The Surface Breached

He burst into the hallway.

The emergency lights flickered and died. A summer storm had broken over the campus, the thunder shaking the foundation of the dorm. The power cut out, plunging the windowless corridor into absolute darkness.

Elias fumbled for his phone, turning on the flashlight. The beam cut through the humid air, illuminating dust motes that swirled like plankton in the deep sea.

The floor was flooded. An inch of black water covered the linoleum, rippling with the vibrations of the thunder.

Elias splashed toward the stairwell.

* Splash. Splash.*

Behind him, another set of footsteps echoed. *Splash. Splash.*

Elias ran. He reached the stairwell door, but the handle was wet. Slick with slime. He couldn't turn it. It was jammed.

"No," he sobbed, pounding on the metal. "Let me out!"

He turned back. The hallway was empty, but the water on the floor was flowing upstream, moving against gravity, pulling him toward the open door of the communal bathroom.

It was a magnetic pull, a hook in his gut. He didn't want to go, but his legs moved of their own accord. He was a moth, and the mirror was the flame.

He entered the bathroom.

The lightning outside flashed, illuminating the room in strobe-light bursts of blue-white.

The large mirror over the sinks was intact, but the surface was rippling like a vertical pool.

Standing in front of the mirror was Elias.

Or rather, the *real* Elias stood trembling by the door, soaked in sweat. The figure in the mirror stood tall, calm, and perfectly dry.

The reflection smiled. It was the same smile from two days ago—beautiful, cruel, and devoid of humanity.

"You're so lonely," the reflection spoke. Its voice didn't come from the glass; it vibrated in the water on the floor, in the pipes in the walls. "You stare at yourself for hours, picking apart the flaws. You hate being in that skin. I can take it off for you."

"What are you?" Elias whispered, holding up his phone like a shield.

"I am the Echo," the thing said. "I am the Ripple."

The reflection reached out.

Its hand didn't hit the glass. It passed *through* the surface, causing the mirror to ring like a struck bell. A solid, dry hand emerged into the humid bathroom.

It grabbed Elias by the throat.

The grip was freezing—absolute zero. It burned his skin.

Elias gagged, dropping his phone. The flashlight spun across the wet floor, casting chaotic shadows on the tiled walls.

The Other pulled.

Elias scrambled, his sneakers sliding on the wet tiles. He grabbed the edge of the sink, ceramic digging into his palms.

"No!" Elias screamed. "I'm real! I'm real!"

"Not for long," The Other hissed.

It lunged halfway out of the mirror, its torso emerging. It looked exactly like him, but "better." No dark circles. No anxiety. Perfect posture.

They grappled in the dark, smashing into the porcelain basins. Elias felt the strength draining from him, siphoned away by the cold touch of the entity. He was being dragged toward the glass.

His hand flailed blindly, knocking over a soap dish. It shattered.

Elias grabbed a jagged shard of ceramic.

"Let go!"

He drove the shard upward.

He meant to stab the entity. But in the chaos of the struggle, with the lightning flashing and the world spinning, he wasn't sure what he hit.

He felt the ceramic slice into meat. Warm blood sprayed across his face.

The Other didn't scream. It laughed.

A violent shove sent Elias flying backward. Or was it forward?

The world inverted. Gravity shifted. The sound of the storm became muffled, distant, as if he were underwater.

Then, silence.