THE VÖRTEX NIGHTMARE - by Onlyreal

Some clothes help you express yourself. Others make you wonder who, exactly, is doing the expressing. The first time I saw my reflection move without me, I blamed the lighting. It was an ordinary Tuesday evening. My Temu parcel had finally arrived, and I had spent the last twenty minutes trying on my new gothic clothes, admiring myself in the mirror, and taking pictures from every possible angle. The outfit was everything I wanted: dark, dramatic, and perfectly suited to my vibe. For once, my reflection looked like the person I had always imagined myself becoming. I called the look VÖRTEX. It was a name that suited the aesthetic—dark, mysterious, and impossible to ignore. I imagined it as the name of a character in a psychological horror film, someone beautiful enough to attract attention and dangerous enough to make people regret giving it. I did not know that, before the week ended, I would be terrified of my own face. The first strange thing happened while I was reviewing my pictures. In one photograph, I appeared to be smiling at the camera, but my reflection in the mirror behind me had a different expression. Its lips were slightly parted, and its eyes seemed fixed on something beyond the photograph. I zoomed in. The reflection looked exactly like me. I deleted the picture and continued taking photographs, convincing myself that the camera had captured an awkward expression. That night, I dreamed of a corridor lined with mirrors. Every reflection wore my new outfit, but none of them moved when I did. They stood perfectly still, watching me pass. At the end of the corridor was a tall mirror with a black frame. Inside it stood a version of me with hollow cheeks, bloodless lips, and eyes so dark that they seemed to swallow the light around them. It smiled. I approached cautiously. The figure raised its hand and pressed its palm against the glass. Then it whispered, “You made me.” I woke up screaming. My bedroom was dark. The outfit lay folded over my chair, exactly where I had left it. I switched on the light, checked the wardrobe, and laughed nervously at my imagination. Then I noticed something strange. The outfit was no longer folded. It lay on the floor, arranged as though someone had taken it off in a hurry. I picked it up, examined it, and placed it back on the chair. Nothing happened. I told myself I was being ridiculous and went back to bed. The following morning, I felt better. Sunlight made the room look ordinary, and the events of the night seemed less frightening in the brightness. I dressed, checked my appearance in the mirror, and left for the day. For several hours, I forgot about the dream. Then, while recording a short video in my room, I noticed a figure crossing the doorway behind me. I stopped the recording. The doorway was empty. I replayed the video. The figure appeared for less than a second, moving silently across the background. It wore black, and although its face was blurred, I recognised the shape of its head and shoulders. It looked like me. I searched the hallway, checked the rooms, and found nobody. When I returned to the video, the figure had disappeared from the recording. I deleted it. That evening, I covered the mirror in my bedroom with a towel. I did not tell anyone. How was I supposed to explain that I was frightened of a mirror because of a figure that might have been a trick of the light? I was determined to forget the entire incident. But that night, my phone rang at exactly 2:17 a.m. An unknown number appeared on the screen. I answered, expecting a wrong number. At first, I heard only breathing. Then a voice spoke. “Why did you put me away?” I sat upright. The voice was mine. Not similar to mine. Not a stranger imitating me. My own voice, speaking with the same rhythm and tone I heard whenever I played back a recording of myself. “Who is this?” I whispered. A soft laugh came through the phone. “You know who I am.” I ended the call and switched off my phone. From inside my wardrobe came a quiet scratching sound. I stared at the doors. The scratching stopped. Then something knocked from within. Three slow knocks. I ran out of my bedroom and spent the rest of the night on the living-room sofa. By morning, I had convinced myself that exhaustion and fear were affecting my judgment. I decided to get rid of the outfit, along with the accessories I had bought to complete the look. I packed everything into a bag. But as I stood by the door, ready to leave, I hesitated. The clothes had made me feel good about myself. I had bought them because I liked them, and they had fitted my style exactly. Why should I throw them away because of a few nightmares? I placed the bag beside the wardrobe. The moment I did, I heard a whisper. “You look good in them.” I turned towards the mirror. The towel covering it had fallen to the floor. My reflection stood before me, wearing the outfit. I was wearing an ordinary T-shirt and trousers. The reflection smiled. I stepped backwards. It raised one hand and pointed towards me. Then it mouthed two words. My turn. I ran from the room. For the next few days, I avoided the mirror and refused to wear the outfit. I tried to return to normal life, but the fear followed me everywhere. Windows, phone screens, and polished surfaces became things I avoided looking at for too long. Eventually, a friend visited because I had been unusually withdrawn. We spent the afternoon talking and laughing. For a while, I felt safe. Then my friend glanced towards the wardrobe. “Is someone standing behind you?” I turned immediately. Nobody was there. My friend frowned. “That’s strange. I thought I saw someone.” I forced a laugh. “Probably the shadows.” They looked at me for a moment, then shrugged. When they left, I locked the door and returned to my room. The wardrobe stood open. The outfit hung inside. I was certain I had put it in a bag. I approached slowly and touched the fabric. It felt cold. Something shifted behind the clothes. I stumbled backwards. A pale hand emerged from the darkness and gripped the edge of the wardrobe door. Then the thing stepped out. It had my face. Its body was unnaturally thin, its arms too long, and its fingers ended in dark, crooked nails. The gothic outfit clung to its frame as though it had grown into its skin. Thin black lines spread across its cheeks, and its mouth stretched into a smile that exposed far too many teeth. I could not move. It tilted its head. “Finally,” it whispered. Its voice was mine, but something beneath the sound seemed to grind and crack. I stumbled towards the bedroom door. The thing followed. I grabbed the handle, but the door would not open. Behind me, I heard its footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. I twisted the handle again. A cold hand closed around my wrist. I screamed and tried to pull away. Its fingers tightened until I felt something shift beneath my skin. Pain shot up my arm. “Let go!” The thing leaned closer. Its face began to change. The skin around its mouth split, revealing wet, dark tissue beneath. Blood trickled down its chin, but it continued smiling. Its cheeks stretched wider, and the corners of its mouth tore towards its ears. I struck it with my free hand. My fist connected with its face. The skin broke beneath my knuckles. Something soft and warm gave way, and black blood splashed across my fingers. The creature released me. I stumbled backwards, staring at my hand. The blood was real. The pain was real. The thing was real. It touched its ruined cheek, examined the blood on its fingers, and began to laugh. “You still don’t understand,” it said. I finally managed to open the door and ran. But the hallway was no longer my hallway. Mirrors lined the walls, stretching into the distance. Each one showed a different version of me. In one, I was crying. In another, I was screaming. In another, my face had been peeled away, exposing a slick, red surface beneath. At the end of the corridor stood a tall mirror with a black frame. The creature appeared inside it. “You wanted to become something else,” it said. I backed away. “You wanted to be different. You wanted people to look at you and wonder who you were.” The mirrors began to tremble. “You gave me a name.” The creature pressed both hands against the glass. “You gave me a face.” Cracks spread across the mirror. “And now you want me to disappear?” The glass shattered. I ran towards the front door, but the corridor seemed to stretch with every step. The creature’s laughter followed me, echoing from the mirrors. Then I felt something grip my ankle. I fell hard against the floor. A hand emerged from a broken mirror and dragged me backwards. Its fingers dug into my skin. I kicked, screamed, and clawed at the floor, but the grip only tightened. The creature appeared above me. Its face hovered inches from mine. “You made me,” it whispered again. I stared into its black eyes. For the first time, I understood what frightened me most. It was not the blood or the distorted face. It was how familiar the creature felt. It knew what I wanted. It understood why I had chosen the clothes, why I enjoyed the darker aesthetic, and why I had given the look a name. It had taken something I genuinely enjoyed and twisted it into something that could control me. It was using my own desires against me. I stopped struggling. The creature tilted its head. “You wanted to be seen,” it whispered. “Yes,” I said. Its smile widened. “You wanted to be unforgettable.” “Yes.” “You wanted to become me.” I looked directly into its eyes. “No.” Its smile disappeared. “I wanted to express myself. I wanted to wear clothes I liked. I wanted to feel confident. That doesn’t mean I wanted to become you.” The creature’s face contorted. Its skin began to tear, opening along the black lines that spread across its cheeks. Its mouth stretched into a silent scream. The mirrors rattled violently, and cracks raced across the glass. “You made me!” “No,” I said again. “I gave you a name. That’s all.” The creature screamed. Every mirror shattered at once. Glass exploded around us, filling the corridor with glittering fragments. The hand gripping my ankle released me, and I scrambled to my feet. At the end of the corridor, the creature stood in the black-framed mirror. It looked almost human again. Its face was smooth. Its eyes were clear. Its mouth had returned to normal. For one brief moment, it looked like the version of me I had seen on the first day I wore the outfit. Confident. Beautiful. Unafraid. It reached towards me. I took a step backwards. The creature smiled sadly. Then it whispered something I will never forget. “You’ll come back. You always do.” The mirror shattered. I woke on my bedroom floor. Morning sunlight entered through the curtains. My head throbbed, and my hands were covered in tiny cuts. The mirror lay broken beside the wall. For several minutes, I could not move. Then I began to cry. I cried because I was frightened, because I was exhausted, and because I no longer knew whether I could trust my own mind. I cleaned the broken glass, treated the cuts, and packed the gothic outfit into a bag. This time, I did not hesitate. I took it away from the house and left it behind. I returned home with empty hands. For the first time in days, I felt relieved. The nightmares gradually stopped. I began sleeping normally again, and the strange voices disappeared. I replaced the broken mirror with a smaller one and avoided thinking about what had happened. Eventually, I convinced myself that the experience had been caused by stress, exhaustion, and an overactive imagination. I had no proof of anything else. Months passed. I continued enjoying gothic fashion, although I became more careful about letting an aesthetic define my entire identity. I learned that I could dress however I liked without needing to become a character. I could enjoy darkness without believing I belonged to it. The outfit had been a good purchase. The nightmare was a different matter. I tried to treat the experience as a strange story from my past, something I might eventually tell someone if I could find the right words. Then, one evening, I found a photograph on my phone. It showed me wearing the outfit, standing in front of the mirror. I had deleted every picture from that day. Yet there it was. I opened it. For several seconds, everything looked normal. I recognised the room, the lighting, and the expression on my face. Then I noticed the reflection. It was not looking at me. It was looking directly at the camera. Its smile was wide and patient. I zoomed in. Written on the mirror behind it were three words. SEE YOU SOON. I dropped the phone. The screen cracked against the floor. I stared at it, unable to breathe. Then, from the hallway, I heard three slow knocks. I did not move. A familiar voice spoke from the other side of my bedroom door. My voice. “Hey.” I pressed my hands against my mouth. “Don’t be dramatic,” it whispered. “Open the door.” I remained silent. A pause followed. Then the voice laughed softly. “You still think I’m outside.” The lights went out. I heard footsteps approaching from behind me. I turned towards the window, but my reflection was already there, standing in the dark glass. It wore the outfit. Its face was mine. Its smile was the same one I had worn when I first tried the clothes on. The creature raised one hand and pressed its palm against the window. I stood frozen. Then it mouthed four words. You look good in it. I stumbled backwards. The figure disappeared. The lights returned. The room was empty. I left the house that night and stayed with a friend. I did not explain why. I simply said I needed somewhere else to sleep. The following morning, I looked at my wrist. A small black mark had appeared on the inside of it. A circle with a spiral at its centre. A vortex. I rubbed it. It did not disappear. I covered it with my sleeve and went about my day. I have never found the outfit again. I have never discovered who sent the strange parcel that appeared on my bed. I have never understood the photographs, the voices, or the wounds that vanished without explanation. Sometimes, I tell myself that nothing supernatural happened. Sometimes, I believe it. But there are nights when I wake suddenly and hear something moving inside my wardrobe. There are evenings when my reflection seems to hold my gaze for a second too long. There are moments when I catch myself smiling at a window and cannot remember deciding to smile. I never stay to investigate. I turn away. Because I have learned that the most frightening thing about a reflection is not the possibility that it might move without you. It is the possibility that it might know you better than you know yourself. I bought the clothes because I liked them. They fitted my style, made me feel confident, and allowed me to explore a darker side of my personality. That should have been the whole story. A good buy. A great story. Instead, I discovered something I had never expected to find inside a simple online shopping parcel: a nightmare that knew my name, wore my face, and wanted my life. I still believe that clothes can help us express who we are. But I no longer believe that becoming someone new requires us to destroy who we already are. And if you ever find yourself standing in front of a mirror, wearing something that makes you feel so completely yourself that you barely recognise the person looking back, take a moment. Admire the outfit. Enjoy the confidence. Take the picture. Then walk away. Because sometimes, when the lights are low and the glass is dark, the person looking back might not be waiting for you to move. They might be waiting for you to leave. And if you look closely enough, you might notice that their smile begins just before yours. Mine did. I saw it last night. I was brushing my teeth when my reflection suddenly stopped moving. The toothbrush remained in my hand. The water continued running. Everything else was still. I stared at the mirror. My reflection stared back. Then it slowly raised its free hand and pressed a finger against its lips. A warning. A secret. I could not tell which. It smiled. I turned away and left the bathroom without looking back. I did not sleep well. This morning, I checked my wrist. The black mark had spread. The spiral was larger now, its lines winding towards my palm like tiny veins. I stared at it for a long time. Then my phone buzzed. A notification appeared on the screen. A shopping recommendation. Black gothic clothing. I almost laughed. Almost. Then I noticed the photograph beneath the recommendation. It showed a model wearing the exact outfit I had bought. The model had my face. I dropped the phone. The screen went dark. For one second, I saw my reflection in it. It was smiling. And beneath the smile, in letters so small I almost missed them, were three words. A GOOD BUY. I backed away. From inside the wardrobe came a soft, familiar laugh. Then my own voice whispered: “A great story.”

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