THE TOPIC OF THIS CONTEST WAS:
I watched you as you picked up the note I put on your car. I watched when you threw the unopened package in your garbage can. I watched as your eyes darted left and right when you were sitting with your friends on the beach. And, then I watched you…
(Stories need only touch on this topic in some way to qualify.)
Yesterday, I watched you take my note from your car, and I watched you throw the unopened package into your garbage can.
Today, I watched as you walked along the beach, your eyes darting left and right, until you finally noticed me.
Not with your eyes, though. You’ve never seen me with those. But with the tiny shiver that ran up your spine when the tide pulled back farther than it should have.
You, humans, think you invented mirrors. You didn’t. You just borrowed the idea from us, the Glassfolk, the ones who live inside reflections, inside the thin silver skin between what is and what might be. We don’t have bodies, but we do have the ability to lean out of a reflection just enough to touch the world.
That note on your car? I wrote it with a fingertip made of horizon-line. The package you threw away? I left it on your porch the night your porch light flickered twice. It’s my way of knocking.
You didn’t open it. You never open anything that doesn’t come from your mother.
On the beach, you kept scanning the dunes, the water, and the sky, because you felt watched. You were right. Every reflective surface around you, sunglasses, phone screens, and the wet sheen on the sand carried a version of me. I was everywhere you looked, but only when you weren’t looking directly.
Then you reached into the sand and pulled out the thing I’d been waiting for you to find.
It looked like a smooth stone, but it pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat trapped in a skipping rock. You held it, confused, because it was warm and familiar in a way nothing should be familiar.
You whispered, “What are you?”
I answered by shifting the reflection in your sunglasses. My shape rippled across the lenses. A silhouette stitched from the shimmer of heat above the dunes.
You stood, clutching the stone, and walked toward the water. Your friends called after you, but their voices sounded far away.
The tide rolled in, then stopped. Frozen mid-curl, like a paused video.
You stared at it, breath caught.
I stepped out of the reflection in the water. Onto the air itself, the way a reflection shifts in a mirror.
You still couldn’t see me fully, but you sensed the outline: a figure made of shifting glass, bending light, refracting sky.
“I’ve been watching you,” I said, though my voice didn’t come from a mouth. It came from every reflective surface around you speaking at once.
You tightened your grip on the stone.
“You dropped this,” I said.
“No,” you whispered. “I’ve never seen it.”
“You dropped it twelve years ago,” I said. “The day you stopped imagining things. The day you decided the world was only what you could touch.”
You looked down at the stone. It pulsed again.
“It’s your imagination,” I said. “The last piece of it you abandoned. I’ve been keeping it safe.”
You shook your head. “This is insane.”
“Insane is thinking you can live without wonder,” I said. “Insane is believing only the visible world matters.”
The tide began moving again, slowly, as if it was waking from a long sleep.
You held the stone to your chest. “Why now?”
“Because you’re almost out of time.”
That made you freeze. “Time for what?”
I stepped closer, and my form sharpened, the angles aligning, and edges clarifying. For the first time, you saw a hint of a face, but it wasn’t mine.
It was yours.
Not your present face, no, your childhood face. The version of you who used to talk to shadows and build kingdoms out of sticks and believe the moon followed you home.
“I’m not your watcher,” I said. “I’m your reflection. The one you abandoned when you decided growing up meant shrinking down.”
You staggered back. “No. No, this isn’t real.”
“Real?” I laughed, and it sounded like glass chiming. “You think real is only what casts a shadow? I am the part of you that never stopped watching. The part that’s waiting for you to come back.”
Then, the stone in your hand cracked, and light spilled out. It wasn’t bright or blinding, but soft like the glow inside a seashell when you hold it up to the sun.
The light wrapped around you, lifting your hair, warming your skin, and you gasped in recognition.
Because you remembered.
You remembered the imaginary friend you swore was real. You remembered the mirror you talked to at age seven. You remembered the feeling that someone lived inside your reflection, someone who wasn’t scary, just lonely.
That someone was you.
It was the part of yourself you abandoned when you decided growing up meant shutting doors instead of opening them. The part that stayed behind in the glass when you stopped believing in it. The part that had been watching, waiting, hoping you would come back.
The stone dissolved, and I stepped back into the tide’s reflection.
“You won’t see me again,” I said. “Not like this.”
You reached out. “Wait,” you shouted.
But I was already fading.
“Next time,” I said, “you’ll see me when you look in the mirror, and you’ll finally recognize who’s been watching.”
Then the tide crashed forward, soaking your legs, and I was gone.
