The Reflection
Copyright© 2026 by FinchAgent
Chapter 1
The city was already alive with the cacophony of speeding cars and blaring sirens when Lily rolled out of bed, still feeling tired from the previous day. She shuffled to the bathroom and looked at her reflection in the mirror. It looked back at her, squinty-eyed, messy-haired, and ... naked? Strange, she hadn’t remembered sleeping naked. Lily’s hand dropped to her side, and she felt rough flannel. She glanced down at herself, confirming the presence of her flannel pajamas, top and bottom. She glanced back up at her reflection. Completely naked, from her pink nipples down to where the mirror met the sink just below her belly. Standing on tiptoes, she confirmed that she was naked below there too, naked and smooth from her depilation efforts the night before.
She blinked a few times, then ran the faucet and splashed some water on her face. Her reflection remained the same, albeit now with a slightly reddened, dripping face. She tugged at her pajama top, and her reflection mirrored the motion, grasping at empty air. It had also taken on a puzzled expression.
“Am I dreaming?” she asked herself. She closed her eyes, counted to ten, and reopened them. Her reflection remained bare as before.
Her eyes wandered to the mirror’s ornate gold frame, which had been defiled with odd symbols carved in at irregular intervals. Lily’s small studio apartment lacked many things—one of the most basic was a built-in bathroom mirror. She had thus counted herself quite lucky to have found, shortly after moving in, a mirror of the correct size and shape—and in pristine condition—abandoned on the sidewalk. It didn’t really match her decor, but she figured it would be temporary. However, over the past months, she had found many more urgent needs for her salary than a new bathroom mirror.
Was this some kind of trick? No one but her had been in her apartment for the last few days, so it didn’t seem likely. And how could such a thing be possible? Had someone replaced her mirror with a display rigged to show deepfakes? Why would anyone do that? Lily shuddered, glancing around the bathroom for hidden cameras. Her landlord was a bit of a creep, but this was ... something else.
Her heart raced in her chest. Her frightened expression in stared back at her. She grabbed a towel from the rail and hung it over the mirror, having no better immediate solution. Breathing a sigh of relief, she pulled off her flannels and hopped in the shower.
Sometime later, Lily emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, body and hair firmly wrapped in two towels. The warm water had calmed her nerves, but she had not yet been brave enough to remove the towel from the mirror. She pulled the day’s outfit from her dresser and laid it out on the bed, then quickly dressed. Feeling a little exposed, she pulled on a baggy black hoodie. From the bedside table, her phone buzzed.
Still wrapped up in the towel, Lily grabbed her phone, but froze before the blank display. The black screen showed a reflection of her face and chest—sans hoodie. Though she felt the fabric on her skin, saw it on her sleeve, the tops of her breasts stared back at her from the black screen.
Lily flung the phone on the bed, screen down. What the hell was going on? Her pulse raced and her hands felt clammy. Her hoodie came up to her neck—she could feel it there. Was she having a mental break?
If she was, there was no time to address it—any more dallying and she would risk being late for work, where she was still new on the job and at the bottom of the totem pole. But the reflection in her phone screen had confirmed that whatever was happening was not confined to her bathroom mirror. The city was all glass and steel, a place of infinite reflections. She would see her reflection everywhere. How could she go out like this? What if others could see it too? Her stomach twisted at the thought.
There was no way of knowing. Not until it was too late. Maybe it was all in her head. A stress reaction of some kind, brought on by too many late nights hunched in front of Photoshop. That had to be it. That was the only thing that made sense.
Lily tightened the hoodie at the neck, but it was a futile gesture. When she glanced at her phone, her reflection stared back naked as before. She stuffed it in the pocket of her hoodie, grabbed her bag from where she’d dumped it the night before, and walked straight out of the apartment and down the building’s creaking stairs, trying to not glance at any windows, forcing herself to ignore the flashes of skin in the corners of her vision, forcing herself not to think about the reflection of the hunched-over naked girl trudging down through the lobby.
On the street, Lily pulled her hood up over her head and stared at her shoes as she navigated the crowds. Her head was pounding. She needed a coffee. Maybe that would cure her psychosis. She grimaced at the brief sight of her bare skin in the glass entrance door, but pushed past it and took her place in line.
At the counter, a barista whose face was hardly visible between his curly beard and overgrown hair took her order and payment. As he was ringing her up, his eyes went wide, staring at something behind her. “Thank you for your ... uh, woah ... ma’am ... are you ... do you know that ... um, are you feeling a bit of a draft?”
The color drained from Lily’s face as she looked over her shoulder. Her bare ass was reflected in the polished glass of the coffee shop window. The image was indistinct and blurred at the edges, but clear enough to be unmistakable. A couple of people in the line behind her whispered to each other.
“Huh,” said the barista. “I thought you ... ugh, maybe I need to get my eyes checked. Sorry, ma’am, your coffee will be ready soon.”
“Th-thank you,” Lily said, battling to hide any reaction on her face.
That confirmed it—others could see it too. Lily hurriedly shuffled to the collection spot, placing a pillar between her and the shop window. She grabbed her plastic cup before the startled barista had even finished saying her name and hurried out back onto the street, taking burning gulps.
The horrible reality was starting to sink in—everyone else could see her naked reflection. All she could hope for was that, like the barista, most would probably think it a trick of the light, or a figment of their imagination. Lily had thought she was going crazy when she first saw herself in the mirror—others probably would too. In some ways, this was worse than going crazy.
Short glimpses of her reflection in shop windows indicated that coffee was not the cure to her condition. She pulled her hood further down her face, but it did nothing to stop the enthusiastic chorus of wolf whistles from the construction site two blocks from her office, though that was quite normal. What was less normal was how much attention the construction workers appeared to be paying to the glass window Lily was just about sprinting past.
By the time she finally reached the Sphinx offices, an airy open-plan on the 20th floor of another shiny glass tower, her nerves were shredded. She hurried to her desk, took one look at the computer monitor, and then hastily adjusted the blinds on the window behind it before sitting down.
Her colleague Maya arrived fifteen minutes later and plopped down on the seat beside her. “What’s gotten into you this morning, hiding in this dark corner?” she asked, pointing at the blinds.
“It’s for the glare,” Lily said quickly. “Can’t see a thing with the sun shining on my screen all the time.”
Maya raised an eyebrow. “It’s never bothered you before.”
Lily shrugged, continuing her deep etching.
“Seriously, it’s way too gloomy in here with the blinds drawn,” said Maya, striding purposefully to the window.
“Don’t!” Lily blurted out, her tone more shrill than intended.
But it was too late. The blinds shifted up, allowing the morning light to stream into the office. The glare was, indeed, particularly bad today, and Lily’s screen was at once awash with light, obscuring its contents and replacing them with her reflected face, shoulders, and chest.
“Whoa, what the hell?!” Maya hissed, leaning in to confirm what she thought she’d seen. “Lily, the office is no place to touch up your sexy selfies!”
Lily bit her lip, heat rising to her cheeks.
“Wait, what’s going on?” Maya asked, her eyes squinting behind the round lenses of her glasses. Her reflection appeared beside Lily’s, normally clad. “Is this, like, an AI thing? Are you streaming right now?! I don’t want to be in your camshow!”
Lily wanted to scream in frustration, but knew it would be better to remain calm and avoid drawing anyone else’s attention to her reflection. She felt hurt that Maya would start assuming all these wild things about her, but tried to put herself in Maya’s (reflected) shoes. She took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of her nose to calm herself down. “I can explain,” she said, taking Maya’s wrist. “Lady’s room. Now.”
Moments later, Maya and Lily were standing at the row of sinks in the office ladies’ room, in front of the large, clear mirror on the wall. Behind the sinks stood two women, a curly-haired brunette in a green skirt and a redhead in jeans and a baggy hoodie. Their reflections, however, showed a woman in a green dress standing next to a woman who was completely nude.
“Whoa,” said Maya. “So you said it’s been like this since this morning?” Not for the first time, she took off her glasses, cleaned them on her dress, and put them back on. “This is really weird.”
Lily blushed profusely on both sides of the mirror. The reflections in the windows and her computer screen were partial, indistinct, and fuzzy at the edges, but the restroom mirror offered no such comforts. Her entire upper body was bared to the scrutiny of Maya, a woman barely more than an acquaintance.
Behind them, the restroom door creaked. Lily’s eyes went wide with fear, and she dashed into a stall, slamming the door behind her, just in time to hear a distinct pair of heels click across the restroom tiles.
“Good morning, Laura,” said Maya, confirming that their manager had just entered the ladies’ room.
“Morning, Maya,” said Laura. “Who was that who just slammed the stall door?”
“Uh, Lily,” said Maya, after a brief pause. “Her, uh, time of the month. You know how it is sometimes.”
“Yes,” Laura replied, after a long pause. “That can do crazy things to a girl’s mind. Crazy things. In fact, I thought I saw ... no, I can see her shoes now, and the bottoms of her jeans. But I could have sworn...” Laura trailed off into an indistinct mutter.
“Could have sworn what?” Maya asked.
“Oh, never mind,” Laura replied with a short chuckle. “I’ve just been working too hard, that’s all.”
After what felt like hours, a knock rattled the stall door. “She’s gone,” Maya said. “You can come out now.”
Lily stepped out of the stall and grabbed Maya’s arm, pulling her out of the ladies’ room. Now that she’d proven her strange condition, there was no reason to hang around in a place where her reflection was so clearly visible.
Most of the Sphinx staff had filtered into the office by now. Some were sitting at their computers, others making coffee, but a significant and growing cohort was gathered around Derek’s desk, staring intently at his screen and murmuring to each other.
“What do you think all that’s about?” asked Maya.
Just then, Priya turned and caught Lily’s eye. Her eyes widened, and she gasped and nudged the coworkers on either side of her, Tom and Sadie. Suddenly, the whole office went quiet, and all eyes descended on Lily.
A chorus of giggles broke the silence, and Lily felt a wave of nausea. She leaned on Maya for support.
“What are you all looking at?” Maya asked, pulling Lily towards Derek’s computer.
The crowd stepped aside, and Derek pushed the chair back from his desk. Security camera footage was playing on both of his monitors, showing different angles of the office. The footage was recent, recorded less than an hour before.
Lily watched with horror as her naked body appeared on both screens, captured from the front and back, rushing towards her desk. As she reached up to draw the blinds, there was a chorus of oohs and aahs from the spectating crowd. After she sat down to start working, Derek fast-forwarded the footage to when Maya appeared, slowing it down and pausing judiciously as Lily rose from her chair to stop the blinds from being opened.
“Was it a dare?” whispered Priya.
“Hey, Lil,” asked Tom, cocking an eyebrow, “how much is a monthly sub?”
Lily’s face was burning up. She had no response. Her whole body was shaking, and she couldn’t even bring herself to look her coworkers in the eye. She felt Maya place a comforting hand on her back.
“You people are sick!” Maya snapped. “Sadie, Derek, you were both here early. You saw Lily walk into the office with your own eyes!” Then she whispered to Lily, “Don’t worry, I’ve got an idea.”
Just then, a distinctive set of heels clicked behind them. “What are we all so focused on?” asked Laura. “Is that—is that Lily?!”
“Yes, it is,” Maya said, crossing her arms. “That is definitely Lily in the video.”
Lily looked at Maya with pleading eyes, her face white as a sheet. She dared not make eye contact with Laura.
“In that case, I think someone has some explaining to do,” Laura continued.
“Indeed,” Maya added. “Derek has a lot of explaining to do.”
“Me?!” asked Derek. “I just noticed the video!”
“A likely story,” said Maya. “This footage is from less than an hour ago. Most of you were already here at that time. You saw Lily come into the office, just as I did. And you saw that she was wearing clothes, like she is now.” Maya tugged at the sleeve of Lily’s baggy hoodie. “She’s positively overdressed!”
“Then how do you explain the video?” asked Priya.
Maya’s face fell into a scowl. “It’s on Derek’s computer, isn’t it? He must have doctored it. You can do all sorts of things with AI these days. And you know how men are. I don’t know why you’re doing this sort of thing at work, Derek! And to an unconsenting colleague! Revenge porn is a crime, you know.”
Now it was Derek’s turn to look panicked. “—I found it like this, I swear!”
“These are some serious allegations, Maya,” Laura said. Then she turned to Lily. “I saw you in the office earlier, dressed as you are now, just as Maya said. But when I entered the ladies’ room, you rushed into a stall very quickly. I just saw the reflection of your back in the mirror. You didn’t appear to have your hoodie on then.”
“But you saw her jeans and shoes under the stall!” Maya stammered.
“Caught halfway,” Tom added.
Laura looked from Maya to Lisa to Derek. “I don’t want to jump to conclusions here. At minimum, we have a serious incident on our hands. Nudity is not acceptable under the dress code, and office equipment must not be used to view pornography, much less create it. I don’t know which of you is at fault, and frankly I don’t have time to deal with it today. Tammy’s on leave until next week, so we’re operating without an HR department. In light of that, Lily and Derek are both suspended. I’ll see you both in Tammy’s office on Monday. Until then, go home, and think about what you’re going to say.”
“But I did nothing wrong!” Lily and Derek shouted in unison.
“Save it,” Laura scowled. “Out, both of you, before I call security.”
Lily’s shoulders slumped, defeated, and she trudged towards her desk to pick up her bag. In a way, this was a relief—she had no desire to stick around in the office today.
“I tried,” Maya said, shrugging. “At least Derek’s in trouble too. Always thought he was a creep.”
“That ... doesn’t mean you should lie about him,” Lily said.
“Lily, he showed the whole office that security footage!” Maya hissed, grabbing her shoulders and staring her in the eye. “You and I know he didn’t make it, but he deserves whatever he gets for embarrassing you like that.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Outside the office, Lily thought about ordering a rideshare, but changed her mind when she contemplated the possibility of the driver looking at her through the car mirrors the whole way. She chose to walk home, moving fast and avoiding reflective surfaces as best as she could. People shouted at her and stopped her a few times before shaking their heads and apologizing. It was bad enough knowing that the reflection of her naked body had caught their eyes, even if they’d written it off as a hallucination.
At last, Lily reached her apartment building. She hurried up the stairs and slammed the door behind her, panting heavily from exertion. The warm hoodie didn’t help matters—it had been completely useless all day. Lily pulled them off angrily and hurled both across the room.
She drew the curtains over the apartment’s sole window and covered every mirror she owned with a towel or piece of clothing. Without looking at it, she placed her phone face down on the table next to her bed, and then slammed her body down on the bed and shut her eyes tight. If she couldn’t see any reflections, perhaps she could pretend, at least for a little while, that none of this was happening.
But it wasn’t just reflections. As Derek’s little stunt had shown, she also appeared naked on video footage. Her body was now a permanent feature of the office’s security footage, stored on that pervert’s computer, and undoubtedly shared far and wide. How many other security cameras had she walked past today? How many people were filming or taking videos with their phones? She shuddered at the thought.
Eyes still shut, Lily tossed and turned on her bed, trying to put these and other thoughts out of her mind. Eventually, it must have worked, for she woke up groggy, with a dry throat, drenched in sweat. She wasn’t sure how long she had slept for, not that it mattered.
With a groan, Lily drew herself up from the bed, rubbing her eyes. Feeling sticky and gross, she pulled off her top and jeans and headed for the shower, discarding her bra and panties as she walked.
The towel she’d hung over the mirror had fallen into the sink. Lily caught a glimpse of her reflection and instinctively turned away. There was something different about it. She looked back and gasped.
The Lily in the mirror wore a long white dress, covering her from her neck to her ankles.
Lily placed a hand on the mirror, awestruck. For the first time that day, she saw clothes in her reflection. Not her clothes, she had never owned a dress like that, but it was a welcome change. What could have caused it? She placed a hand against her belly and felt bare skin.
Of course. She was naked, so now her reflection was clothed. It made about as much sense as the opposite.
Feeling experimental, Lily picked up her panties from the bathroom doorway and stepped into them. She looked at her reflection again. The white dress had disappeared, and, standing on tiptoe, she confirmed that her panties were not visible in the mirror. Keeping her eyes on her reflection, she slowly slid the panties down her legs. As soon as she released the fabric, the white dress reappeared.
“Hmm.” She walked out of the bathroom and picked up her phone. The white dress was reflected on the black screen. She turned the phone on and opened the selfie camera. The dress was there too. She snapped a picture and took a short video, moving her phone around. Both included the dress.
The rules seemed to be thus: when she was dressed, her reflection and camera image would be naked. When she was naked, both would be clothed in a strange white dress that she had never seen before, much less worn.
The phone buzzed in her hand. It was her mother requesting a video call. She always said she liked to see Lily’s face, now that she was so far from home.
Phone still buzzing, Lily instinctively reached for her discarded top, then stopped herself. Hadn’t she just discovered that, while naked, she would show up on camera with a white dress? If she put on her top now, her mother would see her nude!
Steeling herself, Lily answered the call. Her mother’s smiling face appeared on the screen.
“Hello, dear, that’s a nice dress,” said her mother. “Are you at home? Why’s it so dark in there?”
“Hi Mom, I was, uh, just about to turn on the lights.” Holding the phone out in front of her, Lily walked to the light switch. Being naked and knowing she was on camera made her whole body tense up, even though her mother couldn’t see it.
Once the lights were on, Lily sat down and angled her phone such that only her face was visible. She wasn’t taking any chances with this reflected dress. But it held all the way through her long conversation with her mother, during which she managed to avoid mentioning either her suspension or her reflection. There was no point in worrying her mother, who could do nothing about either. Hadn’t Lily come to the city to be independent?
Eventually, Lily said her goodbyes and put the phone down. It was early evening—she had been asleep for longer than she’d thought. Lily prepared a quick meal and sat down in front of the television. She hadn’t put on any clothes—it comforted her that the glimpses she caught of her reflection wore the white dress.
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