百花圃 / English Language Centre Short Story Competition 2021

Senior 3 Second Prize: Desmond Chin Yao Nam (S3 Birmingham)


She Who Was In The Mirror

Nina was a cheerful girl when that thing happened. She wasn’t affected gravely when it just started but as it continues to prolong, she started to feel different.

One night, with nothing on her mind, she was just sitting on her chair staring blankly into her reflection in the mirror. At first, nothing peculiar happened and she was still complimenting herself for her good looks by looking at her reflection in the rectangular mirror. It did lighten up her mood by a bit. However, as time went by, she started seeing something unusual. She noticed that her pupils were dilating. Gradually, both of her pupils had become milky white. She was fascinated by this scene. As she continued watching on, her pupils were slowly eaten up by excruciating darkness, leaving herself with two black holes that stared back at herself. She jumped at the sight of this scene but that’s when a flicker of spark appeared. A small fire has started around her legs.

The fire was no ordinary fire, instead, it was blue in colour but fortunately, it seems that it couldn’t burn that well. She didn’t feel any pain when she was watching herself burning in the mirror. When the fire had spread to her ankles, a tear dropped into the fire. Almost instantly, the fire that was just at her ankles turned into a raging storm of fire. Her flowing tears helped the fire to spread uncontrollably across her entire body. In the mirror, she was crying and shaking, yelling for help but no voice was to come out from her throat. She raised her arm to the Nina that was outside, trying to grasp for help. Unfortunately, Nina couldn’t reach her burning arm. She could only see herself enveloped in the blazing storm, burning into ashes.