in my bedroom 23 years ago.

I don't know how to tell this story

without asking you a question.

Have you ever heard of Mira?

The girl who lives in the mirror?

The first time I saw her I was 10.

My cousin was visiting.

Her name was Amanda.

She was two years older than me.

Amanda stayed over at my house

almost every other Saturday night.

And she was the daughter my mother always wanted.

A spoiled rotten beauty queen in the making.

And then one night, as we were getting ready for bed,

Amanda pranced around the bedroom before finally stopping

in front of the large mirror near the foot mf my bed

to apply a tube of red lipstick.

I asked her why she was putting on makeup just before bed.

She told me that in order for beauty sleep to work

you have to go to sleep pretty.

Then she said, you know, you could do with some makeup

to cover up that shit stain on your face.

She was talking about the birthmark I was born with.

I tried to hide my embarrassment,

but I couldn't

because,

well, it's permanent.

Amanda knew it was the reason I hated talking to people.

Their eyes always linger to my birthmark.

I can almost hear them thinking, uuhhh, that's unfortunate.

It has always made me feel like a circus freak.

It's okay, not everyone can be pretty, you know,

my cousin said under her breath.

And it hurt.

I watched in silence as Amanda moved

from perfecting her lips to brushing her hair,

only stopping in between to admire herself in the mirror.

But something about Amanda's reflection wasn't right.

(gasping) Amanda, I whispered.

She turned her head to look back at me and my heart stopped.

Her reflection didn't move with her.

The person in the mirror was not Amanda.

It wasn't her.

It was a girl in a white dress with pale, dead eyes.

She looked like she'd gone to hell and never made it back.

She had a wide gash across her face

with flesh wound slits that started

at the corner of her mouth and ran

morbidly deep into her cheeks.

I stared in horror, unable to move.

Amanda was still looking back at me,

but her reflection, the deformed girl,

was blankly staring at her through the glass.

The reflected girl's eyes were pearl white

and lifelessly fixed on her position.

Amanda, what's wrong with your reflection?

I asked, choking on my words.

She was facing me, telling me to cut it out

while I watched the girl in the mirror

pull out a small box from behind her back

and remove a crisp razor blade.

She casually placed it in her mouth and began to chew,

still smiling blankly as if programmed to do so.

(liquid sloshing)

Then we both heard it.

- [Woman] Mira.

- [Narrator] It came from the mirror.

Amanda immediately spun around to find Mira in the mirror.

Suddenly Mira's facial flaps opened up

as skin flaps revealed a different kind of mouth.

Two vertical rows of long, sharp blood-stained teeth

surrounded by a gory mess of shredded meat

and wet red flesh.

Her two eyes remained in place and stared back at us

while her bruised body made creepy Barbie-like motions.

We were both in complete shock.

Then Mira reached through the mirror

and viciously pulled Amanda into her side of the reflection.

(screaming)

And I watched in horror as my cousin

was held down on the mirrored floor

by a gang of pale, white, eyeless human-shaped creatures

who rose up from the ground in the mirror world.

(screaming)

To my disbelief, Mira climbed out of the mirror

and crawled across my bedroom floor on all floors.

(screeching)

I backed into my bed but I couldn't get away from her.

In seconds she was face-to-face with me.

I couldn't move, I couldn't scream.

Mira caressed my face with her hand

and slowly etched my birthmark with her lifeless finger.

She was touching the ugliest part of me.

My insecurity.

The shit stain that everyone laughed at and teased me about.

I realized that was the first time anyone or anything

had ever touched my mark.

Amanda's muffled screams grew louder

as pale, faithless freaks

continued to hold her down. (screaming)

Mira quickly scattered off the bed,

crawled across the floor,

and returned to where she came from,

the mirror.

Mira crawled on top of my cousin,

sealed her cold blue lips on Amanda's,

and began to suck the insides out of her body.

The pale white beings held on as Amanda's blood,

organs, and life were completely drained from her.

Mira continued until Amanda was

nothing more than skin and bones.

The suction pressure caused Amanda's skin

to tightly seal over her bones

until it either crushed them

or pierced through. (screaming)

Mira paused and looked directly at me.

She smiled as she brought a finger up to her lips

and whispered, shhhhhhh,

before regurgitating Amanda's blood and organs

all over her side of the mirror.

(gurgling, screeching)

(screaming)

I finally screamed, startling my mother and father awake.

They rushed in as quick as they could,

but both Mira and Amanda were gone by then.

(siren whirring)

My father called the cops after I told him what happened.

I couldn't go near a mirror for a while after that.

(glass shattering) (crying)

I was psychoanalyzed and treated for PTSD

along with paranoid delusions.

My cousin Amanda was never found.

Her disappearance was thought to have been

some kind of abduction that

must have happened while I was sleeping.

It took months of counseling and multiple therapists

to convince me that what I saw was all in my head

and that Amanda had in fact been kidnapped

in the middle of the night.

I started to believe what everyone told me

instead of what actually happened.

But something changed on my 14th birthday.

I was given a new dressing table,

and that night I saw Mira again.

She had returned in the mirror.

She was holding my cousin's dried out,

shrunken, severed head.

There was a birthday candle in the center of Amanda's head

dripping hot wax down her forehead.

Mira blew it out and the room went dark.

(intense, scary music) - Mira.

(glass breaking)