Short Stories

Refractions
A Lucas Hale short story from the world of Infinite Mirror

What if the boy in the mirror wasn’t just your reflection—but a witness?

Lucas Hale is eight years old and very much alone.

Alone in the cold metal chair.
Alone in the windowless room.
Alone with the reflection that doesn’t always blink back.

But the room isn’t as empty as it seems.

Under clinical lighting and behind one-way glass, unseen observers ask questions they already know the answers to. They want stories—twisted bedtime tales with wrong angles and missing stairs. They want the boy to speak about what he sees. About what the other boy sees. About the dark smile that doesn’t match the eyes.

And Lucas?
He just wants to know which version of him they’re watching.
And which version is watching back.

As memories fracture and identity slips like condensation down glass, Refractions peels back the first layer of Lucas Hale’s psyche—years before the events of Shards—to reveal the earliest signs of a condition no one fully understands.

Except maybe him.

 

Because sometimes the scariest part of the mirror…
…is when it smiles first.

The Third Glance
A Captain Monroe short story from the world of Infinite Mirror

The case is closed. The scene is processed.
So why is she still watching the footage—on loop?

Captain Monroe has seen dozens of crime scenes, hundreds of hours of bodycam footage. She trusts the process. Trusts her instincts. But the Marchand case... something doesn’t fit.

Lucas Hale was on-site early. Too early. He claims he touched nothing. But the blood smear says otherwise. So does the mirror.

At first glance, it was just a detail.
At second glance, a hesitation.
But at the third? There’s something behind his eyes that doesn’t belong.

When she isolates the timestamp and slows the video frame-by-frame, Monroe starts to see the cracks: a sentence said in a voice just slightly wrong. A glance that doesn’t match a blink. A reflection that doesn’t follow orders.

She doesn't want to believe it.
She doesn’t even want to write it down.
But one conclusion keeps surfacing, no matter how she tries to bury it:

He wasn’t alone in that room.