, not to look at yourself anymore.
It doesn’t look like you.
You ran out of pills two weeks ago.
You were seeing her before that, though, weren’t you?
Kara stopped washing her hair. It took too long. She tried, at first, to do her hair after without looking in the mirror, but she always ended up staring at it, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. She just couldn’t linger after her showers anymore—she left before the mirror had time to defog. So she tied her hair up and left it that way.
It took Mark a while to notice, surprisingly. ‘Hey, uh,’ he started, a handful of days into Kara’s greasy-haired life. ‘Did you...do something different to your hair?’
Kara shrugged. ‘It’s in a bun.’
‘No, I mean, it looks darker.’
‘It’s just dirty.’
‘Oh,’ said Mark, and that was it, until her hair was increasingly shiny with the additional grease and dander. Then he brought it up again, in the hallway, and she just asked him to leave her alone. As her personal grime grew, he sent a photo of her to Steph, and said, what should I do?
To which he received a response from Kara, not Steph: don’t take pictures of me. Thanks.
A week later, she stopped showering altogether. She only used the half-bath near the kitchen, and she never was in there for longer than a minute. She left her toothbrush, hairbrush, and makeup bag in the full bathroom, abandoning them in favour of permanent morning breath and a head full of greasy locks. Her face began to break out around her cheeks and forehead. ‘Hey, Kara?’ Mark tried, looking at her pimpled face. ‘Do you need more face wash?’
She glared at him. ‘What?’
‘Did you...run out of face wash? Or something?’
Kara’s eyebrows shot towards her forehead. ‘Mind your own fucking business,’ she snapped. He caught a whiff of her breath and tried not to wrinkle his nose.
‘I could move your stuff into the kitchen bathroom, if you’d like,’ he continued. ‘I noticed you...don’t use the big one.’
She blinked at him. ‘You’re tracking me, now? In my own house?’
‘No, of course not, I just—’ he stopped. Why was he paying attention? ‘I just wanted to help, in case—’
‘In case of what?’ she dared him, and he took a breath. He didn’t have a good answer.
‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Good,’ she said, and stormed off to her room.
Mark went to move her toiletries to the half-bath later that evening and found that they were already gone from the main bathroom.
You hate the mirror above your bed.
You hate waking up and glancing at the glass version of your face staring back. Sometimes she smiles. Sometimes she winks. Sometimes her mouth opens like a gaping wound, deep and red and awful. Your muscles rarely move as fast as hers do.
Even though you see them every morning, first thing, you don’t know what colour your eyes are anymore. They were blue yesterday, maybe. Today they’re as dark as earth. Tomorrow they might not even open. They might just stare back at you, peering at you through the clear flesh of your eyelids.
You should really move that mirror, but it’s too heavy nowadays.
Mark was worried that he was sharing his apartment with a zombie. Kara moved through the house in slow motion: her eyes glazed over, her hair and face greasy, her movements slow and groggy. ‘Kara…’ he tried, testing her irritability.
‘Yeah?’
‘Have you... been getting enough sleep?’
‘No.’ She didn’t offer an explanation.
‘Oh,’ he said, politely. ‘Have you told your sister?’
‘No,’ she repeated. ‘It’ll pass. It always does.’ She gave him a weak glare. ‘Don’t you have something else to worry about? Like paying your rent?’
Mark’s heart stopped. ‘Kara, I left the rent in the hallway. On the console.’
She sighed. ‘Obviously, you didn’t.’ She crossed her arms at him. ‘I checked the console this morning. And then the dining room table. And then the living room end table. And then—’
‘Are you out of your meds?’ he blurted, and immediately regretted it. Kara’s face darkened in anger. ‘Sorry, sorry, I just thought—’
‘That is none of your fucking business!’ she snapped.
‘You just seem like you’re struggling! That’s all!’ He took a deep breath. ‘Look, Kara, I worry about you. You’re forgetting things all the time—’
‘Is that what Steph told you?’ she crept forward, just close enough that he could smell her rotten breath. ‘That I’m forgetful? That I don’t know what’s real?’
‘Yes! No! She just, um, said that you have a hard time without your meds…’ He watched her clench and unclench her fists. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry.’
‘Maybe if you stopped fucking with my head, I’d have a better sense of what was going on!’ she shouted. ‘Stop moving my stuff. Stop lying to me. And stop trying to help me with issues I don’t have!’
Mark didn’t have a good response, so he just watched her storm off in silence.
Kara rarely was in the hallway at the same time as Mark. The corridor between their rooms and the living space was too narrow, made even thinner with the large mirror on the right wall. One person could slip by the mirror’s wooden lip without knocking it, but two bodies in the hallway would cause the mirror to rattle and threaten to fall. Every so often, they would emerge from their rooms at the same time and struggle, briefly, to decide who would leave the hallway first. But then every so often slowly became very often and soon it was every time.
After a handful of times, Kara stopped being polite about it.
He opened the door across from her just as she was stepping out of her own. She rolled her eyes. ‘Do you always have to follow me?’ she snapped.
‘Follow you?’ he asked innocently. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Every single time I open my door, you open yours. Are you that desperate for a view of my ass?’
He laughed at her over her bitchiness. ‘Jesus, Kara. No. I don’t give a shit.’
‘That so?’
‘I’ll even go ahead of you.’
‘No,’ she said, crossly. ‘I was leaving first.’ She brushed by him, barely escaping the mirror. As she passed by, however, she heard the distinct click of a phone camera. She whipped around to see his horrified expression as he lowered his phone. ‘Are you serious?’ she said, raising her voice.
‘No, Kara, I wasn’t trying to—’
‘Get caught, right?’ she scoffed. She took a step closer to him. ‘I’ve asked you not to take pictures of me.’
‘It wasn’t of you, I swear—’ he tried, but Kara was in his face, rank and furious.
‘Were you going to keep it this time? Or send it to Steph again? Why do you even have her number, you fucking psycho?’
‘For emergencies!’ he yelled. ‘In case you were to, I don’t know, fucking off yourself or something!’ She recoiled in horror, and Mark immediately regretted his words. ‘I didn’t mean—’
‘No, you did,’ she said softly. She laughed a small, dangerous laugh. ‘You did.’ She backed up into her bedroom door and opened it. ‘Go on, then.’
‘What?’
‘Have yourself a look. You think I’m going to off myself? Go look for evidence to send to Steph. Instead of taking pictures of my ass, take pictures of the noose. Or the knife. Or the pills. Whatever you think you’re going to find.’
‘I’m not going in your room, Kara.’
‘Why not?’ she said, her voice still dangerously soft. ‘Afraid of what you will find?’
‘No…’ he started. ‘It’s just... your space.’ She lifted a brow. It was a poor excuse, he knew. But Kara’s room was the one space he never went into. It didn’t feel right to him. It was hers. ‘I don’t think you’re going to kill yourself. I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘You shouldn’t have,’ Kara said, closing her bedroom door. ‘But you did.’ She clicked the doorknob back and forth, unlocking it. ‘In case you change your mind…’ she started, walking away. ‘Or better yet,’ she said, pausing at the end of the hallway. Her eyes peered at him, cold as stone. ‘Feel free to take more of my things. I’m sure you’ll just convince me I’ve misplaced them again.’
Mark watched her walk away via her reflection in the mirror, not daring to take his eyes off it.
You know it’s not his fault.
You know it.
But you know it’s not yours this time, either.
Mark avoided Kara and her room as much as possible for the next week. If Kara didn’t want him anywhere near her, then fine. He could disappear into the parts of the apartment she ignored. He could mostly ignore her, too, except for the times she got a bit too close, and he gagged from her body odour. Then she would glare up at him with a half-hearted anger before quietly moving away from him.
She started retreating into her bedroom earlier and earlier every night. Mark knew she wasn’t sleeping—he could see her shadow moving underneath the door, faintly illuminated by her open window. Part of him was still upset about their fight. Part of him still worried about her. But the petty part of him, the part that clung to the knowledge that he was right, continued to ignore all signs of life from his roommate.
Until, of course, he heard a very loud crash from her room, just after she closed the door for the night. It sounded like something both fell and shattered. He waited a moment, assuming that maybe she’d just tripped over something. Then he remembered the mirror above her bed and rushed to knock on her door. ‘Kara? You alright?’ he called. She did not answer. He looked under the door for her movements and saw nothing. ‘Fuck,’ he whispered. He turned the doorknob—it was unlocked, again—and stepped inside.
Her room was terrifyingly, eerily clean. For someone who kept forgetting where she left things, it seemed she didn’t have anything left to forget. The noise had come from her lamp falling from beside her bed: upon closer inspection, the bulb had shattered upon impact. The rest of the room was bare enough to be mistaken for empty, aside from her end table, her dresser, her bed, and the mirror that hung above it.
The mirror that hung above it.
Kara was asleep quietly, the mirror unscathed above her.
But her reflection wasn’t there.
Mark’s reflection was there. But there was no sleeping Kara in the mirror.
All Mark could say was a soft, terrified ‘Oh fuck.’
Kara shot up in bed. Her bedroom door was split wide, light pouring in from the hallway. She was drenched in sweat—from a nightmare or the heat, she didn’t know—and shaking slightly. She gave herself a moment to breathe, wiping her greasy forehead and rubbing her own shoulders soothingly. She didn’t even register that she’d gone to sleep with the door closed. She simply laid herself back down, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes once more.
Until she heard the soft crunch of something on her floor being broken, followed by a distinct, ‘Fuck.’ She held her breath for another moment. The room remained silent. Maybe she did imagine it. She steadied her breathing and was ready to relax when she felt something press ever so slightly on the end of her bed. She sprang back up, only to come face to face with Mark holding a baseball bat, ready to swing, only about a foot away from her.
They stared at each other for a long, terrible moment.
Then Kara started screaming.
‘Kara, no, it’s not—’ started Mark, but Kara’s hand whipped across his face. He startled backwards, dropping the bat, fumbling over it in the process.
From her throat came an outraged cry in response. She lunged at him, forgetting that she was enveloped in her bedsheets. He stumbled anyway, catching himself on the doorknob and propelling himself into the hallway. Kara tripped herself, her ankle tangled in her top sheet, and she screamed in frustration as she tore herself free.
‘Kara, no, please, listen,’ begged Mark, as he crawled backwards down the hallway. Kara followed a moment later. She knew it was his fault. It had been his fault the whole time. He had been fucking with her. He’d been trying to drive her crazy. No—he’d been trying to drive her to kill herself. And when that didn’t work, he tried to kill her himself.
He had tried to kill her.
With a surge of fury, Kara ran at him, arms outspread to push him into the living room. She was howling wordlessly, angrily, completely absorbed by her rage and fear. He fell backwards over the couch and Kara watched him crumple onto the floor.
He had tried to kill her.
She ran into the kitchen, looking for something to defend herself with. She heard him begin to rise, a slow struggle, and she grabbed the first item—her one-quart saucepan—and hurled it at his head. It hit him with a satisfying thunk and he collapsed once more to the ground. A weapon. She needed a weapon. She wouldn’t win without one. He was too big. Her eyes slid over to the knife block.
‘Kara…’ Mark muttered weakly. He sounded much closer to than he had been a few minutes ago.
He tried to kill you.
Kara gripped the chef’s knife tightly and yanked it from the block. It made a lovely scratching sound as it slid from the sharpener and she took a moment to look at herself in its reflection. She looked calmer than she had in months. She turned around, holding the knife’s handle like a lifeline. Mark’s face morphed into an expression of pure horror. He backed away from the kitchen. ‘No, Kara, please, you don’t understand—’
‘Shut up,’ she snarled. She stalked towards him. ‘I understand perfectly.’ She swung the knife clumsily in his direction. He avoided the blow, but tripped over the end table in the living room in the process. He landed sprawled on the hardwood floor, his body angled away from the hallway. She stepped over his legs with grace, settling on his abdomen with the knife pointed at his neck.
‘Kara, look, I was trying to help,’ he tried weakly, and she laughed a dangerous, hysterical laugh. She leaned forward, her knees digging into his stomach, and he groaned.
‘I don’t think you were,’ she whispered.
‘Can we talk about this? Please?’ he begged. ‘This is crazy—’
But the moment he said crazy, Kara’s knife drove into his chest, and his speech ended with a gurgling scream of pain.
Mark felt like an idiot.
As his roommate stabbed him over and over, he realised that this was his fault. All of it. He should have just told her about what he’d seen in the mirror, not rush in ready to smash it above her head. What was he thinking?
He felt dizzy.
Time was slowing.
She kept stabbing him. Her pimpled face was covered in sprays of his blood, some of it even coating her teeth. Her clothes were dampened by the blood. Drops of it even reached her hair, dyeing her dirty hair even darker. She looked like a murderer. She was, he reminded himself, a murderer. His murderer. But it was too late to fight back now.
His eyes gazed past her into the hallway. The hallway console was completely bare. A part of him wondered what happened to all the succulents and checks and chargers and everything else that went missing from there. He stared at the wooden piece, his eyelids beginning to weigh heavily on his line of vision.
The mirror just above the console rattled slowly. Mark blinked at it. Kara was not strong enough to rattle a mirror in another part of the house. Something blotted the mirror’s clear surface, just for a moment. He opened his mouth to question it, but another thrust of the knife took away his voice, leaving a hoarse gasp in its place. Then again, something appeared in the mirror, but this time, it looked like a hand. A full hand, pressed against the glass as if it were coming from within. It was shaking, vibrating, even though the mirror was now still. Mark wasn’t sure if he was seeing clearly or if dying was clouding his vision.
The hand in the mirror slowly, painstakingly emerged from the mirror, growing into a full arm as it grasped the edge of the wooden console. A second hand slipped out from the glass and grabbed the edge as well, the muscles in the arm attached to it taut and strained. A figure materialised behind the glass and began to pull itself out, silently, as Kara swiftly landed the last blow to his chest.
Mark was glad his vision gave out before he saw what escaped from the mirror.
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