The Mirror
written by:
Badgoodegirl

In honor of my favorite holiday, Halloween, coming up, here's (one of) my favorite Halloween fantasies. It's based on an old superstition that if a young woman brushes her hair and eats an apple in front of a mirror in a dark room at midnight on Halloween (yes, that's a lot of steps, but it's a spell, people) she will see a vision of her future husband over her shoulder in the mirror. If she turns to look at him, the vision will disappear and she will never get to meet or marry the man she saw.

The Mirror

The candle, the hairbrush, and the knife are ready for me. I pull them gently out of the box where they've been tucked away. I place the apple, picked fresh from our tree earlier today, next to them on my dressing table. The light glints off the little dagger from the fair as I strike a match and apply it to my favorite candle. The scent of sultry summer fills the room with smoke. I've blocked the bottom and the top of the door with towels to keep any light out and any smoke in. My heavy drapes are pulled back and the moonlight flows through the open window to mingle with the unsteady yellow glow from the candle, creating an illusion of movement all around me. The chill October breeze feels like a caress through my thin nightgown, whose soft material flaps gently across the goose bumps on my skin.

I've been anticipating this for months, since Anne told me about it this summer. I'm trying to be as silent as possible. To wake my parents and lose this chance would be too tragic. The sounds of my own breath and of the night birds and insects outside strike my ears like tiny pinpricks, racing straight to the adrenal glands in my brain and my body. I can't remember the last time I felt so dazzlingly alive, desperately searching the night noises for the creaking floorboard or closing door that would mean my mother is approaching.

I know that this probably won't work. I stopped believing in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy long, long ago. Something about this idea, though, is too compelling. I can't not try it. I can't fight off the slight flicker of hope that boils up now that the time is near. It feels so good to hold onto this fantasy, so good that maybe it could even come true.

I glance at the clock, flickering in and out of view as the candlelight grazes its surface. I've got three minutes. I pick up the brush, a heavy antique that I inherited from my grandmother. Something about the intricate silver handle and shiny back seemed perfect for this ritual. Its weight in my hand seems to fit the weight that has settled in the pit of my stomach. What if this works?

The white bristles bend back as I run the brush through my thick hair. It's long, so my arm follows a graceful downward arc as I pull the brush through the strands. This always feels so good, but especially now, with the heavy aura of secrecy floating around me. The silent noise of the night makes every movement seem more profound.

Two minutes left. I continue to brush my hair, feeling it smooth as time ticks on. As the hour, that fabled midnight, approaches, I remind myself that I must be careful. If this does work, I cannot look over my shoulder, I cannot try to hang on to the vision that will appear.

The very thought of that vision makes my heart race. A real man might be best, but if they won't let me have that, at least I might see a Halloween apparition of the one who will be my lover. If this works, I can at the least see him, gaze on his face, so I will know him when he comes to me in the real world. No matter the temptation, no matter how I would wish I could keep him here, I must not, I must not look over my shoulder into his face. Anne's warning echoes in my head.

If I do, he will be lost forever.

He will never find me in the real world, I'll be doomed to live a life without love. Such a torturous tease, to be able to see and not touch, to be able to glimpse but not know. To have to wait even after I've seen his face, wait for him to find me in my life outside.

But it's worth it, just for that glimpse. I want to have an image to carry myself through the years. How much is reassurance worth? Definitely one night of restraint, one night of longing. That I'm sure I can handle, to help me face the empty nights ahead until I can escape and find him.

One minute until midnight, and it is time. I place the brush back on the table pick up the tiny dagger. I hold the apple in my left hand and slice downward through the center, cutting it neatly in half with a seedy star in the center. I pick up the brush once more and resume pulling it through my hair. I brush and brush and bring the apple slowly to my lips as I watch the second hand inch its way by hair's breadths towards the magic moment. Seconds to go, and without stopping my brushing hand, I look into the mirror and bite into the apple.

For a moment I cannot breathe. The curtains flutter behind me, the goose bumps freeze on my arms. The chunk of apple bursts in my mouth with sweet sour flavor and I cannot take the silence. The silence. Silence, silence, silence.

And yet...

Suddenly I feel a tingle, like the apple was laced with a soda's carbonation, like the flickering candle is really a fourth of July sparkler, like the brush in my hand is made not of silver but of some molten, electric material. I feel a wave of...something...go through my whole body. I am frozen in place, and yet it feels like the world has shifted around me.

And my gaze is frozen on the mirror, the gilt mirror that has stood on top of my dressing table since I was five. The mirror that I used to peer into when I played dress up at seven. The mirror that has always shown my small, lonely room in its steady face. The mirror that is now showing me the most beautiful man I've ever seen in my life.

My breath comes back in a rush, and it's harsh and harried. I gulp down the bite of apple, and my neck twitches, but at the last second I remember not to turn. It takes all my will to hold myself in the chair, to just sit and watch him standing next to my bed in the mirror's image.

He is taller than I am by several inches. He is fit but slim, with that classically breathtaking V-shaped torso, tapering down to his hips. Strong legs, and as my gaze travels back up his glass-reflected body, I notice that his fingers are long and look nimble, as though they've spent hours tracing a woman's body, learning the curves and hidden, quiet places. His mouth is still, betraying no amusement or pleasure; his soft lips simply rest on each other, as though waiting for something.

His eyes, though, his eyes are the most mesmerizing. The expression that is lacking in the rest of his face and body seems to charge out through those eyes. As soon as my stare meets his, I cannot look away from the unrelenting feeling pouring out of the green centers, the dark pupils, the steadily blinking lashes of those eyes.

I don't know how long I sat there, just looking into those hypnotic emerald orbs, but I jumped when he began to move toward me.

Anne hadn't told me about this, hadn't told me he'd be able to move.

"Your hair is lovely."

Or speak.

The softly murmured, almost whispered words wash over me, as he slowly crosses the few steps to stand behind me where I sit on my dressing table stool.

Or touch me.

He lifts my hair, smooth from the many strokes I'd delivered them with the brush that's still in my hand. He pulls the long strands over my shoulder so that they all hang down my back, leaving my shoulder bared except for the thick strap of my nightgown. The hair trailing over my skin is a caress, even though he does not touch me with his hands. My goose bumps are no longer from the breeze.

My breath fractures as he continues to stroke my hair, slowly winding his hands into its thickness until he is massaging my head. My eyes close; it feels so good, lulling me into a daze of acquiescent pleasure.

His hands slide down again through my hair and I hear his clothes rustle as he crouches down behind me. His lips are so close to my ear that I can feel his breath brush past the lobe and onto my throat when he breathes and as he whispers.

"Please. Unbutton your nightgown for me."

A shock goes through my system—much like the one I felt when he appeared—at his request. I've never done anything like this before. My hands tremble ever so slightly as I reach for the tiny white buttons of the gown. There are lots of them, trailing all the way down to my knees, and my fingers brush my skin as I undo them one by one. Even that touch, my own familiar fingers, spreads goose bumps across my flesh. I'm no longer cold. Burning waves of warmth come from my insides.

After I have all the buttons opened, I lay my hands on my thighs and look back up into the mirror. The flaps of the nightgown are hanging open over my small, soft breasts. The alternating shadow and light from the candle flicker across the tantalizing strip of skin that's just barely peeking from where I opened my clothes for him.

"So beautiful," his whisper again makes me shiver, "Open it for me. Take it off."

I reach with my hands and slide the straps down my shoulders and off my arms. The nightgown pools around the stool and I'm left sitting there naked, my wide eyes staring at my own flickering golden reflection in the mingled moon and candle light. His expression over my shoulder is dark with desire; his breath comes faster now into my ear and down the side of my neck, a hot wet reminder of his impossible physical presence.

His hands reach up and slide from the base of my hair, down my neck, over my bare shoulders and down to the tips of my fingers. It's a gentle caress, his touch so light that I almost wouldn't know it was there if I wasn't watching him in the mirror. His hands are warm and dry, slightly rough against my smooth skin.

He twines the tips of his fingers with mine and pulls my hands upward with his, trailing the tips of our fingers over my bare thighs, past the patch of hair that guards my most private place, over my sensitive stomach and up to my breasts.

My nipples are already tight from the cold and the excitement by the time our fingers brush them. His hands leave mine cupping the bottoms of both of my breasts as his fingers wander the curves, tracing their shape and learning the sensitive spots. His fingers circle around the areola, teasing, not yet touching the tip. My back arches, and my head drops back. I'm afraid to bend too far, lest I should catch a glimpse of him and this would all end. I hastily close my eyes.

And the sensations magnify, exploding into my head all the clearer now that I can't see what he will do next. I feel him finally stroke the tip of my nipple, rubbing it over and over again, then pulling on it lightly. I can't help but gasp. The feeling is too strong; it makes me want...something...too badly. I open my eyes again.

And look straight into his in the mirror, watching my face intently. I see that I am flushed, that there's a foreign look of abandon in my eyes and the set of my mouth. It is open, panting, my tongue feverishly licking my lips every few seconds.

A slight knowing smile flits across his perfect face, fighting through the harsh look of longing that I had opened my eyes to find there. He lowers his lips to my ear again.

"I want you to play with your nipple."

His right hand guides mine to my breast, placing my fingers on the sensitive tip. The sight of his big hands over mine, covering my breast with its small, pink nipple is almost too much to bear. I don't move right away.

"Stroke it," he encourages me, "Do what feels good."

I muster my courage and look his mirrored image squarely in the face as I begin to perform the familiar, secret movements I've made so many times in the dark of my midnight bedroom. I can feel my eyes glaze as all my attention is drawn into that sensitive areola; I rub three fingers over the tip and pluck lightly at it with my thumb and forefinger. His hand stays over mine, allowing movement but ensuring that it stays there, on my own breast, playing with myself.

His left hand begins to mimic the movements I am making on my other breast, and I am lost to the world. His right hand slides away from mine; I continue to stroke myself, no longer self conscious, wanting only some kind of relief and release from the aching that has built somewhere in the depths of my chest, in the pit of my womb.

His right hand slides down my stomach, flicking into my belly button, teasing the furrow of skin where my hip bone meets my torso. I arch my hips up to meet him, praying that he will reach just a little bit lower. I maintain my gaze on the mirror, still careful through all my wantonness to keep from looking at his actual body, watching us both only through the mirror.

He passes by the moist area at the juncture of my legs, barely grazing the light hair that grows there. I make a soft noise of protest, but he shushes me and strokes my thighs, fingers delivering slow caresses that circle ever closer to that damp center of my pleasure. It burns for him. I'm sure he can feel its heat, even though his hand is only on my thighs.

My moan of frustration is loud in the calm of the night, reminding me that I must remain quiet lest my parents overhear and come in to check on me. I stifle myself, but the urge to do or say or feel something is so strong that I feel like I might fracture into a million tiny pieces if it doesn't happen soon.

As though this were a sign he'd been waiting for, he finally moves his hand into that aching hollow between my legs. At the first brush of his fingertips, my hips arch and my muscles spasm. He pulls his fingers away; they glisten in the candlelight with moisture from below.

I whimper again, and his hand returns, parting my folds, opening me up. I can see myself as I never have before, spread eagled on this stool, my legs falling away in the face of his caresses, his strong arms holding me up, his hand caressing the center of my being. My entire body is flushed pink and my breasts—still fondled by his hand and mine—are heaving with the effort of my breathing, the effort to keep quiet and face forward and take all of this pleasure in stride. It's like nothing I've ever felt before; those lonely nights in my bed pale in comparison to this strange, breathtaking man's hands and breath on my body, his voice in my ear.

His middle finger finds that hooded ball of flesh and a moan slips out between my open lips. I bite my lower lip to hold the other sounds—grunts, gasps, shrieks—inside as his fingers circle and pet me at the epicenter of my body's little earthquakes. I can no longer hold still, and I throw my head back against his shoulder, squeezing shut my eyes.

My hips writhe and my hands clench on my breast and on the leg of the stool that I have somehow grabbed in the last minutes. His lips come down on mine in a final caress, his tongue driving into my mouth, drinking the cry I cannot suppress as my orgasm picks me up and sends me soaring, only to deposit me back down again with a delicious thud into the arms of this man, my fantasy lover.

I lean there for a long moment in his arms, still shaking with the after effects. His mouth has gentled on mine, drawing out the kiss so it's more like a soothing stroke of his lips over mine. His hand pets my thigh; he holds me up with the other on my stomach. I've lost all will or ability to move, as thought the weight of my limbs could keep me here forever.

Finally, he straightens his head, his mouth pulling away from the kiss. Without thinking, I let my eyelids flutter open to see what he is doing.

For a brief moment, I gaze at his face, finally drinking in his countenance, seeing his pores, the hairs of his eyebrows, the curve of his lips in the flesh, not in the cold reflection of a glass mirror. When I meet his eyes, though, I see only a deep look of regret and, perhaps, disappointment.

"No."

I realize what I've done and instantly look away, back at the mirror, but it is too late. As quickly as he appeared, my lover is gone, leaving me flushed, sated, and alone on the stool of my old childhood dressing table.

My candle has gone out, but the moonlight and the breeze still seep in through the open window. My small bed, my little stool, my gilded mirror, my ticking clock are all the same. The house creaks, the birds and insects hoot and chirp.

I sit there for an interminable minute, then finally stand, pull my nightgown back on, and climb into my bed to dream restless dreams alone for the rest of the night.