I’m the face that stares back when the screen goes to black

When your mum says ‘you look healthy’ but you know she means you got fat

School liberation.

This story is what happened to me starting a few years back. A little background information. I was 21 at the time and I my official documents say that I am mentally disabled although I don’t always act like I am and it can be hard to notice at times. I am extremely forgetful and need some extra help to understand things. Communicating also isn’t my strong suit even though I love to talk. I come from a very respected family in my area, not rich or anything a bit middle class, just because of charity work, always helping people and using our assets and sometimes influence to make the world a better place and everyone in the area knows about us and our influence. My family is really close. Every relative is welcome and it doesn’t matter how far removed, we would always help each other. It is a pretty big family.

Now into the story. In my first year of college my school got a new principle from out of town and with quite an attitude which made her enemies on day 1. She immediately wanted to raise the school’s income. She asked me and every other student to pay €15,- to pay for a locker, which I didn’t need because lived close by, and another €10,- to be able to use the school printers for an entire year. They tried to force me to pay, but because I didn’t sign up for a locker I got away with it. The printer money was optional and could be handy from time to time. So I did pay that. But they never added the money to my school account which resulted in me not being able to use the printers. Luckily for me I paid in cash so a week later I just told the principle that I came to know the €10,- was a fake by accident and because there was to be an inspection that day they gave me the money back, assuming I would still pay the real money. But the money was already real and I just got it back. After a week or so the principle asked me when I was going to pay, and I just said that I already paid but didn’t get what was promised and thus took my money back. In turn for me paying the money she first had to add it to my account and I told her that I would pay after the account balance was what it was supposed to be. She never did that and all the teachers were so glad that she was put in place by me that they would often print things for me, kinda like a reward.

The next year when I had to buy a new set of books for the year the form had the option to choose for a locker and the printer rights. But thinking she was smart with her PDF file she had already checked those options and made them unchangeable (which is illegal) I as a bit of a nerd found a way around that by photo shopping the checkmarks out of the little boxes and printed the form to be send as a letter to the school (either as a letter or by email, so I chose the first) after a few weeks was called into her office and I already knew what it was about, so before I entered her office I set my phone on record and entered the office. She demanded to know why the hell I didn’t pay the full price of my book list. I just asked what was wrong. So she explained that I paid for my books and tuition but not for the locker or print services. I simply stated that I didn’t need those and thus didn’t want them. “But you checked them on the form thus you have to pay” she smirked. I just calmly said that I didn’t check them and thus I was not required to pay. “Impossible I made sure it was checked and unchangeable” she hissed at me. “you know that is illegal, right?” I asked, she growled at me. “take a look at the form then” I continued with a sly smirk. Angrily she opened my files and found the form. And low and behold, the marks were empty. Again she told me that is was impossible that they were not checked because of her measures. I simply asked her if they were checked to which she replied “no” and again she told me that they should be checked and that she would just check them with her pen right now. “you do know that is also illegal, right?” I asked. “Yes I know, but it is your word against mine so no one would believe you” she laughed. I just shrugged and held up my phone “I don’t need people to listen to my words and this recording is instantly uploaded to my dropbox” her face went pale with mouth and eyes wide open. Defeated she send me back to class and once again the teachers rewarded this victory with printing things for me the entire year. But this is not where the story ends.

Then came my third and final year and the principle had hired a new teacher from out of town and freshly out of college who for some reason instantly hated my guts. Apparently she thought, or convinced herself, that I was an entitled brat who would fake a disability to get special attention. Because of some regulations around my disability I was entitled to a lot of extra help. But I don’t like to be confronted with my disabilities and only ask for a little patience and from time to time a repeat or other view of the explanation. Seems fair right? Throughout the entire year she would mock me for my disability. “oh you forgot the lesson already? Well then you shouldn’t have been born with your disability” or “Everyone else gets it, so why don’t you?” or “why can’t you just be normal like everyone else” she would say. And when I told her about my disability she would say “don’t lie to me, you just want to make my work harder or you’re just lazy.” I have been bullied my entire life so me defending myself when cornered like this was rare. I did report it to school and my parents, but nothing would be done. So at the end of the year just before the final exams we had to do a group project and she teamed me up with a slacker. (oh boy) we had rules at our school that in group projects students had to make a contract in which they take responsibility only for their part of the project and the teacher could grade you only for your part of it. This particular project was important because if I failed I could not do my exams and had to redo the entire year. Now my part of the project was not that bad, okay it was not perfect, but still. When the grades were in I got an F. I was shocked and devastated. I asked the teacher what I did wrong. So she took my project and except of a few minor faults on my work she mostly pointed at the slacker’s work. So I told her that THAT was not my work and that I should not be held accountable for someone else’s work. Especially after the contract was signed which we had done and added to the project as usual. “yeah I don’t care about that, better luck next year kid, and do remember what you did wrong” she grinned. This was really hurtful because she knew I struggled with my disability. “you can’t do this” is said. To which she replied “I can, and you are too stupid and poor to afford a lawyer to sue me, bye” I went to my mentor, but she could not help me, the principle refused to help me so I was pretty upset when I came home. I told my father what had happened and showed him the project. He is always very careful with these kind of things and wanted me to get her side of the story. So I mailed her with the question what my grade was again and why I got that grade, because I forgot. Within an hour I received her answer. “How come I am not surprised you have already forgotten your big failure, let me tell you again” and she told everything she said in class. So I showed my father and he was furious. We called the school and arranged a meeting with me, my dad and the teacher. The meeting went as you can expect. My father is a teacher himself at another school who was a teacher even before she was born. And he stated that it was illegal for her to degrade my grade because of someone else’s work. Again she stated that we were too stupid and poor to afford a lawyer to which she added “sue me if you can” After the meeting my father and I went to work and I already had a plan. Remember what I said about my family? Yeah turns out that my aunt from one side of the family is a known lawyer in the region. And 2 cousins once removed from the other side of the family were known lawyers in the entire country. And they all agreed that they would help us for free if it came to a lawsuit. So we arranged another meeting with the teacher, but since the talk would be about a possible lawsuit the principle was there too. She kept her distance because she already got a headache when she saw our determent expressions. She tried to convince the teacher to proceed carefully and it might be wise to just give in. the teacher was having none of it. And again she came with the too poor to afford a lawyer statement and that we couldn’t sue her. So we showed her the names of our 3 lawyers telling her that they as family were going to help her. She recognised the names but thought we were bluffing. So she called each one of them who were happy to respond that she was in the wrong and that they would support us id it came to a lawsuit. Her face went pale and she could not speak for a moment. The principle asked what had to be done in order to avoid the lawsuit. So we made them sign a contract. First, my grade should only be determined for my own work and by another teacher. Second, this incident was to be put on her personal record. Third, we demanded her to be fired, but only after the semester was done, so she still had time to find another job, we are not that hateful and I think it is pretty generous. And fourth, if things were to go south for her future she was not allowed to blame us in any way or she had to pay us (a ridiculous amount of money) for slander. The contract was signed. “You can’t do this” the teacher said after that as she tried to escape through the door. My father got in her way, and with his 6ft height he looked down on her (her being 5,5ft) saying “We can, and if you don’t like it you can try to sue us. And you will fail.” Defeated she sat down in tears as we left the office.

The news of this victory went pretty fast around the school and area. And my grade was raised from an F to a B+ since I was now graded for only my work.

Okay I did fail my finals and thus had only 1 chance left or else I had to redo the year anyway. The principle had enough of it and the risk of having me for another year was enough for her to quit her job, fearing that the next year there would be another problem with me involved. Her replacement was a pretty chill guy and he did fire the teacher three months after the meeting. The new teacher was also pretty chill and now people actually enjoy the school. My second chance at the exams was a success so I have my degree now. And I never heard of this teacher again. Or so I thought. I learned that her boyfriend dumped her after hearing what she did, or tried to do to an disabled kid, and kicked her out of his house and kept the dog because she would not be able to care for it anymore. Her friends stopped contact and her family disowned her. And because this incident was on her personal record no school wanted to hire her even though there is a high demand for teachers. Last summer (about a year and 2 months later) I saw her again. I had to keep myself from laughing from the angry, sad face she made when I ordered a big mac at McDonalds. And it was the best big mac of my life. The end

(source) story by (/u/Samsasamuel)

「 The Girl in the Mirror 」

pairing: none genre: a horror mock-up, ghost rating: PG-13 type: drabble word count: 3.1K

a/n: thank you very much to @hungline for beta reading this for me!

「 masterlist 」

Maybe I should’ve told this story before, but I was afraid that saying it would make people around me scared and I hate seeing those around me get scared for something that might or might not be real.

That’s not the only reason, though. I was also afraid that, if I said something, then they would see her too and they’d be cursed or something. Would you want your loved ones to be cursed by something that could be evil?

All of this started when I was a kid, I was somewhere around four or five years old and I’m not sure why, but before that I never stopped to really notice anything about this antique closet that has been in the family for several generations, the house we lived in back then was also old and belonged to the family for many generations, there were stories and mysticism about it and the woods behind it, some of them, the ones I heard the most were about my grandmother, a woman who – in a mostly catholic country – decided to practice a local form of voodoo.

I barely remember her, really, she died when I was a baby, but people tell me that we used to play tea parties and these kind of things with dolls very often, even though, I never liked dolls.

Well, about that closet… It has always been in the main bedroom upstairs where my parents used to sleep, ever since it was handmade for my grandma’s parents. I used to sleep there a lot too because I’ve always had trouble sleeping, truth be told I’ve always been a night owl and my parents had to have a hold on me.

That closet was made of wood and I remember how it has always been well-cared for because Mom likes this kind of furniture.

I’m not very good in describing anything, but the main point of what I’m telling you is not the closet itself but the mirror that stays between the pair of large doors, before the mirror there’s a vanity and below, five large drawers, there are also some compartments above it where Mom usually places comforters, pillows and things like that.

I was the kind of girl that was either too busy being my tomboy, little devil self or being a library rat. The only exception was when I was listening to music, therefore, most of my time – when I wasn’t at school – I stayed downstairs. I rarely went upstairs, the light there were always off, the windows, almost always closed, so I don’t know why I went upstairs that day.

The room was dark even though it was day because the window was closed and the curtains too, like it always was. I was never a kid to be afraid of the dark, so I ventured into the large dark room to do whatever I went there for, I was probably up to no good when I stepped on the bed and looked at my reflection in that mirror. Apparently there was nothing wrong with it, but there was definitely something different with others I’ve seen, so I walked closer to it. Of course, the me in the mirror did the same, but the me in the mirror smiled and stopped, so I stopped and frowned at it. Why was it smiling?

I wasn’t smiling.

That didn’t happen again for quite some time, but I was intrigued by that, so I started to go visit the mirror often and tried to “surprise it” and see if I had a different reaction from it, but it didn’t happen. Not in that way, at least.

As I looked in the mirror day after day I started to notice that things were missing from there that weren’t missing where I was, as if it didn’t had any reflection and that became a game where every day I’d try to see what went missing. With time, I found out the objects with no reflection were being kept somewhere else and if I went searching, I'd be sure to find the object the next time it went missing. This went on for so long that my parents thought I was purposefully hiding everything.

Because I was always being blamed for the missing objects, I stopped playing and ignored whatever I saw there, no matter how odd it was. I ignored it, that was until a certain night when everyone was asleep and I woke up in the middle of the night, hearing someone tapping on glass. I looked at the mirror and there I was, I mean, my reflection was there, sitting on the vanity instead of my parent’s bed where I was. My reflection smiled and gestured with her hand for me to come closer. I was wide awake now, so I went and we played together again.

The next day, my cousins came to play with me, but as I was playing downstairs with them I heard someone whispering. I didn’t understand what it was saying, so I looked for it. The whispers were coming from upstairs. I asked my cousins if they had heard it, but they didn’t. They accused me of trying to scare them, so I eventually left them alone and went upstairs.

I stood in front of the mirror and that’s the first time I saw her. She was muttering, but I could barely see her lips moving.

“--lonely… I am lonely, I am lonely…”, she kept saying over and over, very faintly.

She seemed familiar to me and she was wearing one my dresses, but she wasn’t my reflection. My reflection was there and she was there too and she looked like an old photograph with fading colors.

She was standing behind me in the mirror, so I looked behind me, but, of course, she wasn’t really there. When I looked back at the mirror she was on her hands and knees, face very close to the mirror, with white eyes and hair tossed everywhere; she touched the mirror and I reached to place my hand where her was when my cousins appeared in the room, running around and started to pull me away from the vanity and by the time I looked at the mirror again, she had disappeared.

That day my aunt showed us the family album and I saw her. The girl in the mirror was my grandmother. In the photo, she was wearing the same dress I saw her in the mirror and my mother told me that it was my grandmother’s before it was mine.

Turned out that I had to go on a surprise vacation trip with the family and I left her there.

The countryside was a nice place to live in, so after everyone left, my parents and I stayed there. Mom and Dad bought new furniture and the old ones stayed in the house.

“That’s where it belongs,” my mom told me when I asked about the closet.

As time passed by and I adapted myself to this new lifestyle I had, new friends and all, I forgot about the mirror and my grandmother. At first it seemed like a dream, then, I just completely forgot.

That is, until this year.

It happened sometime around “All Saints’ Day” or O Dia de Todos os Santos as we call it in Brazil, that’s the day my family usually gather to go to the cemetery where our ancestors are buried and pay our respects to them. My grandmother’s descendants do this every year and every year everyone reunites in the old house that has been empty since my family left, except for a caretaker who the family would hire to check up on the place from time to time, but, for some reason, they always quit after a little while without too much rambling and no clear explanation.

After the others went home, my parents, the two cousins I’m the closest with and I stayed the night since it was too late for my parents and I to go to the countryside in safety. For my cousins… Well, there was a pajama party in the large main bedroom my parents left for us to use for the night.

My cousins and I went to sleep late, I slept last because something kept bothering me. I felt like I was being watched and for some reason, my eyes always drifted towards the mirror between the the pair of large doors of that closet right before us.

I was a spot I couldn’t see the mirror clearly, just a small portion of it, but yet I felt something was off. The more I looked at it, from where I could see it, I couldn’t tell a single different thing that would make sense. Eventually, I judged this as something my head was making up and went to sleep.

It wasn’t much late after that when I woke up with a strange feeling. I didn’t know why I woke up, I just did and I saw my cousin had sat up on the bed and had a frightened look on her face. Her eyes flickered everywhere and she was panting. I pushed myself up a little and asked if something was wrong. She looked at me with dazed eyes, her eyes still looking everywhere and then she finally relaxed.

“It was… just a nightmare, I guess.”

Hesitantly, she laid down again and covered herself as much as she could, closed her eyes tightly only to open them again.

“I don’t think I can’t sleep again.”

“Ah, c’mon! You’re just scared from the nightmare, if you sleep the day will come faster and you won’t be afraid anymore.” She hesitated again and nodded a couple of times mumbling ‘you’re right, you’re right’ and turned away from me, but again, I kept looking at that mirror and then I saw it.

The room was pitch black, but there was a white light slipping through the mirror, like the mirror was glowing from the inside. I looked around the room, but really there wasn’t any light inside, there was no way the street light would come through the window either with the curtains so tightly shut.

The mirror couldn’t be just glowing by itself. I thought I was too sleepy and went to sleep again. More than once, before falling asleep, I glanced at that mirror though I never knew why.

Maybe an hour or so later, I woke up again. This time, my other cousin, sleeping on the floor was sitting up just like his sister had before, just the same way. I frowned, maybe I was dreaming?

I called him and asked if he had a nightmare. He gasped when he looked at the mirror that was right before him and turned his head at me very slowly, almost like a broken doll or something. Just like his sister, his eyes were dazed and he nodded almost robotically.

“Are you sure?”

He laid down, facing me and hid his face with blanket as much as he could in a way only I could see him. Then he muttered something to me very faintly, it was barely a whisper.

‘don’t go to sleep!’ – and then – ‘and don’t-- don’t look at the mirror’

Maybe he had a nightmare too. I thought to myself when he closed his eyes tightly.

I was tired from the trip that day, so my tiredness beat my curiosity and before I knew it, my heavy eyelids closed and I was sleeping again.

Tap... tap…

Tap tap… tap

Tap tap... tap

I was never annoyed by listening to the rain beat the window before, but, for some reason, this time, this was very much annoying. I turned around to go back to sleep, but the high pitched sound of nails scratching the glass made me jump on the bed and in less than a second I was facing the mirror.

A pair of bloodshot red eyes, wide open, were staring at me. I was partially terrified by the vision of the figure that seemed to be struggling to reach out to me through the mirror, reaching out towards my reflection that was nothing but a black shadow.

The mirror was glowing brightly in the room and I could see the reflection of everything else except for the dark shadow that was where I was. A chill ran down my spine and I tried gulping down, but I couldn’t move a single muscle. My eyes hurt because I couldn’t blink and despite being so tired my body was alert as I watched that pale thing, blurry on the pointed edges, stare at me deep in my eyes as it tried to reach out to my reflection, as if it could reach me. I tried to look behind me, I tried to move and see if it was above me… but I couldn’t move no matter how hard I tried.

I could feel something close to me, reaching for me, not in the mirror, but in the room. Something bad was about to happen and I knew it. Next thing I knew I was on the floor, next to my cousins and his sister who was sleeping next to me screamed. I don’t remember feeling any pain from falling, I was just so tired. My eyes closed and I passed out.

I don’t know what happened but I didn’t wake up in the master bedroom. I was sleeping on the couch in a sleeping bag in the living room. It felt as if I hadn’t slept at all and I couldn’t help but notice how everyone seemed to avoid me. A priest came in very early and did his work, I guess I can say that. I saw the nasty scratches on my cousin's side, hers matched mine and I heard her saying how badly it was burning, mine too. I heard her brother was fine, but none of them spoke to me, barely looked my way, really and, as a plus, I was forbidden to go anywhere near the master bedroom while I was in the house.

No need to say, we all left quickly after that.

There were attempts to sell that house, but, for some reason, people seemed to not like being there.