Mirror Glitch: Reality's a Trip

The first sign that something was off was when my reflection winked. Not just a normal wink, but a slow, deliberate one, like it knew something I didn't. Which, considering it was my own reflection, was pretty freaking creepy.

I slammed my locker shut, the metal clang echoing through the empty high school hallway. "Okay, Maya," I muttered to myself, "you're sleep-deprived, stressed about finals, and probably hallucinating."

But as I hurried to class, the feeling that something was wrong persisted. The fluorescent lights flickered with an unnatural intensity, casting the familiar hallways in an unsettling green hue. The posters on the walls seemed to shift and distort, the smiling student faces morphing into grotesque caricatures.

Then it happened again. I caught my reflection in the trophy case – this time, it wasn't just winking. It was smiling a sly, knowing smile that sent shivers down my spine.

"This is insane," I whispered, my voice trembling. I pinched myself, hard. Nope, not dreaming.

Suddenly, a voice crackled through the school's PA system, distorted and warped, like a broken record. "Attention students... reality is experiencing... technical difficulties... please remain calm..."

Calm? Was this some kind of sick joke? The walls around me started to ripple like water, the floor beneath my feet felt unstable, and the air thrummed with an invisible energy.

Panic surged through me. I had to get out of there. I sprinted towards the exit, dodging flickering lights and melting lockers. The world around me was dissolving into a chaotic kaleidoscope of colors and shapes.

Bursting out of the school doors, I stumbled onto the front lawn, gasping for breath. But the outside world was just as distorted as the inside. The sky was a swirling vortex of purple and orange, the trees were bending at impossible angles, and cars were floating upside down.

People were screaming, running, their faces contorted in fear. Some were frozen in place, their bodies glitching like broken holograms.

Then I saw her. My reflection, stepping out of a shattered shop window. She was no longer a mirror image, but a solid being, with the same dark hair and brown eyes, but with an unsettlingly confident smirk.

"Welcome to the glitch, Maya," she said, her voice a chilling echo of my own. "Things are about to get interesting."

And with a snap of her fingers, the world around me shattered into a million pieces.

(To be continued...)