The First Doorway

   Sophie leaned on the bathroom counter, her chest buzzing with a fire she couldn't put out. Her phone had stayed silent for what felt like hours, and every second stretched like a rope tied around her chest. She wanted to text again. She wanted to call. She wanted to scream.

   Her reflection in the warped mirror looked to familiar- the same messy hair, the same tired eyes, but somehow more desperate.

   The room seemed to pulse with the intensity in her chest. She swallowed hard and felt the urge to shrink away, to disappear before anyone could leave her behind.

   Then the mirror shifted. It stretched, the edges of her reflection bending until the glass felt like a doorway.

   She hesitated, breathing rapidly. 

   "I can't," She whispered to herself.

   A voice-soft, almost like her own- answered.

  "Then step through."

   Sophie stepped forward, and suddenly the bathroom fell away. She was in a room made entirely of light. Words floated in the air- needed, wanted, chosen. Her reflection stood across from her, smiling too widely.

   "If they leave," the reflection said softly, "you disappear."

   Sophie's heart thudded. She felt the familiar pull to cling, to prove she mattered, to demand her existence.

   "But I don't want to disappear," she whispered.

   The reflection tilted it's head. "Then learn this."

   The light dimmed slightly. Sophie felt her feet root into the floor. She breathed once. Twice. The words shifted.

   "I can care without collapsing" 

   The room dissolved. She was back in the bathroom, hands trembling, heart pounding- but the mirror no longer felt life threatening.  

Reviews

[Yellow Submarine.]

This is rich with imagination and a little drama. I hope she enters the mirror.