65

I suffer from a very rare medical condition, only two people in the history of time have ever had it; me and my reflection. People used to think that I was very vain, because I was always looking in the mirror. What they didn't realise was every time I looked at myself in the mirror I traded places with my reflection. I’d become trapped inside the mirror whilst my reflection would become a real person. I used to swap as often as I could, because I didn't like the idea of one of us being trapped as a reflection for very long. It wasn't so bad being stuck in a cold and two dimensional world if you knew that you'd be let out in a few hours, but, like most things, that all changed because of a girl.

I met Rachel when I was seventeen. Her family had just moved over from Canada and she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. After meeting her I started looking at my reflection less and less. Why would I want to look at my ugly face when I could have been looking at her's?
After a couple of months we were dating and I was avoiding mirrors at all costs, because I wanted to spend all of my time with her. I knew pretty soon that I was in love with her, and I think that my reflection loved her too, because he seemed to be avoiding looking at me almost as much as I was avoiding looking at him. We couldn't help catching each other's eyes though, in the surface of a pond, the glass of a window. It was a constant struggle to avoid seeing my face, but it was nothing compared to the split second when I recognised myself in the window of a passing car, that fear, the uncertainty, when would I be with Rachel again? What if I never got out of the reflection? Doomed to spend eternity trapped behind a surface, forever looking out at him, with her. How long would it take for me to become my reflection if I spent every minute reflecting him?

As I got older I got better at avoiding my reflection, but I was becoming ashamed of myself. What had I done to the one person who had always stuck by me my whole life? On my 21st birthday I made a deal with my reflection, every year, on this day we would come to the fair and visit the House of Mirrors, whichever of us came out would have her for the next 365 days. It was the best birthday present either of us could wish for.

Tom, Wales.