Angel Feathers

Cat in a Haunted Mirror

I smiled in satisfaction, examining the crumbling Victorian mansion I'd inherited, which overlooked a lake. What a gold mine; once I got it fixed up, I could sell it for close to a million with that view.

Inside, it was a dusty, stinky, icky mess: rats and roaches scurrying everywhere, moldy books tumbling off lopsided shelves, and half the dining room ceiling caving in, to say nothing of the decidedly untrustworthy spiral staircase with half the steps missing.

I ignored everything and hired a few local guys to sweep out the yuck. One day, one of them came down from the attic carrying a tightly wrapped bundle the size of a dead body.

“Whatcha got there, Hank?” I twiddled a cigar between my fingers, lounging at a makeshift foreman's desk.

“This old mirror's gotta be disposed of, Boss. It's haunted!”

“Say what?” I drawled, standing up. “Whaddya mean? Show me!”

“I can't! It's already swallowed Josh –”

Hank trembled, almost dropping his burden. He tried to dart past me. I took him by the shoulder and hoisted the bundle away from him.

“I suggest you quit smoking weed on the job. Josh didn't show up today. Mirrors don't swallow people. Capiche?”

“You gotta listen, Boss!” Hank wheezed. “Josh and I found it standing in the attic. It looks normal, sure, but Josh saw something in the reflection. He let out a screech I'll hear in my dying nightmares. He stumbled into it and fell – right through the glass!”

“I suppose you can still see him crying and trying to come back to this side?” My tone was laced with sarcasm.

“I haven't looked!” Hank backed away from me. “Toss it into the dumpster, please!”

“Nonsense. Why don't you go home early today? You don't have to come back.”

Hank scurried out the door and down the front steps with all the speed of a man with the devil at his heels. I snickered. Leaning the bundle against the wall, I sliced away the tape and unwrapped what turned out to be an antique Victorian mirror. It was a full length cheval, the kind that swivels forward and backward on a point across the middle. The glass had been carefully pasted over with layers of newspaper and mounds of tape. Hank was determined to ensure nobody ever saw a reflection in that thing again.

Why hadn't he broken the glass instead of risking exposing himself to it while covering it? Kinda proved Hank was lying; he just wanted to steal it and make a few extra bucks. He figured he'd keep it padded. Hopefully he hadn't damaged the finish by taping all over it. I tore away the wrappings like a bandage, letting them slither to the floor. Just like that, the mirror was exposed.

My own stocky figure was missing. Not scary at all, because the shadow realm was merely the room I was standing in: full of cats. I belly laughed. Swallow a grown man, indeed! Obviously it was some cheap magician's trick. I reached out to tap the glass, wondering if the cats would hear me.

My fingers went right through the surface as if it weren't there. My hand and then my whole arm followed, pulled by a suction like a tornado. I let out a yell loud enough to shake the rafters, trying to grab the frame with my other hand.

I found myself on the floor of my mansion, surrounded by cats sniffing at me. I looked around for the mirror. It was gone. I sniffed back at the other cats, ears twitching. Then I jumped up with a wailing screech. I'd been turned into a cat!

My claws extended, scrabbling desperately at the wall. I yowled, tail lashing, running maddened circles across the room in between the other cats as I sought a way out. They mostly ignored me. My heightened senses bombarded me with strange new information: the sharp tang of wood polish, the heartbeat ticking of a grandfather clock, endless somatosensory input about balance and distance from the ground that I had no clue what to do with.

I wasn't thinking in words anymore, only in raw emotions, images, and instinctive processes impossible to describe. As I darted past a couch, a mechanical whirring erupted from underneath it. I clawed to a halt, staring, piercing the shadowy void. Lights blinked and flickered, illuminating a black, disk shaped object about my own size.

The other cats gathered languidly around me, crouching to examine the thing. I stretched out a paw, arching down to see if I could touch it. The whirring heightened into an angry growling. Then the black object lunged forward, bursting out from under the couch at me.

We leaped back several feet, yowling, as the object plowed across the floor. It spun from one end of the room to another. Blades whirled around the edges, flashing as they caught the light. Then it homed in on me. The other cats jumped and climbed onto furniture to get away from it. I ran. It followed me. It came so close, it nicked the tip of my tail as I barely pulled myself away in time from the ravenous blades.

I played the game of running away until my feline bones screamed for a rest. I turned to face the thing as it bore down on me. My fur stood on end. I arched my back, hissing. Then, something clicked in my brain. I leaped straight into the air as the object slid under me, landing with a plop right on top of it.

Now no longer the target, I clung on as it flew back and forth across the floor. My ears twisted and laid flat against my head, trying to shut out the high-pitched whirring it made. Hunger poked between my ribs. Then, voices. Humanesque ones. A door opened.

“Aww, look, Henry! That cat is riding the vacuum!”

A tall young woman strode in, giggling as she stared down at me. An equivalent man stood beside her, adjusting his glasses.

“I say, that's a new cat, isn't it?”

“The mirror drew in a new soul,” she responded.

The blades had retracted as soon as they'd entered. The high-pitched growling died down to a muted whirring, and the disk I was riding came to a stop at their feet. I stepped off and snuggled against the woman's legs, my chest rumbling with a deep reverberant thrum.

“This one's probably hungry. Come on, buddy, it's feeding time.”

She bent and picked me up, sending a thrill of delight through me. I kept rumbling. The other cats lined up behind us as she and the man started walking along a hallway.

“How many souls do you think we'll need to complete the experiment?” he asked.

“Oh, at least five more. The magic mirror is doing a splendid job. Once we have enough, we'll see how well our little multipurpose vacuum works on them. Right now, we'll keep them fattened up.”

I no longer understood what they were saying, nor did I particularly care. The close call the bladed monster had given me slipped away into the past. As long as I had food coming and an opportunity to be petted and held, what else mattered?

Author Notes ▼

Words: 1216.
Written for "The Bard's Hall Contest" 
Prompt: You find an antique mirror in the attic of the old Victorian House you just moved into. But something's not right! The mirror is CURSED!
Staring into the mirror you notice some unsettling reflections. It seems you have no power to break from the gaze!
What was the reflection seen?
How did you escape the curse?
Was or could the mirror be destroyed?
Have fun with this one. Make us cringe with the horror of it all. You decide the ending: good or bad, ugly, frightening… eternally trapped inside the mirror?
Also written for "Horror Writing Contest"  Prompt:

Also written for "Note: 48-HOUR CHALLENGE : BONUS Media Prompt ..."

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