Collapse Chronicles Entry #16
“Where the Mirrors Rot”
Sourced from the backing of a shattered vanity mirror, scratched into the silver with what appears to be a sewing needle. Found hanging from the ceiling of a rest stop bathroom off Highway 59—beneath a flickering motion-sensor light that clicks even when nothing moves.
Day 83 A.P.
Status: Reflected. Fractured. Avoiding my own eyes.
Rest stop appeared on the horizon like a bruise: familiar, swollen, wrong in shape.
I pulled in because I had to. The need to piss is stronger than paranoia sometimes.
That was my first mistake.
There were mirrors everywhere inside. Not just in the bathroom. On the walls. The stalls. The ceiling. Even the floor, in cracked and mismatched tiles.
Each one… wrong.
Not broken. Just delayed. They showed me, but not now. Sometimes a second behind. Sometimes a lifetime.
In one mirror, I looked thirteen. In another, I was dead—face purple, eyes bloated, still blinking.
And in another, I was smiling.
I never smile.
A man stepped out from the janitor’s closet. Bald. Filthy. Wearing nothing but denim overalls and a noose around his neck—not tight, just draped like a reminder. He bowed, slow and reverent.
“Welcome to the Threshold,” he said. “These are the Remembering Glasses.”
I didn’t answer. Just backed toward the door.
He didn’t stop me.
“They only rot when you forget who you aren’t.”
He was lighting candles in a circle of compact mirrors. Whispering names. Some in English. Some in what I think was… firmware?
As I left, every mirror in the room twisted slightly. Not physically—just enough in the reflection to make me know something else was watching from inside.
Back outside, I looked into the side mirror of my truck.
It was clean. Perfect.
And behind me, in the backseat, was Reese.
Smiling.
I turned. Nothing there.
When I looked again, the mirror showed only static.
Glass is memory now.
And it doesn’t always forgive the versions we leave behind.