My Reflection Was a Half-Second Behind

This lasted maybe ten seconds and I have thought about it every day since. I was brushing my teeth at about midnight, tired, not really looking at myself, when something snagged my attention in the mirror.

My reflection was late. Not wrong, not distorted, just delayed. I would move the brush and, a half-second afterward, the reflection would move the brush. I raised my left hand. A beat later, the reflection raised its hand. It was like a video call with bad lag, except it was a mirror, and mirrors do not lag.

I froze. The reflection froze too, but a half-second after I did, so for that half-second I was standing perfectly still while the version of me in the glass was still finishing my last motion. I have never felt anything like the cold that went through me then.

I want to be honest: I was exhausted, it was midnight, and the human brain does strange things when it is tired. I know all of that. I told myself all of that at the time, standing there with a mouthful of toothpaste, watching myself lag.

So I tested it. I nodded, fast, twice. The reflection nodded, twice, late. I lifted the brush to my mouth and held it there, and watched the reflection lift the brush to its mouth and hold it, catching up.

And then, at the end, in the last second before whatever it was ended, the reflection did the thing that made me sleep with the bathroom light on for a week. It caught up to me completely, matched me exactly, and then, before I did, it smiled. I was not smiling. A half-second later, so that we were finally in sync, I watched my own face in the glass smile back at me, and I have not looked in that mirror at midnight since.