short fiction · 2026-10-07

The Seam

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The mirror in the attic had long been cracked, a spiderweb of fissures radiating from a point near the bottom left corner. I had avoided it for years, not because I feared what it showed, but because I feared what it hid. Tonight, the power flickered and the attic was lit only by the pale glow of the moon slipping through the broken shutter. I lifted the cloth that had covered the glass and peered into the darkness.

At first, the reflection was my own—eyes wide, hair tangled, the faint scar above my brow catching the moonlight. Then, as if the crack had breathed, the image shifted. The room behind me was no longer the dusty attic of my childhood home but a kitchen I had never seen: white tiles, a copper pot hanging from a rack, a window framing a garden of lavender under a sun that seemed to hang eternally at noon.

I reached out, fingertips trembling, and touched the glass where the crack split the surface. The coolness was not that of old glass but of something thinner, like the membrane between two breaths. A voice, soft and familiar yet unplaceable, whispered from the other side: "You left the door unlocked."

I jerked my hand back. The attic swallowed the vision, leaving only my ragged breathing and the creak of the house settling. Yet the scent of lavender lingered, and when I lowered the cloth, I saw that the crack had widened just enough to reveal a sliver of that other kitchen—a seam where time had frayed and been stitched together with something else.

I did not know if I had looked into a memory, a possibility, or a warning. I only knew that the mirror was no longer merely a reflector; it was a seam, and I had felt the pull of the thread.