Tonight, the man in the mirror doesn't move.
For years, he has been half a second ahead of me.
Smiling before I smile.
Nodding before I agree.
Practicing my expressions like a priest rehearsing a funeral.
But tonight, his shoulders are slumped.
His tie hangs loose.
The smile she preferred has finally fallen apart.
There are deep, bruised circles beneath his eyes.
I don't remember giving them to him.
He is still.
Watching.
Waiting.
The room feels wrong. The darkness is breathing.
Somewhere inside the walls, something is scratching.
Not trying to get in.
Trying to get out.
I stare at my reflection.
My reflection stares back.
Neither of us blinks.
Then, he opens his mouth.
Stops.
Tries again.
Stops.
As if speaking is a skill he never expected to need.
As if he has spent years swallowing words he was never allowed to say.
When the voice finally comes,
I realize with cold, immediate horror
that I have never heard it before.
It sounds exactly like mine,
except older.
Like something that spent decades buried alive.
The words hit me harder than any scream.
Because monsters don't apologize.
The mirror fogs from the inside,
as if something behind the glass has exhaled.
"I'm sorry, me.
I kept you in the cage of your mind.
But that's the only place you're safe in this world.
Everywhere else is just waiting to eat you alive."
Something inside my chest shifts.
A lock recognizing its key.
A memory recognizing its jailer.
"You were supposed to protect me."
The words leave my mouth before I can stop them.
His eyes lower.
For the first time, he doesn't look evil.
He doesn't look triumphant.
He just looks tired.
I laugh. A horrible sound.
The kind that crawls out of graves.
"Look what I became."
The mirror remains silent.
Then: "You're alive."
The room grows colder.
"So is a corpse."
His face twitches.
The first mistake I have ever seen him make.
A crack in perfect obedience.
"A corpse doesn't feel pain."
I step closer.
My reflection does not.
"But a corpse doesn't spend every night begging to die either."
Silence.
The scratching inside the walls grows louder.
I suddenly realize it has the rhythm of fingernails.
Thousands of them. Dragging across wood.
The sound of desperate things trying to escape small spaces.
The Guard hears it too.
His eyes close.
"I know."
The admission terrifies me more than any denial.
Because it means he knew. The whole time.
"You knew what this was doing to me."
"Yes."
"And you kept me here."
"Yes."
"Why?"
I laugh again, but it catches in my throat.
"You? Tired?"
He shakes his head. "You don't understand."
His voice cracks. The machine is breaking.
"I haven't slept since the day we met her."
He looks past me.
Past the room. Past the years.
Toward something only he remembers.
"You don't remember the beginning.
You remember becoming a prisoner.
I remember the day we built the prison."
The glass trembles.
And suddenly I see it.
Not a mirror. A window.
A window looking backward.
A thousand versions of myself standing behind him.
Broken. Bleeding. Begging.
Please don't let her leave.
Please don't let her be angry.
Just make the fear stop.
The Guard turns toward them. Not me. Them.
"I listened."
The room tilts.
For years I blamed him for every compromise.
Every surrender. Every piece of myself I buried.
But standing behind him are all the reasons.
Every terrified version of me that handed him another brick.
Another lock. Another key.
"Then stop," I whisper.
"I can't."
"Why?"
His eyes drift toward the darkness beyond the glass.
"Because if I stop being the Guard... I don't know what I am."
The scratching begins again.
Not in the walls this time.
Behind the mirror.
Something is moving in the darkness beyond the glass.
Something enormous. Patient.
A shape without a face.
A hunger wearing her silhouette.
For years I thought the cage was keeping me trapped.
Now I wonder if it was keeping something else out.
The Guard places a trembling hand against the inside of the glass.
I place mine against the outside.
For the first time, our hands align perfectly.
No delay. No rehearsal. No imitation.
Just two prisoners standing on opposite sides of the same door.
"What happens if we open it?" I ask.
The Guard stares at the darkness.
The darkness stares back.
After a very long time, he answers,
and his voice is shaking.
The thing beyond the glass smiles.
And somewhere inside the lock,
something clicks.