Lost

By Peter Bowden


She found the mirror in the attic where the dust hung like tiny stars and the light came in slow and golden through slats in the roof. It wasn’t just a mirror—it was a whisper from another world, silvered and soft-edged, rimmed in old wood carved with vines and faces half-remembered. She touched it lightly, curious, and the glass gave way like warm rain. She stepped through without a sound.

Inside, the air shimmered like a held breath. Mirrors stretched in every direction, each one showing a different version of her: laughing, crying, running, flying. She wandered through the corridors of maybe, her footsteps making no echo. The reflections called her name, though not always kindly. Some begged. Some warned. All were her, and none were her. Time, if it existed there, drifted like fog.

She searched for the mirror home, the one she came from, but the path was lost in the glittering maze. The glass no longer bent for her. Her voice, when she cried out, vanished into the silver hush. Somewhere in the real world, her family would call and search and forget. But inside, she watched, always watched, her hand pressed to the cool glass of a mirror in an attic that no one dusted anymore.

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