The Reverse
A creepypasta-style tale about what can happen when you mess with mirrors.
Dearest stranger,
You are here because, if you go at night to a place with parallel mirrors, this is what can happen.
The mirrors must be large. Large enough for your body to fit through. The mirrors must be old. Old enough that they have seen at least one person age throughout an entire, full lifespan. The lights must be dim. Not so low that you can’t see yourself in the tunnels of infinity mirrors, but dark enough that you wouldn’t be able to read a book.
The mirrors must be perfectly parallel and aligned exactly. If they are even a centimeter off-center from each other, none of this will work. As you can imagine, it works best when the mirrors are perfect copies of each other. That makes the alignment much simpler, but it makes them much more difficult to obtain.
Once you have all this ready, you should take a seat. For the first stage, you must stare at your reflection in the infinity tunnel for at least two hours. Even though there will be many copies of your face, I find it is best to find just one to focus on. Otherwise, your focus is diluted and the process may fail.
None of this sounds easy, you say. Well, good! You wouldn’t want to do something like this on accident. You shouldn’t want to do this on purpose either, but then neither of us would be here, would we?
Though it isn’t easy, it’s quite simple. There’s a difference, you know. After two hours have passed gazing into the infinite receding hallway, you must then close your eyes.
Then you wait.
This part is less predictable. It may be another two hours of waiting. Maybe three. Maybe you’ll sit there an entire day or night. This is a test of your resolve. To prove you really want to do this. To weed out anyone here by accident. But if you stay, eventually, something happens.
A whisper. It sounds like an incomprehensible, muffled word over your shoulder, but it is such a soft sound that you may think it could also be a sigh of wind, a groan from the floor, or maybe a shuddering moan from a far-off exhaust fan. But whatever it sounds like to you, hearing it means the way is open.
This is the last chance you have to stop the first vertex from forming. If you open your eyes at this stage, you can still go back to the way life was before. You can leave the mirrors behind, and turn on the lights. Nothing else will happen.
But if you keep your eyes closed after that whooshing whisper, you can stand up. You’ll probably feel dizzy, so be careful. You can shuffle your feet backwards. Go slowly, evenly, and intentionally toward the place where you know a mirror faces your back.
Don’t look at the mirror. DON’T LOOK. You keep your eyes closed, and you slink back.
If it feels like ice cubes with tiny feet are creeping around your skin, you know you’re going the right way. Keep going, and you will find that there is no mirror where you know the mirror to be. Instead of touching the mirror, you will go in.
You know you are in the Reverse when you feel the change in your body. You will feel a deep, permeating cold, but it will not bother you at all. You will be colder than you’ve ever been in your life, but you won’t even have a single goosebump. Your fingers won’t turn pink or red. You will know it is cold, and you will feel it is cold, but you won’t suffer for it.
When you feel the cold heralding your arrival, open your eyes. You will be somewhere new. I can’t tell you what you will see, because things change here. The walls (because there are walls, both seen and unseen) shift ceaselessly. The orientation of the entire place moves. You may find yourself in a subway station, picking up an incomprehensible newspaper, like I did, and then suddenly find yourself on the ceiling when the gravity changes.
Know this—the individual cubes stay the same, but the order of the cubes, and their vertices, that is, their connections are always in flux. You may, with great effort, visit the same cube more than once, but you will never enter it from the same place.
I’m getting ahead of myself. What you need to know first is that you’re not alone here.
Look and listen for the other creatures. This place is not deadly, in that it does not mean to kill you. But also, it does not care about you, and that means you are always at risk.
The Reverse is somewhere impossibilities from the Forward world go to live. How do I explain? You know that riddle about whether a tree falling makes a sound if there is nobody there to hear it? Well, if there is a sound, the Reverse is where it goes.
There are animal species long extinct or that never evolved in the first place. There are people and animals that seem like they may be from other worlds.
Sometimes, you might enter a cube and see a mirror version of yourself, either from your younger years in the Forward world or from years that would have come in the future.
I find it’s best not to look at those people, and to leave their lives undisrupted. They can’t see you or touch you, but if you stare for too long, it makes the whole world shimmer. It makes the mind shaky and weak. It blurs the edges of the cubes, and we do not want that. WE. DO. NOT. WANT. THAT.
There is no hunger or thirst here that I can tell. The only thing I have to tend to is my mind, and it is a difficult enough job at that. You must take care of your mind.
Now pay attention.
Your first instinct is to find a way out. I understand that. I can’t fault you for that.
But I don’t think there is a way out of here. I don’t know what the Reverse is. Maybe it is a tesseract, or maybe it is a bunch of movable cubes on a mobius strip, or maybe it’s pitiful for us to even consider that our human minds could understand the arrangement of this strange dimension. But I will tell you my theory about why we can’t leave.
Once you enter the first vertex, you become changed. You are no longer the person you were in the Forward. Stepping back into the infinity mirror means that you become part of the Reverse. Why do I think this?
Well, for one, I no longer eat or drink. I can do those things if I want to, but I no longer need them to survive. Yet, I still feel pain if something hurts me. I don’t know if I’m immortal here, but I can still be injured. So, I cower from any of the more toothsome creatures that skulk by, and these days I stay mostly in the same cube: the one I’ve come to call home. I know not the number of days I have been here, but I imagine the days are countless. I don’t know if time passes the same way in the Reverse, or if it passes at all. Either way, I find I don’t much mind.
Mind. My mind is as fragmented as the infinity mirror I passed through. Even if there is a way out, I don’t think I am fit for the Forward world anymore. I am too changed for it. Ruined for it.
Still, it is so lonely here.
But I once stumbled here, back to the mirror, against all odds. So there may come others. There may be someone like you, reading this notebook. This notebook, which was my one weapon in the battle against an eternal solitude.
That is why I have written these pages. That is why I wrote them more times than I can count and left them in as many cubes as I could.
Once you realize there is no way out, maybe you will come looking for me. The cube I have chosen as my home has no sky. Just like all the others, the top is gray, but the top could also be the bottom, depending on the gravity that day. But if you can find the cube with a small clearing, and an old, gnarled tree with its roots in the air and its branches plunged into the ground, you may find me. I have a small hut next to this tree. And you are welcome here, which is more than I can say for the rest of this place.
Do you know the one thing I have never found here? A mirror. There is nothing whatsoever reflective in this world at all. Everything is too dull, obscure, or cloudy. If only I had brought one with me, then maybe…
No. I must not get distracted again. Thoughts of escape are futile, and I am above them now.
Welcome to the Reverse. I hope your stay is shorter than mine.
Sincerely,
Professor Gemma Orange
This is a special shout-out to my son, who loves liminal spaces and was my first reader for this story. You’re the best beta reader ever, buddy. Thanks for helping this story come to life.
A podcast recommendation: Cornfield Coven
A talented friend and colleague of mine has released an exciting new true-crime podcast, perfect for those of you who like to consume real-life horrors along with your fiction. And even though I’m biased, because there’s nothing else I love more than supporting other spooky moms, just read this amazing description and try not to be intrigued!
Think the Midwest is boring? Ope! Think again. These two spooky moms are here to show you why the no-coast states are the heart(land) of where true crime meets true weird. From axe murders to pukwudgies to haunted... well, everything, we’ve got what you need to get your creepy on. Grab your crystals or a crucifix, a coffee or a cocktail, and join the Cornfield Coven!
Please check this podcast out and give them your support so that they can continue to bring the macabre tales of the midwest to your earbuds. There are three episodes out currently as I’m writing this, and it’s the perfect thing to listen to while looking repeatedly over your shoulder on your daily walk. Sprinting in fear is great exercise!
Thank you for reading!
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fascinating concept! really enjoyed this!
what is it about mirrors....
This was so good. Your son clearly had great taste in literature 💅