The Girl Behind the Glass

By Rain Sullivan

Published in Elegant Literature Magazine, September 2023

Issue 22: Devils in the Dark, Page 57

My girlfriend died three days  ago. No back alley barter, no hold up. Just two quick shots to the head. Twenty-four hours later her car appeared across three chop shops in South End, all its goodies missing. No stereo, no catalytic converter, and whatever shit we had in the back was gone. Same time…ish, I figured out the world wasn’t what it seemed. And I don’t mean in some philosophical, bullshit-me sorta way. I mean, up isn’t up and down isn’t down. 

Must’ve been a mistake. That’s the only thing I could figure. Like when secondary radiation hits a bit, flips a zero into a one, and suddenly your data’s fucked. For a few hours, I’d even tried to blame it on my quick trip down A-Train Lane but my highs rarely last ‘til day two. 

See, my boots were in her car. Platform Demonias. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have remembered them if I hadn’t seen them two hours after ID-ing the body. 

They were in our room. Almost. Tucked under the bed. Almost. I was staring at myself in the mirror: Zeppelin T, cut offs, makeup more parts salt than charcoal. And there they were, peeking out from beneath our bed. Fucking weird shit was, when I turned to grab them, they weren’t there. I turned again because what the actual fuck? And they were there… in the reflection. Ninety double-takes and a home drug test later—I’m an EMT, chill—with nothing but weed on the panel, I had to walk away. It just didn’t make sense. 

Then I got to Googling, everything from ‘how to know if you’ve lost your mind’ to ‘alien interference’ to ‘solar flares causing IRL glitches in the Matrix.’ Lotta moon-landing nonbelievers and flatEarth freaks digging deep holes on Reddit. But when I got back, the boots were gone, my reflection matched my reality, and so I let it go. I brushed my teeth, stripped down, and crawled into bed… avoiding my reflection the entire time. 

I don’t know what it was about her, the girl on the other side of the glass, but, for some reason, I felt like we didn’t quite match… 

I avoided Other Me the next day too. In the bathroom, in the rearview, in the glass doors of the ice cream aisle at Safeway. I nearly let it go, nearly forgot, but while bawling over Becs with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, I looked up. And there she was: on the bed, in the exact same criss-cross applesauce position, eating straight out of the container. I was scrolling, she was scrolling. I was scooping, she was scooping. I was crying… she wasn’t. 

I’ve never moved so fucking fast in my life. I hopped outta bed, dropped the melty pint, and felt my phone slip through my fingers. 

Had she seen what I’d just seen? Did she know? I hid in the dead space of the room, watching ice cream leak onto the carpet, so fucking terrified to move I actually held myself together with my hands. 

I watched the room in the reflection. Not a thing out of place. The puddle of Cherry Garcia, the rumpled comforter, the supine phone with pics of Becs at Stevie’s Pub. I don’t know what I thought would happen next exactly, I mean, I do, I kinda thought that creepy lookalike would show herself. But, I didn’t show myself, so neither did she… 

I told myself not to be a pussy, swallowed back the unwoke, undignified word but trusted the sentiment, and stepped in front of the mirror. We matched again. I squinted, she squinted. I touched my face, she touched hers. Behind me, behind her, was our room, our Offspring Shit Is Fucked Up Tour poster, our rainbow fairy lights, and the door to our ridiculously overpriced corner of the world: Brit and Becs’ Place. 

The light outside her room was on, an orange glow beneath the door. Had I left the light on? Must’ve. But I was usually so careful about keeping the bill down. And now that I lived alone— 

A shadow slid across the orange glow, someone walking by. I turned to look behind me, to see my door: no glow, no shadow. Then turned to face her. Our eyes danced, so in sync, so in time, there was no way… But she saw. When I’d looked, she’d looked. She knew. 

She mouthed something, or did I? I don’t know. I hit the lights. The room was dark and she was gone. 

But the orange slit beneath the reflected door wasn’t. I used it to gage my way to my un-backlit exit and got the hell out of there. Our apartment, my apartment, was dark, empty. The panic in my chest wrung my lungs like a sponge. I felt sick, I felt insane, I felt way too crossed to not be crossed. So, I got crossed. 

That helped, let me wind down with cartoons on the couch and come to the next day with a mad headache. 

I sat there, for a long time, with my filth, my insanity, my headache, going over what I’d seen but the overwhelming feeling in my gut wasn’t panic anymore, or confusion, it was jealousy. 

She had what I wanted. She had what I’d had. Boots, dry eyes, and Becs. I kept thinking and unthinking and rethinking it: if she had her boots, then Becs’ car hadn’t gotten stolen, and if Becs’ car hadn’t gotten stolen then Becs hadn’t been attacked. And if Becs hadn’t been attacked, then, somehow, on that side of the glass, I wasn’t a fucking mess compiled of heartbreak and low-key narcotics. I was happy. I was scrolling old pics for the hell of it. I was exactly where I wanted to be. 

But, of course, I wasn’t where I wanted to be, I was here, on the couch, being a useless piece of shit until the sun slid so far west our—my—livingroom became a fucking sauna. 

I went to the sink, got water, watched myself down the whole glass in the blurred reflection of our dingy kitchen window, and licked my lips. If things were normal, Other Me wouldn’t be here, she’d be at work, pulling houseless kids off the block and hooking junkies up to IVs. But she was here. Drinking water. 

I filled my glass again. Drank again. Filled. Drank. Filled. Drank. Until the water tasted like metal and my stomach burned with the basicity of dilution. It hurt. It hurt me and it hurt her. 

I couldn’t swallow anymore. But what good would making us hurl do me anyhow? So, I could get her sick… hurt her… I didn’t want to hurt her, I wanted to be her. 

I slammed the glass down, ran laps around the apartment: bedroom mirror, bathroom mirror, the compact in Becs’ makeup bag. I needed to see the boots again, see the glitch again, but how? The coroner’s card. The police had advised me to keep everything. Makes it easier when it’s time to get the death certificate and all Becs’ affairs in order. I ran to the nightstand, rummaged for the stupid card with the stupid rose on it, and outright ah-ha-ed when I found it. 

I turned to face her. We stared at one another. Both wide-eyed, both holding a business card. Mine had a rose. Hers did not. I resisted the urge to breathe, lest my breathing evolve into panting and, let’s be honest, doubling over and adding regurgitated ice cream and beer to last night’s dried Cherry-Garcia pool. I slipped the card into my pocket and walked away. 

I thought about digging through the utensils drawer for a steak knife but I could only do to her what I was willing to do to myself… I found a paring knife instead and, in the depths of the dark drawer, beyond the scope of anything reflective, pricked my finger. A crimson bead formed but when I went back to the mirror, her finger was bead-free. 

She’d gone to the kitchen to do something when I’d gone to prick my finger. She’d left the house yesterday to go somewhere when I’d gone to the morgue. She’d gotten somebody’s card when I’d gotten the coroner’s. She’d kept her best friend, the love of her life, while mine had been murdered. And for what? A 2013 Prius! This wasn’t fair! 

But there was room, room to alter the details. Fuck with the facts. I had to find a way to switch… to trade places… No, not trade places. Re-place. I wouldn’t wish this version of reality on anyone. 

I reclaimed my glass from the kitchen sink, filled it up, and spilled half of it on my way to the bathroom, then dug out my med kit. Staying low, and out of sight, I swigged oral saline like a mother fucker, set up an IV, and cursed about three million times when I realized I’d lent my heart rate monitor to my dumbass coworker Jeff who never ever kept track of his shit. No matter, that beer and that melted sugar-sludge and whatever else I ingested within the next few minutes was coming up whether I wanted it to or not. 

I grabbed the bottle of Bedranol—fast-acting beta-blockers—and returned to the bedroom. She held her bottle. Same brand, same blue stripe across the label. I shook out enough capsules to OD, then shook out two more. She looked mad with overwhelm, like she might pass out. Our eyes met, and anger threatened to break the glass. Let it, I thought, desperate to be on her side of the barrier. 

I threw the whole handful back and waited. I wouldn’t leave until I felt them do their job. 

After pacing forward and back, and biting my nails down to the quick, I began to blink faster than normal, I only noticed because she started doing it too. I tipped forward a bit but caught my hand on the glass. Her fingers were warm against mine. I wanted to inch past her, slip my thumb to the left of hers and reach through to the other side. My breath shortened in my throat, a cut of sandpaper in my lungs. My other hand slapped the inversion, her other hand was equally as quick to meet it. Could she just move? Get the fuck out of my way? 

My vision lacked edges. Her eyes were streaked with black and her breath left white clouds on the glass. I leaned my forehead into hers. “Move, bitch,” I breathed, leaning back and thunking my skull against hers. The drugs dribbled down to my knees, to my ankles, soaked into my joints. Each one gave and like a classroom skeleton model unhinged from its hook, I fell to the floor. 

Vomit woke me up. A huge, arcing, projectile slurry. I crawled to my hands and knees and let it pour onto the carpet and splatter my wrists. I breathed through the acidic flare, dislodged and spit the sour crud from the pits of my cheeks, and turned to face my reflection. 

She was on her side, not moving, not breathing. 

I pulled myself to my feet as doubt and fear needled my skin. What was real? What wasn’t? I stumbled, still dizzy from the dose but not dizzy enough to need the IV in the bathroom. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, kept waiting for her to stand, for our images to realign, but it never happened—while the headache eased, while my vision cleared and my heartbeat returned to its normal pace—it never happened. 

I went to the mirror, needing, for no logical reason, to mourn the impossible, to mourn Other Me. I brought my fingers to the glass, hoping to bid her farewell, but felt nothing. Not cool glass, or warm fingerprints, not anything at all. 

There was no inverse hand to block mine from sliding through to the other side. 

Thank you for reading. <3 Rain