Free Sourmouth by Cyle James

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needles and choke her. If the mystery figure didn’t kill her, the fear almost
certainly would.
    Violet tensed up and tried to force herself to turn
towards the shadow that stalked from behind her. If the thing in the unknown
hadn’t already attacked then certainly it couldn’t have been dangerous. So she
thought. It must be fine to turn and face whatever it was that was watching her
so intently.
    With more courage than she ever thought she would have
Violet found the she was slowly swiveling on the balls of her feet. Without
thinking about it she was in a position similar to that of someone readying to
run at top speed despite the fact that her feet would probably fail her before
she left the starting line.
    When her eyes began to focus she was both
simultaneously relieved and confused. It wasn’t some dark figure hiding in the
corner of the room; it was a dark figure facing back at her from within the
full length mirror situated on the wall opposite the bed.
    The entity in the mirror was tall, taller than the
mirror could adequately hold within its boundaries. Its feet from the knees
down were obscured and lost to the bottom of the frame, its head rising above
Violet’s and near the top of the almost six foot tall mirror. It was lanky in
shape, with a body wafer-thin and dangling arms that seemed to hang on the side
of its body like foreign life forms unaware of how they should be attached to
the torso. Its hands were the size of baseball gloves with long, sharp fingers
that waved in unison with one another at its side.
    The mirror copied the room behind Violet as it should
have; however her own reflection was concealed by that of the figure. The
perfect mimicry of the mirror ruined by the concealing figure, which was
unbelievably out-of-focus like the reflection of the sky on an ocean in a
storm. Its body was cast in a faint shimmering shadow that didn’t originate
from her side of the room, which made it impossible to make out details of the
thing. She could just barely make out its basic form in the darkness that it
hid in.
    From what Violet could manage to see she thought the
sight was too ridiculous to be real in its own right. From what she could
gather the thing looked as if it was almost featureless. It stood naked without
hair or accessories on its body. As it swayed on its feet to and fro Violet
could have sworn that its face was nothing but blank skin. It didn’t have a visible
nose or a mouth or even eyes. It had nothing on its face except for the shapes
of what should have been there underneath the surface like protruding bone
underside of skin.
    A gasp of air escaped Violet’s mouth that she hadn’t
been aware she was trapping. As foolish as it was, she carefully scanned the
room with her strained and tired eyes to make sure she was actually alone. To
her simultaneous comfort and dismay she was indeed on her lonesome, which meant
that whatever she was looking at truly was only standing in the mirror.
    With the steps of someone who was trying to remember
how to walk she moved forward towards the figure, who continued to stand
patiently within the confines of his glass prison.
    As Violet got closer it began to leisurely react. Its
first movement was to cock its head to the side like a bewildered dog. It
seemed to be watching her with the eyes that it didn’t seem to have. It was
studying her movements and trying to understand her in the same way she wanted
to know everything about it. Standing a foot from the mirror Violet stopped,
wary of getting any closer in case it was capable of lashing out.
    Against her better judgement she slowly began to reach
outward to touch it.
    She jumped backward and yelped as it reached back
towards her.
    Her instincts told her to run, to move as fast as her
wobbling legs could carry her to safety. But then her head won out as she
realized that the thing wasn’t trying to grab her...it was mimicking her
movements. Like a true reflection the figure began to copy every