Standing in front of the mirror that my Great Aunt Dahlia gave me, the candlelight sparkles in a dingy halo, swimming in the darkness, as I rub my fingertips together. #ScaryStories #horror #rt @gothamghostwriters 
I miss her—she was a beacon of light, that woman, in an otherwise gloomy existence, and I can’t let her go without a fight.
I whisper an incantation under my breath, my voice slowly growing louder, as bitter herbs burn in an iron bowl, an arrangement of flowers in purple, red, and yellow.
I have sought out the psychomanetum, and I am scrying into the void.
My skin is riddled with blemishes and splotches that have been weeping and healing over the past six months, a pattern emerging, as an image pushes to the surface.
I have abandoned my clothes, standing naked in the shimmering darkness, much as I have left all relationships behind me now, no way to be manipulated and compromised, my heart already a smoldering clutch of ash and sinew.
The more I repeat the phrases—the words I have paid good money for—the more the room darkens and reverberates, the light flickering into a greasy, jaundiced film.
In a circle around me on the floor are three carefully crafted rings—the first in salts both pink and white; the second in tiny piles of hair from my shaved head and body; the third in various bodily fluids that are still leaking from my flesh.
My own reflection is dull, and shaky, but it strives to solidify, as much as it is eager to shift and transform.
When the words change from scripture to song, the shadows behind me dance, a dark rush of flickering flames running across a distant horizon, the room filled with smoke, and oily residue.
Hands on my shoulders, lips at my ear, there is a choir in my head, filled with angels shrieking—and in the mirror, a familiar form stands still.
I close my eyes, so tired now, so close to it all, and the rippling just under my skin causes flashes of heat to run across my trembling flesh.
When the smell of rotting meat drifts to me, I gag, opening my eyes, my mouth stretched wide, as long, bony fingers shove beyond my teeth, a blanketing of scales erupting across my back.
I cannot see, the burning flesh and rancid soot filling the air with a dark snow that makes it hard to breathe.
I raise my hands to warn my reflection, a sudden wave of fear riding over me, but the pale outline in the mirror only smiles as it dissipates, my body engulfed by the raging fire.
When the surface of the gifted mirror ripples, I step on through.
@threadreaderapp unroll
