Working the midnight shift can really fuck you up. You stop eating right, stop shitting right, stop spending time with friends and family. You stop spending time with anyone. You go to sleep when it’s light out and wake up when it’s dark. You start to lose yourself from society—even worse, you start to lose yourself. No one knew this better than Martin Moore. That’s why when funny things started happening, he chalked it up to his mind playing tricks on him.

            Marty spent his 35 years being thankful for what he was given. Whether it was jobs or women, he was satisfied with what he had. At least he had a job and a woman, he rationalized—while many men had only one, the other, or neither.

            Marty met his wife in high school, the same high school that was now a five-minute drive from their home. Two years after asking Laura Trundell to the homecoming dance in the tenth grade, he asked for her hand in marriage and they never looked back. Kids were never part of the equation—though they tried, Marty was sterile. Laura wanted children more than anything, and not being able to provide them for her made Marty feel less of a man. They weighed outside options, but they were too religious to follow through. Still, they made it work: they loved each other and they were always honest and loyal to one another—which is more romantic than most can claim, they believed.

            Marty was not a man of opportunity. Better, more demanding jobs had been offered to him, only to be turned down by his weak work ethic. He didn’t strive to be the best he could be; he strove to be average—the less expected of him the better—and he was fine with that. The most excited he got was watching the Buffalo Bills blow another Sunday afternoon while guzzling a case of Genesee on the couch by himself. He didn’t mind watching them lose week after week, year after year, because he knew having a horrible team was better than having no team. He was a simple man.

            Marty worked at a smoke shop and gas station on the Tuscarora Indian Reservation, roughly two miles from his and Laura’s home in the township of Wheatfield, NY. Wheatfield was just as bland as it sounds; it didn’t have much more to offer than the name implies—other than an elementary school, a middle school, and the Moore’s alma mater across the road from where he worked, on the other side of Route 31.

            His job was easy, just the way he liked it: stock cigarettes, sell cigarettes, and disregard IDs—in that order. So when he was offered a 25¢ raise to take the midnight shift, he said no before he even heard what the job entailed, before he ran it by Laura the next morning over eggs and bacon, before she wacked him with a greasy spatula and said, “What in the world is wrong with you, Martin? You take that job like yesterday!”

            So he did. He listened to his old country music and read the newspaper and ate whatever he wanted from the shop at cost. There was only one catch: he had to make rounds on the other buildings owned by Smokin Joe, his boss, a few times a night as a security measure. For this he used a golf cart, and it was only a hassle in the pouring rain and thunder, which only happens in the height of the hot, humid summers of Western New York.

            It was one of these balmy mornings it began. The clock finally made its way around to 9 a.m. and Ruthann burst through the door, bringing the heat in with her, relieving Marty from his post.

            “Lordy, Lordy!” she erupted, “Is it ever a mess out there today? Woo, my!”

            “Bad, huh?” Marty didn’t care what she had to say. He wasn’t much of a talker, though he always made small talk with Ruthann to avoid awkwardness, and, more so, because she was Smokin Joe’s sister-in-law.

            “Ya would’n believe it, Marty! Ya juss would’n! Rain’s a’fallin like the sky itself! Like the good Lord’s takin a rinse! I saw two cars off the road, Marty—two! And you know I only live ’bout a fi’teen minute walk ’round the way!”

            “Ya don’t say?” Marty punched out. “Wasn’t bad when I was makin my rounds, ’cept for the heat. The weatherman has been callin for this though.”

            “But not this bad! You be careful out there now, Marty, ya hear! I got the feelin that this only beginnin!”

            As Marty approached the door, he assured her, “I will, Ruthann, don’chu go worryin ’bout me now. And don’chu go workin too hard today.”

            “Heh-heh, you got it, Marty! See ya now!”

            He stepped from the cool air inside into a torrential downpour outside and realized Ruthann wasn’t kidding. The temperature must have climbed 10°F since his last round, accompanied by a pounding rain. The wind blew water every which way as he jogged blindly to his pick-up truck. He hopped in his rusted, reliable ’93 Chevy 1500 and started the engine.

            Not a quarter mile down Route 31 he saw one of the cars Ruthann mentioned in a ditch on the side of the road. Marty had good morals and a good truck. He stopped to help.

            “Rough mornin, huh?” Marty said as he hooked his chains to the back of a Ford Corsica. The rain let up slightly.

            “Certainly is, I’m already late for class,” the kid replied. “Thanks an awful lot for helpin, sir. A cop stopped about 20 minutes ago and said he’d send someone, and here I’ve sat, no one in sight. They don’t give a shit—to serve and protect, my ass!”

            “We’ll getcha outta here in no time.” Marty hooked the chains to the front of his truck and got in.

            The kid stood to the side as Marty pulled his car out of the ditch. Marty saw the kid’s reflection in the back-glass of the car, as well as his own. He saw his reflection vanish for a moment, then reappear next to the kid. His reflection reached down, grabbed one of the chains, and started strangling the kid with it. As his reflection choked the kid it held him against the trunk, and Marty watched in disbelief as the kid’s eyes bulged out of his head, his legs flailing in fear. The entire engagement was dead silent. At last, the kid stopped struggling. Marty’s reflection dropped him to the ground.

            A knock on his window. “Sir, I don’t mean to be a pain, but are you gonna pull me out or not?” It was the kid Marty just watched his reflection strangle.

            “Uhh, yeah. Yes.” Marty revved the engine, got the car back on the road, and unhooked the chains.

            “Thank you so much, sir. Here, take this,” the kid held out $10.

            “Don’t worry about it.” Marty couldn’t even look at him.

            “Sir, I insi-”

            Before the kid finished his sentence, Marty was pulling away.

            He cruised home at 25 mph, thinking about what he had just seen. The morning cleared of all precipitation, the sky paled light blue. It wasn’t hard to convince himself he saw nothing, that he imagined the whole thing. The midnight shift was starting to get to him was all.

            Breathing a sigh of relief, he looked in the rear view mirror, and winked at himself.

            His skin slithered.

            Martin Moore was not the type to wink at anyone, especially himself. He was exhausted; he had to sleep this one off.

*                      *                      *

            The next night Marty was awoken around 8 p.m. by the aroma of freshly cooked eggs and bacon, and hot coffee.

            “Whad’a lady, whad’a lady!” Marty almost sang as he entered the kitchen.

            “I can’t have ya goin off to work without a hot breakfast now, no matter if it’s nighttime or not!” Laura cooed back.

            “And I can’t go off to work without yer love, Laur, no matter what time it is!” He kissed her on the back of the neck and watched her cheeks puff out in a grin, then poured himself a cup of coffee in the mug she had laid out for him.

            “Well, you’ll have a lot of that! I just hope it keeps ya alert,” she said. “The rain’s started again, and it’s hotter than you wanna believe!”

            She kept him company while he ate, and they made love afterward. Marty thought he saw something strange in the reflection of the TV screen during the act, but ejaculation quickly ejected that thought from his mind. He held her for a while, as he always did after sex, because he knew she liked it, and knowing she liked it made him like it too. This was the time they had together; they continued a healthy marriage by using it well.

*                      *                      *

            By 9:45 p.m. it was time for a shave and a shower. He was rinsing the shaving cream off his face when his reflection smiled at him.

            Marty wasn’t smiling.

            The peculiar events from that morning crashed back on his mind as he watched his reflection take the razor blade and remove its eyebrows with two swift swipes. Reaching up quickly, he felt his eyebrows were still there. A moment of calm came and passed, unsettling him deep down in his gut.

            Tension rose.

            Silence.

            Marty’s reflection went berserk. It shaved into its face, deep and hard, peeling the skin back like a potato, revealing blood and muscle. It cut its lips off and flung them at the mirror, where they would have passed as spattered bugs on a windshield—if they were insect green instead of insidious red. His reflection winked, fell face first into the sink—if it could still be called a face—and remained motionless.

            Marty backed into the tub slowly, running his fingers over his face in horror, and started the shower. There was nothing else to do, except be sure he was losing his mind.

*                      *                      *

            That night at work the rain continued, more ferocious than the night before. As the storm pounded outside, Marty pounded his head inside.

            What’s happenin to me? Why? How??

            He was a coherent man, always on the side of logic and reason, yet neither of these laws he lived by were anywhere to be found. Tell his wife? No way! See a doctor? Absolutely not! He had not seen the inside of a hospital in years, and he was not going to now. Especially not to meet with one of those psycho-sicko-head-shrinking-something-or-others who hid behind big words and diagnoses, attempting to define and understand things which cannot be defined or understood. Next thing you know you’re scheduling an appointment with the prick once a week and you’re taking medication that changes who you are, all while your episodes are still occurring. Well, not him. Not Marty. Nope.

            Time ticked slowly and rain blurred everything as Marty made his rounds, trying to rationalize what he’d been experiencing over the past 24 hours or so. He concluded that he had food poisoning.

            “Yeah, that’s it,” he told himself, “it’s just food poisonin! It’s that takeout from two nights ago playin tricks on me, causin me to hallucinate—yup!”

            Even when Ruthann arrived, frenzied and panicked, he didn’t realize how wrong he was.

            “Marty—come quick!! A bus tipped over out front here!! A school bus!! Lord, oh, Lord! Why would’n they close the schools today?! There’s gotta be—”

            Ruthann’s voice trailed off as Marty lost himself in the reflection off the glass door behind her. He couldn’t see her face, but he saw her arms fluttering, and his reflection maliciously approaching.

            It was serene.

            Silent.

            His reflection grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back, then began to beat her face like a baboon. Blood was flying in the air with every brutal bash, like some sort of bizarre brouhaha, when his reflection took her ear in its teeth and bit it off, spit it in her face, and did the same to the other. It was pulling her head back so far now he saw her face in the reflection, full of blood and already swelling, screaming for someone—anyone—to save her. Silent screams for someone who wasn’t there.

            Drawing a large switchblade, his reflection jammed it through the bottom of her chin so it stuck out of her mouth. Marty’s intestines twisted as his reflection looked him dead in his eyes, giving him a sharp, sinister smile, and shoved her through the glass door.

            “Marty—they’re trapped!! They need yer help!!”

            There was no time to ponder this violent vision as he ran outside. The heat engulfed his skin and the rain swallowed him whole, thunder roaring, quick flashes of lightning lighting the otherwise pitch black and bruised purple sky.

            The bus had tipped over on its right side in a ditch, making the usual exit useless. Kids swarmed the emergency escape in the rear by the time Marty trudged through the flooded ditch and yelled, “Get back!” He covered his fist with the sleeve of his rain jacket, smashed the glass, and pulled the lever, opening the door.

            Marty helped kids climb out while Ruthann stood by asking them if they were okay. Once the last little girl hopped out, Marty hopped in to evacuate the rest of the passengers. Picking up a small boy who was knocked unconscious, that big glass windshield caught his eye—and what was inside it.

            Marty’s reflection slammed the kid down on its knee—hard—breaking his back. It found another kid and lifted her up by her throat, churning it, snapping her neck. Making it to the front of the bus, his reflection spotted the driver hanging from where he sat by a seatbelt, which it undid, allowing him to drop to the ground in what should have been a loud thud, but was silent instead. He saw his reflection stomping the driver’s head in when he ripped himself away from the grisly depiction and retreated from the bus as fast as he could.

            Dashing to his truck, he didn’t even hear Ruthann’s, “What the hell’er ya doin, Marty??” as he sped into the storm.

*                      *                      *

            Laura was sipping tea and doing a crossword puzzle when Marty roared in the driveway and burst through the door. For such a calm and collected man, he was disturbingly disheveled. Laura had never seen her husband so distraught.

            “Honey, what on God’s green earth is wrong?!”

            All she got was, “Talk about it later!” as Marty ran into the bathroom and slammed the door, locking it behind him. Little did he know later would never come.

*                      *                      *

            The soap and shampoo of Marty’s shower were replaced with tears and terror as he contemplated his next move. His entire life was based on rationality and now that was gone—out the window and on the loose. He didn’t know what to do; his mind reeled. He couldn’t even think; he was a broken man.

            Stepping out of the shower, his heart plummeted when a finger started writing a message in the steamy mirror from the other side.

            Sluggish.

            Silent.

            “No!!” he shouted, “Not again!! Stop it!!” He squeezed his eyes shut for an indistinguishable amount of time, his head in his hands. When he looked up, the mirror read:

DO YOU WANT IT TO END?

            Laura was banging on the door and jostling the handle madly, begging Marty to open up. He paid her no mind. Instead, underneath the question on the mirror, he wrote:

YES

            A small area of the mirror was slowly wiped clean and a hand appeared, with a single finger beckoning him toward it. Marty leaned forward and extended his arm, reaching for the hand. For a moment his fingertips passed through the surface of the mirror… then his palm… then his forearm.

            It was numb.

            Something tugged him, strong and fast, off his feet and through the air.

            Disorientation hit him heavy as he picked himself off the floor. Looking around, he was in his bathroom, but something was terribly wrong. The toilet was on the right, the sink on the left; everything was opposite! The mirror read the question and answer backwards.

            Marty rubbed the rest of the steam off the mirror frantically. He watched his reflection open the bathroom door. Dread washed over him as Laura rushed in and embraced it. He stared on, shocked, as their mouths moved, but he heard nothing.

            Cinematic.

            Silence.

            The two beamed at one another as his reflection caressed her belly.

            What does that mean? he thought, she can’t be…

            Martin Moore’s body froze.

            He leapt out of his skin.

            His blood ran blue.

            He recalled the night before, when they were making love and he saw something strange in the reflection of the TV screen. It was his reflection. It had impregnated Laura.

            Marty screamed and pummeled the mirror, but it made not a sound. His reflection looked him dead in his eyes while it held his wife.

            It flashed that sharp, sinister smile, and winked.