Reflections
He keeps waking up at the same time every day ... What's going on here?
3:00 AM
"Oh, for fuck's sake ..."
Eloquence was never the jackal's forte. Piercing orange eyes glared at the digital alarm clock.
"3 AM again? This is the third time this goddamn week ..."
Yet again, he had awoken at the dead of night at the same exact time for no discernable reason. Feeling pressure in his lower abdomen, he sighed and decided to get out of the confines of his bedsheets to relieve himself. He'd usually just ignore it and go back to bed, but he was too pissed off from having his slumber interrupted for the third night in a row.
Unfazed by the cold linoleum on his bare footpaws, he padded towards the en suite bathroom, his pupils dilating as they adjusted to the darkness, his hind paws leaving moist, evanescent prints on the flat, moonlit surface of the floor.
The light flicked on. The sound of urine splashing against ceramic was followed by a flush, and the jackal decided he needed to replenish some of the water he had just lost.
Standing in front of the bathroom sink, the faucet commenced spewing a turbulent stream of cold water as the corresponding knob was turned by the white forepaw of the drowsy jackal. The dog lathered up his paws and washed them. As he began to lean over to cup his paw over the flowing water to take a sip, his gaze momentarily diverted straight ahead, and he felt his stomach drop - his peripheral vision had caught something unusual in the mirror.
The jackal couldn't explain it. The reflections in the looking glass were exactly as he'd expect them - himself, the white-walled bathroom around him, the shimmering lunar light on the linoleum floor of his bedroom. But ... there was something off.
After a half-minute staring contest with his reflection, brow furrowed and muzzle ajar, attempting to work out what was wrong, he sighed and attributed his confusion to lack of sleep. He looked down at the pouring water and cupped his hand under the stream to be able to drink. A couple of big gulps quenched the wild dog's thirst, and the knob was turned in the opposite direction, the valve groaning as it cut the flow.
The canid turned around and padded towards the light switch; darkness once again enveloped the bathroom, as expected. The mirror, however, revealed something unexpected ...
3:00 AM
"God fucking damnit, I'm gonna go insane if this keeps up!"
The jackal felt like smashing his alarm clock, but managed to collect himself before he ended up hurting his paw. For the fourth night in a row, at the exact same time of 3 AM, his rest had been interrupted, and he couldn't comprehend why.
Huffing, he tossed the bedsheets and started padding towards the bathroom.
After doing his business, the jackal found himself face-to-face with his reflection. He couldn't put his finger on it - even though everything seemed as it should, something didn't make sense. For some reason, his mirror image seemed ... detached. Putting his paw up to the mirror, the reflection did the same.
Sighing and attributing his paranoia to sleepless delirium, he twisted the knob that controlled the flow of cold water and cupped his paw. As he leaned forward, his heart skipped a beat and his breath got stuck in his throat. This time, he was damn sure he had seen something. He slowly rolled his eyeballs up towards the looking glass and his back straightened up, his gaze fixed on his specular image's eyes as he rose.
Frustratingly, once again, everything seemed ordinary.
"Oh, screw this!" he growled and stormed out of the bathroom, slamming his paw on the switch to cut the lights. He didn't appreciate his mind playing tricks on him, especially not when he was cranky from lack of sleep.
As the jackal walked back towards his bed, his reflection didn't follow him. Specular doppelgänger fiery eyes followed the real canid as he got back into bed. The gaze lingered as the jackal's consciousness started to fade, and a minute after the canid was asleep, the rogue reflection vanished.
3:00 AM
The jackal's eyes opened, and they rolled. He knew exactly what the alarm clock would say. A glance at the godforsaken digital display confirmed that it was indeed, as always, without fault, 3 AM. At his wits' end, the dog slammed his fists into the bed and pushed himself off, his hind paws landing on the cold solid floor with a thud, the bedsheets following him as they slid off and piled up right behind his paws.
"All right!" he bellowed, not caring if his neighbors would mind. "If someone's here, stop fucking with me and show yourself ..." he paused to let his eyes adjust to the moonlit room and angled his ears to hear any would-be intruder. "... because I've been trying to sleep for the past week, so if there's someone here, show yourself now, or you'll be very sorry ..." he stopped again to see if anyone would answer. Nothing.
"Get a grip on yourself, there's nobody here ..." he reprimanded himself, sitting back down on the bed. Reaching down to pick up the crumpled bedsheets, he felt pressure in his abdomen. He cursed and got up and padded towards the toilet.
After emptying his bladder, the jackal found himself rinsing his soapy paws, staring at his reflection. "Oh, you silly jackal ... Just get some sleeping pills tomorrow in the morning and you're all set." He scoffed at himself for letting a bout of insomnia get the best of him.
A white forepaw twisted the knob to stop the flow of water; his ears perked - for some reason he couldn't hear the air conditioning anymore. He focused to try and make the sound come back; maybe the running water had masked it temporarily. But then he realized something more alarming ... Not a sound could be heard. It was completely silent.
His ears swiveled, his head turned in all directions to try and pick up any noise at all, no matter how faint - and then a familiar sensation gripped his chest. It dawned on him that right before he'd wake up at 3 AM, this was the feeling that took hold of his consciousness right before he would come to. For some reason his psyche, his subconscious, blocked it out and he never remembered it. But now that he was experiencing it fully awake, it all came back.
It was an unnerving feeling of being watched, of having eyes on you ... The feeling you get when you know someone's looking at you through your peripheral vision.
He froze in place and turned his head to face the mirror - his reflection was there, but it wasn't his mirror image. The reflection's forepaws clutched the edge of the sink, and on his face was a smug look of satisfaction, staring straight at the real jackal.
The jackal instinctively took a step back, but this did little to alleviate the situation, since the reflection held his stance, watching the dog cower, confirming that this was no hallucination.
The doppelgänger reached for the straight razor sitting on the back edge of the sink against the wall. The jackal watched in sheer terror as the razor on his side of the mirror stayed put. While maintaining his cocky stare, the reflection slit his own throat from ear to ear - at first, no blood emerged from the clean, red wound, but then the first drops started oozing out.
A sight like this would make the jackal run for his life, but he felt weak at the knees. A sharp, piercing pain in his neck compelled him to look down - a copious amount of blood was cascading down his thorax, and he blacked out ...