Than You for Letting Me Do This

Cw: Seduction, spooky shit, mirror based horror

(SPOILER) Cw: True monster, possession, ambiguously bad end

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Plastic keys clicked and clacked noisily as Jasmine stared at the glowing light blue screen from behind her thin, rectangular glasses. The small, illuminated square of her window was a beacon outside in the slowly darkening night. Jasmine paused for a second, then finished communicating her thoughts through text. She took a sip of her cup of steaming caramel-colored coffee and waited for her patient to respond. She was working from home now, sometimes from her bedroom, other times from her kitchen, but either way it was different.

A lot of things were different after the pandemic. For one, she had long gotten used to meeting with her patients in person, at her office. They would talk there, for an hour or so, sometimes a little more depending on where they were at in the conversation—Jasmine wasn't one to cut people off just as they were gaining momentum, finding a way to put something into words that they hadn't been able to previously—and then if all went well, schedule again for next week. But then, stay-at-home orders had gone out, and with all of her patients and herself in quarantine, they had to find other ways to connect. Sometimes it was better, admittedly. People who had always needed or wanted therapy but didn't have the means to travel could now see her either online, or over the phone. They could use video, voice, or if they were especially anxious, like the patient she was with at the moment, they could even just text. She imagined she was now getting some patients who might've

never

come to see her in person. All the same she missed the face to face connection of her work back then, and beyond that...

She missed seeing her friends, her mom, and to be completely honest just people in general. Even the annoying people standing in-line at the bank or at the post office, or the kids behind the counter at the restaurant she used to go to, talking just a little too loudly and watching videos on their phones. She was desperate for any sense of normalcy at this point. It had seemed like an apocalyptic event at first, and for some, she supposed, it might as well have been. But for her, and most of the people she knew, it had become an exercise in tedium, something that slowly ate away at everyone's mental health and something that had become an unsurprisingly common topic among her patients. Jasmine felt like she was growing far too familiar for the inside of her home, longing for long, boring, traffic-jammed commutes and lukewarm office coffee. There were beginning to be whispers of a vaccine being in production, but still no clear answers on how long the pandemic would last, or when people would be able to go back to their normal lives.

The three black dots flashed on the screen, encapsulated in their grey word bubble, indicating that her patient was typing. Her patient, whose name was Zacharia, was one she had never met before, and though they seemed confident enough to discuss their issues with her over the internet, life had beaten them down to the point where it was difficult to talk face-to-face with people, or even leave the house on some days. Jasmine had had similar darknesses surrounding her own life, even if they hadn't directly affected her personally—they had left scars on her family that still affected her in subtler ways, ways it was harder to see: her grandmother had grown up in the Jim Crow south and had been threatened with physical violence on multiple occasions—even if no one had ever followed through—and similar, more insidious prejudices had made it hard for her mother to get a steady job or to find a home. It had been even harder without her dad there to help. And yet, somehow, her family had managed. Jasmine had always thought it meant something for her to be able to be there for people like nobody had for her mom and grandma, to talk about things with people that the people she'd known had never talked about before. Not that that was the sole reason she had decided to become a therapist.

Everything now depended on what her patient wanted: If Zacharia wanted to come out of their shell and make some more in-person connections, then Jasmine would help them take the small, gradual steps that could get them there. And if they were perfectly content to leave things as they were, it was a matter of making peace with that and finding ways to deal with the times that they did have to venture out into the world. The session went on for another ten to fifteen minutes, after which the two of them worked out their next appointment date and said their goodbyes.

Jasmine closed her laptop and slumped back in her chair, sighing. Inside her room the light was warm and comforting, but outside it was a cool, late Summer night, later on in the day but not that dark due to daylight saving's time. It was misting, a little bit of fog and a light drizzle of rain complementing a hazy blue, darkening sky. It was a little after 8PM, and her fiancée Melanie was still at work, meaning that Jasmine would have to find a way to occupy herself until she came home—unless she wanted to go to bed right then, which she didn't. Melanie worked a shift as a night custodian for a local art museum. She had used to work much later shifts, but after the two of them had gotten together she tried to find something that was a little more convenient for their schedules. So now she worked from 6PM to midnight every weekday night, and was off on weekends.

Between the two of them, they made enough to get by, plus a little extra, which was all they really wanted. Jasmine clicked the side button on her phone and was greeted by a picture of Melanie with her arm slung around her shoulder. Melanie had short, died black hair that fell around her pale white ears, with spider-web earrings hanging from her lobes. Her eyeliner, lipstick and general attire was similarly dark, and a single silver nose piercing joined her double pierced ears. Melanie had dreams of being a musician at some point, and though the pandemic had put any plans she'd had on hold, she still kept a guitar in their bedroom and practiced every now and then. There were no text notifications on her phone, so Jasmine let the screen fade to black once more and put her phone back on her desk.

Jasmine looked around the room. She and Melanie had been living in this house for the past 3 years now. Well, Melanie had been living here for three, Jasmine had been here her whole life. Three years ago her mother had finally paid off the mortgage on the house, and, having decided to move out of state, she thought it would be a perfect place for her daughter and her then girlfriend.

After graduating college Jasmine came face to face with the inconvenient reality that she would have to live with her mother again, and begrudgingly accepted it. She got a part-time, shitty retail job, went back to college for her Master's, and paid as much rent as she could possibly manage. If she was going to live at home, she wasn't going to be a burden, or at least that's how she saw it. She knew it was common these days, but it was still something she was a little self-conscious about. She had met Melanie, not in her classes but on campus in the student center, and although Jasmine was almost always very busy, their relatively brief conversations over shared lunches did a lot to endear her to the girl. Melanie had been a few years younger than her and perhaps had a little less direction in her life, but she was enthusiastic and confident it would all work out.

There was some time for the two of them to get closer after Grad School while Jasmine got her hours in as a supervised counselor. And when her mother had left she had reassured Jasmine that it was, in fact, okay for her to accept the house. She had worked more than hard enough over the past 10-15 years to have earned it, and even that in her eyes was an unnecessary extra step. She'd told her that it was okay to accept help, and that there were too many factors in the world already working against Jasmine for her to feel guilty about it. Eventually, Jasmine had gotten used to the idea of it, and it wasn't like Melanie had ever complained. Jasmine felt like she was finally getting to a point where she was comfortable with the life they had together, even if there were still plenty of uncertainties, both internal and external.

Jasmine's phone vibrated quietly and lit up. She reached out to grab it excitedly, seeing 1 new message from her fiancée. She unlocked her phone hurriedly and opened the messenger app. Her shoulders slumped and she sighed disappointedly. Apparently something had come up and they needed Melanie to stay overnight. She put her phone back down and looked aimlessly around her room once more. She didn't want to just watch to or do something online at this point, she had been staring at a screen all day. So with another sigh she picked herself up out of the chair, left the small enclosure of her shared bedroom and began walking through the house.

She made her way through the quiet house she had grown up in, switching lights on and off as she went from room to room. The kitchen, where she and her mom had celebrated many a birthday, for both of them, with Jasmine usually having a few classmates if anything in her younger years, and then later on no one aside from immediate family; the living room, where she and her father had watched game shows together and the occasional movie; the small library at the back of the house where she had spent more of her time as she got older, getting lost first in fiction, then in books about human behavior, social structures and the mind.

It was also in this back section of the house where the door to the attic was, a door that lay horizontal against the ceiling, a long, dangling pull string hanging from it. Their house was technically two stories, but all the main rooms were on the first floor. It was one of the few rooms in the house that she rarely visited, but Jasmine was feeling nostalgic and curious tonight. Looking up, Jasmine grabbed the string with two hands, and pulled with a little extra effort.

The door came down slowly at first, then a little faster. The metal hinges keeping the folded wooden ladder together creaked and groaned as she pushed the brown cedar plank back until it stopped, the hollow metal noise reverberating for a few lingering seconds afterwards. Exhaling, Jasmine grabbed the front part of the ladder and carefully brought it forward, unfolding it and straightening it out. She glanced at the faded safety warning stickers below the ladder and the pasted white sheet that told her the door had been installed in the 1980s. She was as surprised as anyone might've been that the wood still looked to be in good condition. All the same, she took a cautious first step onto the ladder, grabbing the provided railing and then another one, testing to see if the rungs would hold. When they did, she continued her climb and made her way up to the room above.

She found herself in a mostly large, open space, only feeling cramped from the sheer amount of assorted things that were mostly pushed to either side of the room. The room was constructed of dark, textured wood that rose into a darker, triangular roof, slanting on both sides and held up by numerous, cobweb-covered support beams. There was a lone, circular framed window on the far wall that shone dim light into the larger room. A few small, scattered raindrops ran down the other side of the glass, the branches of a large tree across the street from their house blowing gently in the calm breeze. Jasmine reached up to a pull another cord hanging down near her arm as she had traversed halfway up the ladder and a single hanging lightbulb clicked on high above her, filling the room with its slightly dulled glow. She made her way to the top of the ladder, then looked around.

The attic was filled with old, mostly forgotten things—relics of a bygone time, memories given physical form. A lot of the things had belonged to her grandmother, a woman who she could unfortunately barely remember, as she had died shortly after Jasmine was born. In one dim corner of the room, next to an old, dusty sewing machine, there were several cardboard boxes filled with a large number of things that looked more and more familiar as she approached them. In one box there was a stack of board games, some of their cardboard tops flattened or damaged to the point where they were simply balancing atop their bottom halves, with toys and stuffed animals filling out the remainder of the space. Loose Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards were strewn about haphazardly on top of the toys, with more buried farther down, bent or crumpled beneath the weight of larger objects. Jasmine lifted the board game boxes halfway out of the box to look at their labels: Monopoly, Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders—these were surrounded by Ninja Turtles and Godzilla figures, tiny hot wheels cars and half-mutilated Barbie dolls. She had played with all of these at one point, before moving onto books and the occasional video game.

The soft, furry stuffed animals were familiar to her too, from when she was about six or seven years old. One fuzzy giraffe head and neck had stuck out obviously from the box, like a flag waving her down from across the room; it was joined in the cramped space by a grey-furred gorilla and a small, black and white panda bear. In another box there was one massive, whole child-sized brown bear missing one eye with dusty fur and a green and red vest, currently dangling precariously over one cardboard flap. Jasmine barely remembered that one from a very early age—knowing it had belonged to her mother first—but seeing it again brought the memory rushing back. Feeling an illogical sort of sympathy for it, Jasmine grabbed it and stood it back up, resting its back against the inner wall of the box.

On the other side of the room, there were several boxes with holidays written on the side in big, sometimes difficult to read lettering. One box had "Halloween" in letters that just barely made it onto that side of the container, like the person who had written it had nearly run out of room. There was also a Christmas box with a tangle of lights and wires hanging out of it and spilling onto the floor. Yet another box was unlabeled but had a large plastic bag filled with tiny, multicolored plastic eggs, some closed, others lying in opened halves.

And then, in the middle of the room, was what appeared to be a large piece of furniture with a massive, dirt-stained cover over it. The uneven, lumpy shape beneath the sheet looked like some kind of apparition, especially in the dark room, but Jasmine knew what it really was. She walked slowly over to the obscured structure, then grabbed one end of the covering. She tugged on the sheet and it barely moved. It was a heavy fabric, something with a thick, wrinkled texture, and it was getting caught up on the aforementioned lumps. She took a deep breath and grabbed another part of it, at an arm's width away, and began to pull. She stubbornly yanked up the dangling ends of the material, getting it up near the top of the structure before pausing for a moment to catch her breath, the thin therapist not in the best physical shape. Then, with a few more arduous, effortful tugs, she dragged the cover down bit by bit, until momentum was finally on her side and the rest fell to the floor in a cascade of dried out fabric, folding in on itself.

Breathing heavily, Jasmine impatiently kicked the heavy, crumpled sheet off to one side, having to resort to multiple fierce shoe-tipped blows, the end of the cover getting stuck on her sneaker at one point and needing to be flung free. Catching her breath slowly, she turned back to inspect what lay beneath. Beneath the dusty cloth was an old dressing table, like one you might find in an actor's dressing room, though this one looked like it was at least from the 60s if not farther back. It consisted of a wide, low dark brown table with several drawers on either side of the space where your legs would go, a small wooden chair behind it, and a large, straight, rectangular mirror that was curved at the top. The mirror had multiple parts to it however, slightly smaller pieces of reflecting glass that were connected but separate, sloping downwards to break away from the mirror and curving around, so that if you sat at the table you could almost completely surround yourself with flexible, folding mirrors. There were parts of the table that jutted out from the main structure diagonally that also looked moveable, to support the weight of the branching mirrors. Jasmine saw her solemn expression staring back at her, with off-shooting secondary reflections of herself lingering at the corners of her vision. Outside, the fog-shrouded clouds emitted the low rumble of distant thunder, the sky darkening as the minutes of the day ticked by.

The table had belonged to her grandmother, she knew, and she had seen it before but not for a long time. Her grandmother had been a dancer, once, a long long time ago, and this had been the very table that she had used to apply her makeup and get dressed before going out on stage. From what her mother had told her, her grandmother had done ballet as part of a local theater group. She had never gained any widespread notoriety, but her mom had seen her shows since the time she was a small child, and she had said that her grandmother was beautiful, graceful and utterly captivating on stage.

Sometime after Jasmine's mother was fully grown, her grandmother had gotten injured after a show one night, something she never recovered from. When her collaborators came to give the old woman the table as a memento of her time there—they had recently purchased a new one—she wanted nothing to do with it. Even after her daughter had wanted to keep it for herself, Jasmine's grandmother seemed reluctant, and had insisted they cover it up. Then, after she had died, her daughter had taken it with her when she moved to the East Coast and decided she wanted to start a family.

Pulling out the small, seemingly hand-carved chair, Jasmine sat. She took a deep breath in, then let it out, looking at her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was long, dark and straight, framing a long, slender face of light brown skin. She could see much smaller, indecipherable reflections caught in the glass of the thin, black rectangular frames that balanced at the end of the long bridge of her small, pointed nose. She was still young, but she was getting older. Jasmine had just recently turned 35, and she could see it, albeit subtly, in her face. The slight, almost imperceptible lines above her cheeks, the way her eyes seemed to retreat back into the shady recesses beneath them as well as the insidious slow creep of her hairline, which was just beginning to recede, if you looked at just the right angle. She also couldn't help noticing her breasts, which rested slightly lower on her chest than they had when she was in her late twenties, even if she knew she was probably the only one who saw it.

From everything she had ever read, from the many conversations she'd had over the years, Jasmine understood the pressure on her to always look beautiful and unblemished, even when it was unreasonable or impossible to do so. She knew that age and aging was an inevitable part of life, something natural that shouldn't be feared or reviled. She knew all that on an intellectual level and yet...there were still times when she missed being twenty. Twenty five. Twenty-eight, even. Times when her skin had seemed to have a shine to it...or even just times when she had a little more energy, when she would wake up revitalized and ready to embrace the day. Beyond that though, she knew there was more to cosmetics than just compensating for insecurity. Her fiancée had shown her on numerous occasions the flexibility of makeup as a medium, even if Melanie usually worked with exclusively darker colors.