[ WP ] Mirrors are Gateways to other universes . The only reason we can not use them , is because someone is always blocking the way .

That movement in the corner of your half-glance vision. That shift that makes you look, makes you anxious about something you did n't see. 
 
 Something unbound. 
 
 -- 
 
 Ash woke up dizzy. Dazed and confused about the heavy pain in her head and the awkward weight of all her limbs. Confused about why her room was so cold and, when she pulled the blanket tighter around herself, confused about the dry red stain on the fabric's edge. 
 
 She forced herself to sit up and regretted it. Ash winced at the sunlight cracking through her blinds. Why was her window open? A question she could only ask herself and provide no answer for, but it did explain the cold. 
 
 An instinct told her to touch her neck, she felt something dry there too. Something brittle gathered around strange lumps. A red stain of something concerning. 
 
 Carefully she stepped out of bed. Careful both to avoid the clothes that she never bothered to put away, and to avoid simply falling from the sudden flu that seemed to have seeped into her system overnight. 
 
 Perhaps she would have worried more, on her way to the bathroom, if she was n't so out-of-it. So barely conscious and aware of the gravity of waking up to dry blood in her bed. 
 
 Ash was confused when she looked in the mirror. She squinted, leant forward, tried to focus. She was confused by the normalcy of her reflection. She could see her confused expression, but not the red stain on her neck or the heavy bags under her eyes. And then she 
 
 Screamed 
 
 Distantly and 
 
 Faded. 
 
 -- 
 
 Ash woke up tired. It was expected, as warm as her bed was. Snug under a heavy blanket that took all her resistance not to pull over her head. Not to retreat from the sunlight that urged her awake. 
 
 But she had already hit snooze on her alarm enough times. 
 
 Ash told herself to get up, and since Ash respected her own authority she did so. She sat up and stretched and carefully avoided the mess of socks and underwear and pants strewn about on the floor. 
 
 She made her way to the bathroom to begin the morning routine and to splash some cold water on her face. Though first she caught herself in the mirror. A quick glance to check she was still there, to confirm that she looked like what she would expect herself to look like. It was something Ash assumed everyone did. 
 
 She did not look like what she would expect herself to look like. 
 
 She had heavy bags under her bloodshot eyes. Her skin was pale and there was dry blood across one side of her neck and lumps that suggested a strange, overnight wound. 
 
 Yet, when she reached to touch her own neck, just like the sick Ash in the mirror did, she felt nothing. 
 
 And then she screamed. The sound piercing and immediate. She screamed because the mirror-version of herself did n't. Because the mirror-version of herself closed her eyes and fell forward. 
 
 `` Oh what the fuck, what the fuck?'' Ash jumped back as her Other, dead, entered half-way into her world. 
 
 The dead Ash did not collide with the mirror, she fell right through it like an open window. The body slumped half-way between one world and another. 
 
 She did n't know what to do, the living Ash. The Ash that had witnessed her own self collapse through a mirror. The Ash that babbled anxious nothings to herself until something hit her throat and she had to dash to the toilet to vomit. 
 
 Ash did n't know how to deal with this. Was she dead? Would she know if she was a ghost? Something felt missing, but that could have been because she just flushed last night's dinner. 
 
 Her knees hurt from kneeling on the tile floor, so with a grunt ( and a pause to make sure she was n't going to vomit, ( again, ) ) she forced herself upright. Ash braced herself before turning around because of what she would see behind her. 
 
 Which was nothing. 
 
 She saw nothing that she was afraid to see. She saw her bathroom, the mirror, and the bathroom reflected in it. She saw no dead Ash, slumped between worlds. 
 
 It took her a moment to realise that she did n't see herself, either. She looked down and saw her body, her feet, her hands, but when she looked up to the mirror she did n't see her face or her messy brown hair. And when she stepped forward, cautiously, and reached out, gingerly, she felt no surface. Her hand too easily slipped through one bathroom and into the other. 
 
 Ash knew that if she climbed, she could pass through it completely. She knew that inside herself, something had changed. 
 
 Something was unbound.
