Bright Eyes

Jack watched her every day. He had a rather slight body for his twenty-two years, and dark eyes. Nothing special in his own opinion. He didn’t think she’d recognize him in a crowd. He’d only spoken to her once in the eight months he’d been watching.
She’d been crying then, sitting on a park bench. He had warred with himself inwardly before deciding to walk up to her. As he did so, he noticed her glancing fearfully around herself every few seconds.
“Hi…” he’d finally gotten out after standing next to her uselessly for a full minute.
She hadn’t noticed him until then. “Um, what’s wrong?” he’d asked quickly.
She didn’t answer. She only turned her tear-streaked face up at him, astonishing him all over again with her best feature. Then, she’d run away.
Her name was Alice Edgeber. He’d been watching her long enough to know that. He’d had to find out from a paper she dropped because no one ever called her by name. For that matter, no one ever spoke to her. Sometimes, it was like no one even saw her.
Jack most definitely did. She was a small, strangely beautiful thing with long, dark hair and pale skin. Although those features were arresting enough by themselves, they were but complements to her best feature. Her eyes were an odd gray-green-blue that the word luminous could not begin to capture.
She had the brightest eyes that he had ever seen. They were the main reason that she featured in almost every photo album he owned. Jack was an avid photographer, but no one knew it. He preferred to photograph his subjects without their knowledge and Alice was his favorite.  Her beautiful eyes glowed at him from every wall in his apartment.
He hadn’t seen her in three days. He had waited at the corner store she frequented every day, hoping for a glimpse of her, or, better, an excuse to start a conversation. She was always alone-always afraid. He wanted to know why.
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It was so hard to leave the house. So terrifying. There were too many reflections… she couldn’t let herself continue that train of thought. Alice hadn’t eaten in two days, and her small frame couldn’t quite support prolonged fasting, but she didn’t notice. She hadn’t slept either. Her mind had been alternately occupied with… IT and him. The boy? Man? from the park.
It had been so long since anyone had attempted to talk to her; she’d been overjoyed to hear a kind voice directed at her. Then she’d looked up and seen the reflections- two of them. He’d been wearing glasses. She hadn’t been able to help herself; she ran. She’d been pondering over him ever since. Who was he? Why did he talk to her?
“Why did he care?” she whispered, then jumped as the sound of her voice startled her.
She peered out the glassless window of her room. It was a good day: cloudy but not rainy. No puddles. No reflections. Shuddering, she stepped outside.
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Jack had nearly given up hope when he saw her coming down the sidewalk, her gaze continually downcast. She looked thinner, more harried than usual. As he thought it, he wondered at his choice of words. Why did he describe her that way? He shook his head to rid himself of the extraneous thoughts. They weren’t important. Being alert was, because this time, he promised himself, he would talk to her. This time he had a plan.
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She saw him walking toward her and her heart leapt. He hadn’t given up! She turned back to the magazines she had been inspecting. After a few seconds she heard him shuffling his feet behind her, then he tapped her shoulder.
“Um, hi, listen, you don’t know me, but I’ve seen you around,” he cleared his throat, “town, uh…” he stopped as she turned toward him.
Alice glanced apprehensively toward his face and her eyes widened when she noticed he wasn’t wearing his glasses. He must have noticed her surprise because he lifted his hand with which he had been nervously playing with the glasses.
“Yah, I wear glasses,” he said and made a move to put them back on.
She quickly looked away and said, “Please, do you have to wear them?”
She hoped it wouldn’t offend him. He was the first person to voluntarily talk to her in longer than she could remember. She smiled with relief when he countered her request.
“Sure. Um, don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like you wouldn’t mind a bite to eat, and I’m starved. Would you like to get lunch with me?”
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Jack had been so relieved when she didn’t run away again. He had been thrilled when she said she’d come to lunch with him. She had protested at first that she didn’t have any money to eat on, but he wouldn’t have let her pay in the first place and told her so.
Now they were sitting face to face in a booth at the local diner. She was picking at a cheeseburger and he was finishing his third order of extra fries. Between mouthfuls, he had been explaining the reason he wanted to talk to her.
“I’m a photographer. I’ve seen you around and I think  you would make a great subject for a piece I’m working on,” he said. He didn’t mention his photo albums at home or that the “piece” didn’t exist.
“Why would you want to take pictures of me?” she asked, looking up at him for the first time since they’d sat down.
“You have a very unique look,” he said, thinking that it was the understatement of the century.
She’d simply said “Oh,” and gone back to looking down.
“So, are you interested?” he asked, “I’m not trying to pressure you or anything, I would just really like to get to work…”
“Oh. Yes, I can do that… when were you planning on doing it?”
Jack couldn’t believe his luck. He decided that they should go to her home, because he wanted her to look natural and comfortable. She balked at the idea initially but after some coaxing, agreed. Jack paid the waitress and followed Alice out the door.
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She was nervous about letting him see her house, but he didn’t make any comment as they walked into her living room. If he saw the broken out windows, he didn’t say anything. He quietly began to set up his equipment and told her that she should sit on the couch beside the window. She didn’t look at him the entire time. She stared steadily at a spot on the carpet that she wished she could have cleaned up before she brought him here and felt a flash as he took a picture. 
“Ok,” he said, “I just need you to look at me a little for a few of these.”
As he said it, she looked up at him, and in the light from the open window, saw her reflection staring back at her in the lens of his camera.
She screamed, covering her face with her hands and rolling into a fetal position on the couch.
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Jack didn’t know what to do. She had freaked out as soon as she looked at the camera. That wasn’t the only odd thing. When she had screamed, he had been looking at her through the viewfinder. Her image had stretched.
He stood there, paralyzed for a minute or two. He recovered when he realized that she was still lying there in the fetal position, crying softly. He sat next to her on the couch, wanting to comfort her. He tentatively put his hand on her hair and stroked it. Very soft. She froze at his touch and looked up at him.
“I’m so sorry… I don’t know what happened to me. I just always… when I can see IT…” she dissolved into tears again.
“It’s alright,” he said, “But what do you mean by it? The camera?”
She shook her head. “No, the reflection.”
She began to cry again and this time didn’t stop him when he petted her head. He let her cry in silence- not sure what to do. As it neared 6 o’clock, she began to calm down and sat up to face him.
“Listen,” he said, “It’s getting late, and I’m sure you don’t want me to be here. I hate to impose on you more than I have…”
“No! No. Please, don’t leave. I don’t feel… safe tonight.”
Jack tried to control his reaction. He was surprised but not entirely put out by her suggestion. He wasn’t sure how to respond and took his glasses from his pocket where he’d put them. He fiddled with them for a few seconds before she broke the silence.
“I’m sorry. I’m sure that sounded strange. I suppose it is strange, but I haven’t had anyone to talk to in so long, and this house is so empty… I’m just afraid to be here alone tonight.”
“That’s alright,” he finally said, “I don’t have anything else to do tonight, and you do seem very upset… I will sleep on the couch,” he hastily added, “You don’t have to worry.”
They talked into the early hours of the morning before Alice decided that she should go to bed. Jack had agreed to stay on the couch, and as he lay awake, he thought about the positively strange things that she had had to say.
Alice had no family that she could remember; she had always lived in this house. When he questioned her about her childhood, Jack found that she couldn’t remember past three years ago. He guessed that she was nineteen now. He asked her about the windows, which had intrigued
him from the moment he walked in, and she said that she had broken them out, so that there wouldn’t be reflections.
When she’d mentioned reflections again, he’d had to ask. The answer he got was far more strange than the one he had been expecting. She told him about the first time she could remember looking into a mirror. There used to be one in the bathroom, but it had since been broken, she said. She had glanced into it and felt an odd sensation. She had felt it pulling on her. She had walked closer to the mirror to see what could possibly be doing that, and saw herself, in the mirror, being stretched toward it. She ran away and didn’t go back in the room for nearly a week.
She seemed rather agitated at this point, so Jack didn’t mention what he had seen in the camera. She went on to tell him about the second time she had looked in a mirror.
She had gone back into the bathroom after half-convincing herself that she had imagined the last incident. She looked into the mirror and saw only herself, and felt nothing. She had been in the process of sighing with relief when she saw something else in the reflection.
It was formless and black, constantly shifting in size and shape, but always growing. She watched in fascination and horror as it morphed into the semblance of a head with a wide, seeking maw directly in the center of it. Alice had screamed and run out of the bathroom again, crying. The next day she reached into it with a broom handle and broke the mirror.
By this point in her narrative, Alice was crying again and finished her story with one sentence.
“I just knew it was searching for me… that it wanted me.”
Shortly after she had decided to go to bed. Jack was torn between belief and disbelief. It sounded horribly fantastical, but he had proof of at least half of her story. Didn’t he? He was interrupted from his musings by the sound of muted whimpering coming from the direction Alice had gone down the hall.          
He got up from the couch and followed the noise to a room at the back of the house. There was a strange luminescence coming from it, and as he looked in, he found the source. Alice lay in bed, scrunched down as far as she could into the blankets. All around her in the air were dozens of swirling lights.
They weren’t ordinary lights, they were more lighted orbs than regular lights. As they swooped and dived above her, Alice cried harder into her pillow. Her eyes weren’t open.
Jack knew he had to do something. He stood in the doorway indecisively for a moment before shouting her name into the room. At the sound of his voice, the lights stopped their cavorting above Alice’s head and shot toward him. He ducked and they went out into the hall. He watched their progress and followed them to their destination- what turned out to be the bathroom. He arrived at the door just in time to see the last light disappear into the mirror.
Jack went back to Alice’s room. She was where he had left her, eyes still tightly closed. She appeared to be asleep. He said her name softly, hoping that she was just afraid that the lights had come back. When she didn’t respond, he said it again, louder. She still didn’t move, so he hesitantly shook her shoulder.
Her eyes shot open and she moved past him without seeing him. She walked into the hallway with an alacrity that he would not have believed she was capable of a few hours earlier. He followed her through the hallway and into the bathroom. He was astonished to note what he hadn’t before. The mirror wasn’t broken.
Alice stood in front of it, apparently transfixed by her reflection. He shook her shoulders and tried to get her to look at him to no avail. Then he caught what she was looking at.
A blackness was gathering in the middle of the mirror, and as he watched, it acquired a head and a gaping hole that more than likely served as a mouth. Alice took a step toward the mirror as if in a trance. Jack tried to hold her back, but found that he couldn’t do it.  She stayed rooted to the spot as blackness crept into the corners and empty spaces of the mirror.
Then he heard an unearthly howling and saw Alice begin to stretch toward the mirror. The howling continued as she stretched further, her features distorted. As she stretched far enough to nearly touch the mirror, Alice seemed to wake from her trance. She blinked and the blank look on her face was replaced by one of horror. She screamed piteously and the sound was as distorted as her countenance. She reached for him and Jack tried to grasp her fingers as she was sucked into the mirror.
He couldn’t get a good enough hold. As he watched with growing horror and despair, Alice was sucked into the mirror. Instantly, the blackness was gone from the mirror. There was no sign of Alice.
Jack beat futilely at his own reflection, hoping to bring whatever it was back, and with it Alice. He hadn’t known her long, but he had fostered an attachment to the strange, diminutive girl. When he realized that nothing he could do would bring her back, Jack backed slowly away from the mirror. When he got to the door, he turned and ran.
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Jack goes by her house every once in a while. It has remained empty. No one has put up windows or tried to move in. He feels vaguely depressed whenever he sees it and constantly wonders if he didn’t just make the girl with bright eyes up. Only the pictures that still adorn his walls and photo albums indicate that she was real.