The Perfect Self

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The lens stared back at Mara. To her it looked like a black pupil, and it seemed alive in some strange way.
    She had spent enough hours in front of cameras to know the tricks they played. Light could hollow a cheek or soften it. Angles could forgive sleep, grief, bad skin, and poor decisions. Filters could make anyone look as if life had never touched them.
    This felt different.
    The ring light cast its clean white circle around the camera, and beneath it the monitor showed Mara half a second behind herself. The delay had never bothered her before. Tonight it did. Her image seemed to wait for her movements instead of copying them.
    “Three, two,” Naomi said through the earpiece. “You’re live.”
    Mara smiled.
    “Good evening, mirrors.”
    That was what she called her followers. Mirrors. People who reflected back whatever version of herself she offered them.
    “What do you think of today’s program so far?”
    Heart emojis climbed the screen. Comments began pouring across the monitor screen.
    You look rested today.
    Glow queen day, no question.
    Did you do something different with your hair?
    Mara had done nothing different. Same foundation. Same lashes. Same carefully chosen shade of lipstick that cost too much and looked natural only under artificial light.
    She leaned closer to the lens.
    She felt the skin across her cheeks tighten, and the feeling was strange.
    It was not pain. It felt more like a gentle pulling, as if invisible fingertips had smoothed the years away. The faint crease beside her mouth softened. The lines at the corners of her eyes faded.
    For one strange second, the face on the monitor was hers at fifteen.
    Young. Careless. Certain the world had not yet earned the right to hurt her.
    Naomi’s voice crackled in her ear. “Back up a little. You’re too close.”
    Mara barely heard Naomi’s instructions. She was too focused on watching the viewer count rise as the monitor showed a close-up of her face.
    Questions filled her mind.
    What filter is this?
    Did I just get younger?
    Something in the center of the camera lens shimmered.
    Mara thought it looked like breath on glass.
    OK, this is creepy.
    . . .
    After the live stream ended and everything shut down, she stood in her bathroom with the shower running hot behind her. Steam coated the mirror. Her reflection looked softer there, almost dreamlike.
    And still younger-looking.
    A bead of water slipped down the glass, leaving a clear path through the fog.
    For a moment, Mara had the unpleasant feeling that something on the other side had wiped the spot clean so it could see her better.
    Her grandmother’s voice returned from somewhere deep in childhood.
    Don’t stare into the mirror too long.
    Mara had been seven when she first heard the warning. Her grandmother kept a faded cloth over the hallway mirror. She claimed it kept off dust, although she never covered anything else.
    Once, during a thunderstorm, Mara thought her grandmother was distracted and had lifted the cloth.
    Her grandmother saw her and yelled, “Mara, get away from there.” Then, in a quiet, almost fearful tone, she said, “Mirrors are mouths that are pressed flat against the backside of the mirror.”
    Mara had laughed, but dropped the cloth back into place.
    Her grandmother continued to talk in a hushed voice. “The glass keeps them shut. You stare long enough, you warm the surface. Then something evil underneath starts staring back.” Then she turned back to the window and resumed watching the lightning streaking across the dark clouds outside.
    At breakfast the next morning, Naomi pushed a paper cup of coffee toward her.
    “You saw what happened during the livestream yesterday?”
    Mara peeled back the lid. “You mean the comments?”
    “I mean your face.” Naomi’s voice grew more excited. “It changed... you looked ten years younger.”
    Mara looked at her. “That’s not possible.”
    “I know. But it did.”
    “Why are you saying it like we should put it on a T-shirt?”
    “Because people noticed. They’re talking about it.”
    Mara took a drink. The coffee was already cold.
    Naomi smiled carefully. “Whatever it was, we can use it.”
    “Use what?”
    “The moment. The mystery. People want to see it again.”
    That afternoon, Mara received a message from a follower.
    Loved the stream, but after it was over I began to feel weak and exhausted. Probably nothing.
    Then another message.
    Are you doing something to us? Using some kind of subliminal messaging? I got some kind of strange feeling after watching.
    She read both twice and deleted neither.
    At eight that night, she went live again.
    This time she leaned closer on purpose.
    The viewer count surged, and the number of online comments increased.
    People wrote that they felt seen. One said she could not look away. Another asked why the wall behind Mara appeared to be breathing.
    Mara kept her eyes on the lens.
    The pulling sensation returned.
    Just as before, her skin tightened. Warmth spread across her face. She watched years loosen from her reflection.
    Then she heard it.
    A soft exhale.
    It did not come from Naomi or from the air vent.
    It came from the camera.
    Mara sat back and muted the microphone so only Naomi could hear her.
    “What was that?” she whispered.
    Naomi answered through the earpiece. “What was what?”
    Mara turned the mic back on and ended the stream early.
    . . .
    By morning, clips of the livestream had spread everywhere. So had complaints.
    Headaches. Fatigue. Trembling hands. People sleeping thirteen hours and waking as if sleep had made them older instead of younger.
    One young girl posted a photograph of her hand.
    The skin across her knuckles looked thin and creased. It looked more like an old woman’s hand.
    Naomi stared at the picture and said, “We should do some tests.”
    They recorded Mara instead of doing a live broadcast.
    Nothing happened.
    Her face remained unchanged. The room felt ordinary. The camera looked dead.
    Naomi folded her arms.
    “So it only happens when we live stream.”
    Mara looked toward the lens.
    “It seems like it only works when people are watching in real time.”
    Naomi nodded slowly. “Maybe.”
    Mara heard her grandmother again.
    If you stare long enough, something underneath starts staring back.
    “No. It’s more than that. You need watchers,” Mara said, “watching me watch them.”
    Mara looked at the black circle in the center of the camera.
    “My grandmother used to say mirrors weren’t really about reflections. They were about looking. You stare into a mirror long enough, and eventually something notices you staring.”
    Naomi frowned. “This camera isn’t a mirror.”
    “Maybe it is.” Mara pointed toward the monitor. Her own face looked back at her from the screen. “I look into the lens. They look at me through their screens. I see myself while they’re watching. Maybe the glass doesn’t matter. Maybe it never did.”
    Naomi glanced toward the camera.
    “Maybe it’s the looking,” Mara said. “Maybe a mirror was just the first way we learned to do it.”
    . . .
    The next stream drew more viewers than all the others combined.
    Mara tried something different. When she leaned close, she told everyone to look away from the screen for thirty seconds.
    The chat filled with laughing faces.
    No.
    You first.
    Can’t stop now.
    Then an urgent private message appeared from one of the moderators.
    A man named Len wanted to talk.
    Mara waited until the next morning, then finally called him.
    His voice sounded young and frightened.
    “I am a graduate student, and I study folklore,” he said. “Mostly tales and stories that involve mirrors. I’m calling because I watched your stream.”
    “So what are you trying to tell me?”
    Len continued. “In several folkloric tales, mirrors are treated like boundaries. Not symbols. Boundaries. Some of them talk about the belief that reflections take something from you every time you look.”
    “Take what?”
    “Time. Life. Soul. Whatever word people had for the part that keeps the body itself.”
    Mara looked toward the bathroom doorway.
    Len said, “Your grandmother ever tell you mirrors were mouths?”
    Mara’s hand tightened, and she almost dropped the phone.
    “How did you know that?”
    “I didn’t till just now.”
    For several seconds, neither spoke.
    Then Len said, “There are versions where the glass is described as skin stretched over a deep well. Things underneath have no faces, so they borrow ours.”
    “Glass mirrors are simply the oldest way people could look at themselves clearly and feel something looking back. A camera lens is glass too,” Len said. “So is a screen. But I don’t think the glass is what matters. You’ve built the same thing, only bigger. You look into the lens, thousands of people look back through their screens, and somewhere in the middle all that attention meets.”
    Mara stared at the camera on her desk.
    “So the livestream is a mirror?”
    “No,” Len said quietly. “It’s thousands of mirrors joined together.”
    Mara remembered the old cloth over her grandmother’s mirror.
    Len drew a slow breath. “I watched you last night. I took a picture of my hands before and after.”
    Mara closed her eyes.
    “My hands aged,” he said. “Not much. But enough you could actually see the difference.”
    . . .
    That evening Mara told Naomi she was finished.
    Naomi did not argue at first and sent out an email announcement to everyone on their contact list.
    Soon her phone and her mailbox lit up with replies of disbelief.
    Sponsors. Subscribers. Followers.
    “Maybe we can stop for just a week,” Naomi said. “And then come back with something safer.”
    “What do you mean by safer?”
    “I mean controlled.”
    “Someone said her mother wouldn’t wake up. How do we ”control“ that?”
    Finally Naomi said, “You’re right, we will stop with the live streams.”
    They posted prerecorded videos instead.
    Viewers immediately began to complain. Views from subscribers dropped to almost nothing.
    The comments were blunt.
    This isn’t live.
    Nothing happens anymore.
    Bring back the close-up.
    Within a day, people had begun streaming themselves staring into mirrors. A new challenge appeared. Keep your eyes on your reflection for ten minutes. Then twenty.
    Mara watched one video and saw the black behind the glass begin to ripple.
    She shut her laptop.
    At home that night, she covered every mirror she could find.
    All except the narrow one in the hallway leading to the kitchen.
    She had forgotten it was there.
    The kettle clicked on in the kitchen. Mara walked past the mirror and caught sight of herself.
    Young.
    Too young.
    The face in the glass seemed almost luminous.
    She stopped.
    “No,” she whispered.
    Her reflection smiled.
    Mara had not.
    The glass of the mirror gave beneath the fingertips of the reflection.
    The glass did not shatter or crack. It yielded... Like skin.
    Mara stepped backward, but the hallway seemed to stretch behind her. The mirror darkened from its center until the reflection stood inside a depth that should not have existed.
    Something moved there.
    A shape gathered itself behind Mara’s face and wore it.
    The surface of the mirror bulged outward and a hand pressed through.
    Its fingers had no nails, no joints, no color. The hand looked unfinished.
    Mara tried to scream.
    The hand touched Mara’s cheek.
    The contact was neither cold nor warm.
    It simply took.
    Her knees weakened.
    Her pulse slowed.
    Heat drained from her bones. Strength left her muscles. Years gathered inside her all at once, heavy and intimate. Her skin loosened. Her vision dimmed.
    Across from her, the thing straightened.
    It wore Mara perfectly now.
    Not as she was.
    As she had always wanted to be.
    Smooth skin. Bright eyes. Full lips. No grief. No fatigue. No trace of time.
    The perfect self.
    It smiled from the other side.
    Mara raised one shaking hand.
    The reflection raised nothing.
    From the kitchen, the kettle began to scream.
    The sound seemed very far away.

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