Step 1: Wake up

There’s a ghost in your house.

            This fact was not included when you agreed to live here.

Sometimes it gives you nightmares of its past that make you wake up screaming.

            Can ghosts even dream?

You should have argued for a lower rent.

            Tonight, it was a dream about a war. You’re not sure which one because it’s experienced so many and they all result in you jerking upright in bed, chest heaving as your heart tries to escape. There’s a tapping on your window as there is everyday to wake you up. You think it’s the ghost.

            Three taps.

A pause.

            Five taps.

A pause.

            It normally stops once it knows you’re awake. It hasn’t tonight. Before you can talk yourself out of it, your arms are already moving to open the curtains. It’s not something you’ve done before because the very thought of it would make your brain reel, but not tonight. Perhaps it’s in consolation for the nightmare. That thought in itself makes your heartbeat start to slow.

            It’s still dark outside and you can’t see the stars from the city but something in the sky winks at you anyway. There’s a reflection in the window that shouldn’t be there (reflections are always tricky like that). Not when there’s no light in the room. The reflection looks like you—as reflections often do—but you’re not wearing your glasses and it shouldn’t be this clear. The window feels like ice when you place your hand on it. Your reflection matches it and your hand feels warmer. You tilt your head and it tilts its head the opposite way. You snatch your hand back and it laughs at you.

            It then has the audacity to offer you its hand as all reflections do at the end of an interaction. An offering to enter their world. You know better than to accept because they never include a timeframe. When you refuse it disappears, leaving you with an icy window and an icier scowl.

            It’s 3.06am and you know you won’t be able to sleep again tonight. While adjusting your position so your back is leaning against the window you resign yourself to a day of tiredness. You blink and it’s 5.59am. Exactly one minute before your daily alarm is due to ring. The window is still cold against your back and you’ve never been able to sleep while sitting up. Time has never been a permanent fixture in your life.

            You switch off your alarm. You’re not sure why you still keep an alarm if you get woken up every morning before it. Perhaps you’re afraid that the tapping will stop waking you up if you don’t keep an alarm, even though you know they are not connected in any way. Maybe you’re just scared that one day the ghost will disappear and you won’t wake up again. Some thoughts are best to not dwell on.

            You knock on your bed frame twice as a good morning to the cloud under your bed. While you scroll through your messages with one hand, the other flops uselessly on the bedside table in search for your glasses. Your hand hits something and it falls but there’s no sound of it hitting the floor. You look down and the cloud has caught your glasses. It won’t bring them up to you though because it’s scared of heights.

            You lean over so you’re looking at it upside down, it takes over the entirety of space beneath the bed like a colourless fog. You let it carefully place the glasses on your face. You smile and messily sign thank you to it because it doesn’t like unnecessary sound when it’s still waking up.

            The shadow in the kitchen is not yours—it’s too big, too corporeal. Your own shadow leaves you before it enters the kitchen because it’s scared. You put the kettle on before opening the fridge to search for a suitable breakfast. There’s no bread even though you bought some yesterday and the eggs have moved towards the front. Omelettes it is then. You make two and leave the one without the mushrooms on the stove for the shadow to take whenever it wants. There is already a mug of hot water on the kitchen island for you with a tea bag next to it. You smile because the shadow never knows how long to keep the tea bag in for. The kettle never went off.

            The oven dings when you’re washing the now empty pan from the stove. You hadn’t put the oven on. You open it and find a loaf of freshly baked bread. A silent admonishment for buying grocery store bread. You make a mental note to buy raspberries because even if you don’t know how to make bread, you can make raspberry muffins.

            The cloud from under the bed wraps around your ankles before you can enter the bathroom. It’s gentle in a way that seems like it’s not forcing you to stay but it also doesn’t release you. Not until the time is right, which is only when the shower has been running for exactly one minute and twenty-seconds. This is so that the water will be at the perfect temperature when you step in.

            On the fogged-up mirror there is a message reminding you about the lunch meeting you’re dreading. You draw a little heart in the corner so that it knows its message has been read. When you do your makeup, your reflection points at places that need to be fixed. You blow a kiss in thanks and your reflection pretends to swoon. It offers you its hand as it does everyday. You decline as you do everyday.

            That’s the thing about reflective surfaces; they always try to lure you in without telling you that you can’t leave. On some days you think that it wouldn’t be so bad to escape the world. Those are the days where you don’t dare to look at anything reflective.

            There are two sandwiches on the counter by your keys, made from the freshly baked bread and vegetables you didn’t buy. Maybe you should make raspberry muffins and a chocolate cake.

            You remember the nightmare and leave one sandwich just outside the attic because that’s where the ghost usually hides. There aren’t any mirrors in the attic which means that maybe you’re not the only one scared of reflections. You’ve never seen the ghost before, it doesn’t let you (you don’t think it has the same power over reflections), but the air is always warmer when it’s around.

            As you walk through your garden, the flowers all turn to you. They turn back after you’ve closed the gate and given them a small wave. The wind is strong today and your coat tightens itself around you.

            The city is alive and as all living things do: it thrives with colour. Splashes of colour drown you. You wonder how people can navigate in this mess. Dead things don’t have this much colour and it’s why everything in your house is sharper than life.

            You have glasses that help you see less. How ironic, maybe you should call them something else. They have carefully arranged mirrors so that everything you see through them is a reflection because reflections aren’t as alive as they want you to believe.

            A child can only ask what’s that in the corner there? Or why doesn’t my reflection copy me? So many times before it moves from cute to concerning. For your seventh birthday a box with your first set of glasses appeared on your bedside. You cried when you put them on and your parents pretended they gave them to you. When you moved out, you only took your glasses and the cloud under your bed.

            You enter your office building with a keycard that is supposed to contain a picture of you but every time you look at it, it changes. Sometimes it likes to try to speak to you by moving the letters around. Today the picture is scowling at you so you shove the card into the bottom of your bag. You know better than to try to speak to it with it when it’s in a bad mood.

            There is hot coffee already on your desk when you unlock the door to your office. You’re the only one who holds the key for it.

            Smile, your reflection tells you with untamed glee, your day is about to start.

- C.