Chapter 13 Reflection
Kate's POV
Two days later
It was one of my favorite days—a Sunday evening. This is the day I get to do my laundry, put my room in order and have one of the most peaceful nights ever.
Today was one of the most peaceful evenings for me—no calls, no text messages from depressed patients, no visitors, and most of all, no therapy sessions that I usually hold at home for VIP patients. It was just me and my home.
It's just so funny how I've to deal with other people's problems when I'm actually faced with mine.
Sometimes, I kept wondering who was coming to help me fix mine.
I've been traumatized for years in an abusive relationship—the same relationship I advise my patients to stay away from, I couldn't believe I found myself in it.
Despite everything I went through at my boyfriend’s hands, I still couldn’t believe that I sometimes thought about him—wanting him, missing him, and maybe even wishing things had been a little easier between us.
He was such an abusive man with weird fantasies. He'd told me about all his fantasies and he said I was going to help him make them come true.
All this while, I didn't take his words seriously, not until he said he'd liked us to have sex on the balcony of a forty-seven story building.
I warned him against it. I told him this wasn't a good idea and if at all he wants us to have weird sex, then we could do it another way, rather than this. I tried to convince him not to do it, but he wouldn't listen.
And when the day finally came, he dragged me to the top of the building, forced me against the edge of the rooftop and began to bang me from behind. It hurts, but I couldn't ask him to stop.
While he was at it—lost in his reckless little game—he slipped, and before I could help him, he had already fallen off the rooftop, shirtless and his dick exposed, caught mid-action.
I screamed out loud, but it was already too late. He had fallen from the forty-seventh floor, his skull shattered across the quarter road below.
This particular scene traumatized me for years, hunting me every night until I decided to become my own therapist—to help myself come over it.
Witnessing someone die in such a horrible manner isn't something any man wants to experience in his life—not even once.
But what traumatized me the most was when I was arrested for his murder, only to be saved by the CCTV footage that captured everything that happened on the rooftop—from the moment he forcefully stripped me naked, until he fucked me till leg-shake.
After the incident, I quit my job as a therapist for about a year until I was able to put myself back together. I got back on track and I became the very best of myself.
And here I am now, sitting on the plush carpet in my living room, folding my clothes, sipping coffee and listening to slow music while the rain played drums on my roof.
I love how warm and serene the environment was.
I hummed along with the slow rhythm of the music playing in the background as I attended to the last piece of my laundry.
Once I was done, I stretched my arms up slowly and let out a loud exhale. I was glad to finally be done with my laundry. I gathered the folded clothes in my arms and headed to my bedroom to arrange them in the closet.
I walked into my bedroom and past the side mirror, but something suddenly seemed odd.
For a split second, I tried to point out what was wrong, but I couldn't get myself to think straight.
So I went ahead and placed the folded clothes gently in my closet.
I was heading out of my bedroom, when I noticed the same oddity that I observed when I walked in.
This time around, I saw it—I saw what was wrong.
It was my reflection on the mirror—my reflection was stagnant, it didn't move along with me. It didn't even match any of my actions—it just stood still like some watchful ghost.
I paused for a minute before I slowly turned around and stared back into the mirror, but then, it was all normal again—my own pale face blinked back at me.
I scoffed under my breath. “Fuck, Kate! What’s wrong with you? Pull yourself together,” I murmured, giving my head a soft slap. Then I walked out of my bedroom, brushing off the mirror incident as nothing more than tiredness or stress.
“I need to sleep.” I exclaimed with a soft chuckle.
I stepped out and walked back to the living room, but upon reaching, I noticed the light was off.
“Fuck, not again!” I muttered, cursing at the old wires of the building.
My apartment is on the ninth floor, and the wiring on the ninth floor was poor, which causes all the lights on this very floor to flicker at night, especially when it rains.
I picked up my teacup from the rug and headed to the kitchen to get more coffee, but upon arriving at the kitchen, the light began to flicker too.
“That's unusual,” I muttered.
It's usually just the living room's light that flickers that way, every other room was just fine.The light continued to blink, not once, not twice, but repeatedly.
I stared at the ceiling, “Cheap bulbs,” I whispered.
I didn't hesitate before turning on my phone's touch so I could use it to locate the coffee pot while the light refused to stabilize.
I fetched just enough coffee that will take me the whole night so I don't have to return to this hell of a kitchen with flickering light. I have a phobia for darkness so I'll avoid my kitchen for a while until I get to fix the bulbs.
I went back to my room, and proceeded with studying my paperwork. After a while, I checked the time on my wristwatch, it was past midnight already.
“Time for bed,” I yawned, placing my teacup on the dresser.
I sluggishly went into the bathroom for a quick wash before I retired to bed.
I leaned on the bathroom sink, splashed warm water on my face, as I pressed the toothpaste out of its tube and into my brush.
I gave my teeth a quick scrub, and just as I bent over the sink to spit out the toothpaste foam, I noticed something strange again. What I saw was eerily similar to the incident that had happened in the bedroom.
I slowly lifted my head up as if I was scared of looking at myself in the mirror.
The moment I raised my head, I felt my heart rip out of my chest. The woman in the mirror was smiling coldly at me. It wasn't just a smile, it was a wild, unnatural smile that cut across the normal wideness of a smile. The smile practically spread her lips to the back end of her ears.
Now, here comes the craziest thing—I wasn't smiling at the mirror, but my reflection was.
I turned around to see if someone was behind me, but nobody was there, it was just me.