Sunday Short: PRIDE

Mara had never met a mirror she didn’t love.

Her apartment was lined with them — full-length, antique, frameless, tinted — each one reflecting her flawless skin, sculpted jawline, and the carefully curated life she posted online. With two million followers hanging on her every shot, Mara was every inch the self-made beauty icon she claimed to be.

And she believed it.

Every like was worship.

Every comment was devotion.

Every tag was proof that she mattered.

Her pride didn’t just grow — it metastasized.

One night, after a brand gala where she spent more time posing than speaking to actual people, Mara returned home tipsy and glowing. She kicked off her heels, wiped off her lipstick, and posed in front of her favorite mirror — a Victorian piece she bought from an estate sale. The seller warned her it “belonged to someone who loved themselves too much.”

Mara had laughed.

“Same.”

She lifted her phone to take a selfie… and froze.

The reflection behind her wasn’t smiling.

Her mirrored self stared back with a stiff, unnatural stillness — eyes unblinking, lips thin, shoulders rigid. Mara blinked hard, shook her head. Must be the drinks. But when she lifted her phone again, her reflection leaned closer to the glass, as if trying to crawl out.

Mara stepped back.

Her reflection didn’t.

It stayed pressed against the mirror, face stretched into an uncanny grin.

“What the hell—?”

The reflection’s grin widened, skin pulling tight, showing too many teeth. It raised a finger and tapped the inside of the mirror once.

A crack formed.

Mara yelped and stumbled, knocking into another mirror. The sound echoed, and when she turned around, every reflection in every mirror around her had shifted. None of them matched her movements.

They were all watching her.

Her Victorian mirror-self whispered something, fogging up the inside of the glass.

MINE.

The mirrors began to tremble. Her reflections’ eyes turned black, bodies twisting into thinner, more beautiful, more perfected versions of her — as if her vanity had birthed something hungry.

Mara tried to run, but the mirrors blocked her path with impossible angles. One reflection reached out of the nearest glass, its hand pale and glossy like polished marble. It grabbed her by the face, nails slicing her skin like paper.

The mirrors whispered in a hundred warped voices:

"You wanted to be adored."

"Let us adore you."

"Forever."

She screamed as the reflections pulled her into the glass.

Her phone kept recording on the floor — an empty apartment, a single cracked mirror, and a distorted echo of Mara’s scream fading away.

The next morning, her followers woke up to a new post on her account.

A flawless photo of Mara.

Perfect skin. Perfect smile. Perfect eyes.

Too perfect.

Captioned:

“I finally became who I was meant to be.”

But those who zoomed in swore her reflection in the background wasn’t matching the pose.

And if you stare long enough, it smiles at you too.