The Glimmer by Olivia Salter | Flash Fiction

  

The Glimmer

By Olivia Salter

Word Count: 958

It started at a barbecue. I was watching a man walk across the lawn, expecting him to stop at the fence, but he didn’t. He passed right through it, his form rippling as if distorted by heat waves. Our eyes met for a moment – his expression confused, almost pleading – before he disappeared, fading into the shadows. I glanced around, waiting for someone else to react, to gasp or laugh, but everyone was oblivious. Their voices, the smell of smoke from the grill – everything suddenly felt distant, like I was standing on the edge of two different worlds.

Later that night, I was reaching into the fridge when that same presence stirred again, a prickling along my skin. I closed the door slowly, and there he was, standing in the doorway, his gaze searching mine. He seemed more solid this time, his face lit by the faint kitchen glow, eyes dark and fixed on me. Heart pounding, I whispered, “Yes. I see you.”

There there was a shift in his face – a flicker of relief, maybe – and then he was gone, leaving a strange chill in the air. I stood there for a long moment, staring into the empty doorway, feeling as if I’d crossed an invisible line, as though I’d opened something I didn’t understand.

The visits began after that. They came in brief glimpses, flickering at the edges of my vision, slipping from shadow to shadow. At first, they were strangers, hazy shapes that seemed more like after-images than people. But soon, the faces grew familiar. One night, I saw Andrew – my childhood friend who had died in a car accident years ago.

Andrew appeared at the edge of my room, a half-formed figure cast in dim light. He looked just as he had that summer day, dirt smudged across his face from playing baseball. But his eyes… they weren’t the eyes I remembered. They were fixed on me, holding a sorrow that made my chest ache, as if he wanted to tell me something I couldn’t hear.

Seeing him, seeing all of them, left me feeling hollow, stretched thin, like each encounter was taking something from me. The exhaustion crept in, a deep weariness that sleep couldn’t touch. I’d stare at myself in the mirror, and my reflection looked back pale and drawn, with a strange glimmer in my eyes that I couldn’t explain – a light that seemed almost alive, flickering beneath the surface.

Friends started to notice. “You look haunted,” they’d joke, though their smiles always faltered, their gazes lingering on me too long. Sometimes they’d glance over their shoulders, staring at something just past me, as if they sensed what was hovering around the edges. And in the mirror, my reflection continued to shift, my eyes catching a gleam that felt foreign, unsettling.

One night, I woke to a heavy silence, the kind that fills a room like a storm about to break. The air was thick, unmoving, pressing in from all sides. I sensed them around me, shadows crowding the space, whispering fragments that brushed against my ears like cold breaths. I sat up, my skin prickling, and saw them, their shapes blurring in the darkness, their faces barely formed.

The room felt freezing, the air dense with an earthy, decaying scent, like damp soil. Shadows moved in the corners, brushing past my arms, my legs – invisible hands reaching out, tugging me toward them. My pulse hammered in my ears, and I managed to whisper, “Please… I don’t have anything left.”

For a moment, the whispers stopped. Silence settled, thick and uneasy, and I thought – maybe, just maybe – they would leave me alone. But then I caught a flicker of movement. My eyes drifted toward the window, and what I saw stopped my heart cold.

There, in the glass, was my reflection. But it wasn’t quite me.

The faint glow in my eyes had intensified, now pulsing with an unnatural, hungry light. My face looked hollow, skin stretched thin over bone, and my gaze… it was wrong, foreign, like something else was looking out from inside. My reflection didn’t blink or flinch, just stared back with that strange, fixed gleam, as if waiting. It was as though I was staring at a stranger – a stranger wearing my face.

A chill ran through me, a creeping understanding that settled like ice in my veins. Whatever they saw in me, whatever had first drawn them, had changed something deep inside. I wasn’t just seeing them; I was becoming their doorway – a conduit, a bridge they could cross whenever they wanted. I tried to look away, to tear my eyes from the reflection, but it held me, the glow growing brighter, flickering like a spark that was slowly catching fire.

I couldn’t tell where they ended and I began. Their whispers slithered into my thoughts, filling my mind with a language I couldn’t understand, yet somehow knew was a part of me now. Their faces – Andrew, the man from the lawn, all those half-seen strangers – hovered in the glass, crowding around my own. And in that moment, I understood: they weren’t just here to be seen. They were here to stay.

I reached up to touch my face, but my skin felt unfamiliar, cold, like I was wearing a mask that didn’t quite fit. The glow in my eyes pulsed again, and my reflection finally moved, its lips curling into a faint, unsettling smile – one I hadn’t chosen.

The whispers resumed, louder now, filling the air, filling me, until I could no longer tell my voice from theirs. My last thought, faint and fading, was that I’d been right all along: I’d opened a door that could never be closed. And now, I was on the other side.