In 2015 I had a strange dream. Or at least it seemed like a dream.
I woke up in the middle of the night absolutely parched. Everyone knows water never tastes as good as it does when you're guzzling it in the middle of the night. Problem is, my bedroom is upstairs, my kitchen is downstairs, and I'm sleepy. Next to my bed is a closet, and on the sliding doors of that closet are two closet-door sized mirrors, and when you slide open either side of the closet, the mirror on the left door is concealed behind the right door. When I look at my closet, I see a tall glass of ice water reflected back at me in the left mirror.
The glass is frosty, like a glass you'd be served a draft beer in. It is sitting in what would appear to be an endless void of white, and it's enormous. It's closet-door sized. I push off my blankets and step out of bed and despite the chill of the air conditioning, this ice-cold glass of water is absolutely tantalizing. But it's weird, because as far as I can tell there isn't a closet-door sized glass of ice-water sitting in front of the mirror in my bedroom.
I open the left side of the closet, and by doing so I block my view of the odd water. When the closet is fully opened, I hear the clink of ice in the glass, like you would if you were to slide a glass of ice-water on a table and suddenly stop it. I also hear a giggle. Impish. Antagonistic. The contents of my closet are the contents of my closet. I slide the door closed.
Something has changed. The ice-water remains, but the configuration of the ice has shifted, not so much as to be unrecognizable but enough to be noticeable, and too much for it to have been caused by the change in velocity. I repeat my experiment.
The same thing happens, another giggle, clearly coming from the plane reflected back at me. The ice-water dimension, I guess. Deliriously I repeat this experiment far too many times for anything novel to happen, and the giggles have stopped. The joke got old. On maybe my ninth or tenth repetition of this cycle, I notice that the ice is melting and the glass is less frosty than it was when it initially appeared in my mirror. And I'm still absurdly thirsty, and the most convenient source of water is getting warmer by the second.
Something in my head is screaming to not drink this water. This is bad water. But I'm so thirsty. I tentatively reach towards the water and am met with the familiar resistance of a glass mirror. Obviously. But it's cold. And when I push, there's more give than a mirror should have. More elasticity. I push with roughly the force required to puncture saran wrap and now I've breached the sacred boundary between reality and reflection. I feel doomed.
I should not drink this water. But my lust overpowers my restraint and my head is pushing through the veil and I'm submerging it in the water and guzzling as much as I can handle and it isn't as cold as it was when it was gifted to me but instead the perfect temperature and there is just enough for me to quench myself and when I'm sated nothing remains but a pile of ice and the shame that I've broken a rule I will never and could never understand.
That's the dream. Every day since has been routine.
Yesterday on my lunch break I went to a nearby coffee shop and sat down to eat my meal. I'm replying to some emails, halfheartedly paying attention to the radio being played through the establishment's speakers.
"In other news, [redacted] Health Department has issued a release regarding an odd phenomenon. Over 500 residents have related stories of an unusually similar, possibly hallucinatory experience in which they find themselves gazing upon the reflection of an alluring glass of deliciously cold water. These mirages seem to appear in the middle of the night, which we all know is the best time to drink some cold water, hahaha. Oh man. Anyways, officials say that these experiences are nothing to be concerned about, so long as you do not drink the water."
I'm pouring sweat and guzzling my coffee and it's too hot and it's burning my mouth and my throat but I feel like I need to sanitize myself from the inside. That really happened? That's all the info they're giving me? Why isn't anyone acknowledging the absurdity of this situation? No one else drank the water? I drank ALL of the fucking water.
I go back to the office and I'm soaking through my cornflower blue button-down and I'm breathing wrong and my brain won't focus on a task long enough to even consider starting it. I need to know what happens if you drink the water, what is going to happen to me.
I call the health department. I argue with a call-screening bot and its fake typing sounds make me want to drown myself in the bathroom. After 15 minutes I reach an operator. I tell her my story as clearly and calmly as possible.
"Hi, I'm calling because I just heard the release about the mirror water and the radio guy said that I should be totally fine as long as I don't drink the water but it'd be nice if I could get a little bit more information about this because that seems like a bizarrely tiny amount of info to give about weird giant glasses of water showing up in my bedroom mirror, and also-"
She cuts me off, "Hahaha, sir, calm down, it's really nothing to worry about. As of right now we're considering it some kind of shared delusion. Social media has our brains all scrambled ya know? There's just too much going on. Anyways, luckily no one has actually drank the water, so there's no cause for alarm yet."
"No, that's what I'm saying, I drank the water. What happens if you drink the water?"
A few seconds of silence. I hear a sniffle, she's crying. Now she's sobbing. She's saying "Oh god, I'm so sorry. Why would you do that? I'm so, so sorry sir."
Dial tone. I call back and I don't even get the bot. I get a busy signal. I call again, I get a "the number you are trying to call is unavailable." I call again, the call doesn't even go through, it just hangs up.
Someone else must've drank the water right? Anyone? Does anyone know what's happening? Did any of you drink the water? What's going to happen to me?
