TRUE TALES OF TERROR
"Mirror Mirror on the Wall"
Tonight’s story, “Mirror Mirror on the Wall” is brought to you by Lucky Brand Contraceptives. If you think you might get lucky, carry Lucky Brand Contraceptives! And now on with our story.
Fidley checked her dark, voluminous, teased hair in the mirror. Perfect.
“You almost ready?” her roommate Quipper asked from their shared college apartment combination kitchen-living room-foyer.
“Don’t rush me,” Fidley said, hurrying toward the front door in her best “going out on the town” party frock. “You know I always forget something when you rush me.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’d forget your head if it wasn’t attached,” Quipper joked as she flipped off the lights, locked the door, and they headed out for what was expected to be the “dopest” party of the semester.
It took them nearly ten minutes to get all the way across campus to the rockin’ shindig, gabbing and gossiping the whole way like good friends do. Although Fidley was a 20-year-old communications major with dark hair and a penchant for romance, and Quipper was a 19-year-old English major with blonde hair and a love of true crime, they still found enough in common to cement a bond between them that couldn’t be severed. The ladies were still mid-conversation as they reached the soiree, and it was only as the bouncer asked for IDs that Fidley realized she’d left hers back at the apartment.
“Oh stinkers! I have to go back.” Fidley was majorly bummed.
“Forgetful Fidley,” Quipper joshed in a tone that was playful and understanding rather than cruel and remonstrative. “Come on. I’ll walk back with you.”
“No, you go ahead,” Fidley insisted. “Don’t miss the exciting first few minutes of a party on my account. I’ll be back in twenty minutes. I swear on a dog-eared copy of a 2000-year-old religious text.”
So Quipper reluctantly went into the party solo as Fidley hustled her heiney back to her apartment.
Night had fallen by the time Fidley reached home and she fumbled to find her key. She opened to door to a darkened apartment, but didn’t bother to flip on the light. After three years here, she knew this place like some place she had lived for three years. She made a b-line across the room to the bathroom and grabbed her license from beside the sink where she knew she’d left it… right beside her convenient and easy-to-use pack of Lucky Brand Contraceptives. Always ready for a girl on the go in its bright, cheery packaging, Lucky Brand Contraceptives were the essential item she never wanted to forget! She dropped them into her purse and ran out the door, all in complete darkness, without ever turning on the lights. She hurried back to the “off the chain” par-tay.
Well, needless to say, it was a thrilling collegiate hootenanny, full of socializing and imbibing, but after several raucous hours, Quipper was ready to call it quits.
“I don’t mean to be a major downer or party pooper, but I have finals in the morning,” Quipper sighed. “So, I’d better do the right, sensible thing and get to bed early so that I’m rested for tomorrow and my final exams. I’m denying myself now in order to be better off tomorrow. Yes, the rest of my life starts tomorrow. But you stay and have fun!”
And with that Quipper headed back across the darkened, empty campus to their apartment.
Fidley danced a few more dances, chatted up a few more co-eds, and laughed a few more laughs before she decided it was time to turn in. Guess she hadn’t needed her Lucky Brand Contraceptives tonight after all. But wasn’t it reassuring to know that she had the protection and the professional guarantee of Lucky Brand Contraceptives whenever she needed it. It was always there for her, like a good friend. Like Quipper!
It was nearly one in the morning by the time Fidley headed out into the chilly night air to walk home alone. The campus was deserted and silent, save for the lonely clip-clop of her party shoes on the pavement and the mournful wind through the skeletal bare branches of the trees.
The first thing she saw was the lights, blue and red, flashing across the building like strobes. Her apartment complex was surrounded by police. Fidley broke into a run, pushing past the cops and bolting inside to find out what was going on. She found the door to her apartment open and the place full of police officers… and full of blood.
“Whoa whoa whoa, young lady. You don’t want to see this,” an officer at the door said firmly.
“But I live here!” Fidley protested. “With my roommate and BFF, Quipper. Is she all right?”
“Quipper will never be all right again,” the officer sighed, stepping aside so Fidley could see the prone body of her close friend and occasional lover sprawled across their living room floor in a spreading pool of dark red blood. Her head, still coiffed for party-going merriment, was no longer attached to her body, but lay in the corner of the overpriced college dwelling, staring at the ceiling with her mouth agape in an exceedingly unladylike fashion.
Fidley stifled a scream of horror. This couldn’t be happening.
“Apparently, someone was waiting for her when she got home,” the officer explained. “A maniac that’s been attacking girls on campus.”
“How – how do you know?” Fidley stammered.
“The killer left a note,” he said, pointing to the bathroom mirror.
In a daze, Fidley crossed the familiar apartment, now as foreign to her as an alien planet, taking the same path she had taken only a few hours before, but this time she could feel her shoes sticking to the floor as she tracked bloody footprints across the carpet. She averted her eyes from her roommate’s headless, rotting corpse and, for a moment, wished the lights were off again.
She looked up at the mirror and gasped. There was a message written in blood:
“Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?”
Fidley froze.
Was this message meant for her?
Had this demented assassin been here when she had returned for her license?
“Uh, there’s more to the message,” the officer pointed to the bottom half of the mirror and Fidley read on:
“You see, when you came home earlier, I was already here, waiting for someone to kill. But I have this weird peculiarity that I only kill people who can see me. It’s only fair. So, when you didn’t turn on lights, I let you pass and waited patiently for someone who would turn on the lights. I paced for a while, looked through some of the titles on your bookshelf, did a Sudoku, spent an embarrassingly long time on my phone, and then your roommate came in, flipped on the lights, and the ritual killing frenzy began. So now aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?”
Fidley was stunned. It was a really big mirror. She’d never noticed before, but that mirror was huge.
The officer put a comforting hand on her shoulder to offer his support as he spoke to her again.
“There’s actually more on the back of the mirror, if you…”
“Nah, I’m good.”
She didn’t need to read any more of his ravings. She already knew what she needed to know.
She was still alive.
Her life had been spared.
And she had the entire apartment all to herself!
Well, that’s the end of our story and we’d like to thank you for taking the time to read it and thank our sponsor, the good folks at Lucky Brand Contraceptives. When you find yourself prepared for an evening of romance, it’s not luck; it’s Lucky Brand Contraceptives!
Good night, everybody!
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