You let out a satisfied sigh, basking in the warm afterglow of creating your latest NovelAI prompt. It's a fine piece of writing, if you do say so yourself, and you can't wait to share it online. A dramatic hook, rising tension, and a climactic ending in which the player's fate is left open-ended; your prompt has it all!
But all of your "prompt testing", so to speak, has left your hands in quite a state; it wouldn't hurt to give them a rinse in the bathroom sink. Outside, the wind batters the sides of your small apartment; it's cozy enough, for what a wagie like you can afford in this day and age. As you stand up from your desk, you gingerly pull back the tightly drawn blinds of your room with an unsullied pinky to glance outside. Kids in costume run up and down the street, giddy with the anticipatory excitement only tonight's positively diabetic deluge of industrialized sugar can provide.
Ah, Halloween. Like all things in life, it once entranced you, enraptured you, enamored you; now, it's just another thing to be avoided. You wouldn't want to infect any of the cheerful little kids with your sullen adulthood, after all. It's been years and years since you've been afraid of the dark; it's hard to recall when exactly horror movies became another kind of comedy. Lately, the only thing you've found truly spooky is your ever-recurring credit card bill.
You make your way over to your bathroom, flicking on the light and running the taps. As you lather away the product of your polished prose from your fingers, you glance upwards to examine yourself in the bathroom mirror. Your own face greets you, looking the same as it always has. You turn your face this way and that; is that another wrinkle? If you were still in the mood to dress up for Halloween, you might consider going as the concept of inexorably marching time. That's a terror tried and true, but how would that costume even work? That's what you have on your mind when you dry your hands, flick the light off, and begin to slip through the bathroom door. You barely even register what the corner of your eye catches as you turn away; if not for the colossal shot of adrenaline your sympathetic nervous system just slammed into your veins, you might've missed it entirely.
A burning pit shooting up your middle, as if falling from a great height; your mind is already racing with rationalizations. It's late, you're tired, what you just saw can't possibly be real. Just a trick of the light. But you could've sworn that as you yourself turned away....
...your reflection didn't.
You wheel around and slam the bathroom light on again, looking up and down the mirror while drawing quickened breaths. Your heart pounds in your chest, and the rationality in the back of your head dismisses this autonomic response as totally ridiculous. It's just your reflection. It's just you, ${Name}, your own mirror image created by reflecting light. Nothing more. Right?
That's what you're insisting to yourself, when the ${Name} in the mirror winks at you.
A slow, deliberate, purposeful wink. Inexorably marching time suddenly stands still, as does your breathing and heartbeat. Milliseconds ooze by, viscous as honey, as the mirror-${Name} gives you a smirk.
Fear.
You can't recall falling backwards, but you are aware of scrabbling up from your hands and knees as you wildly dash through your apartment's living room. Hallucinating, right? You're dreaming, or tripping, or, or... you don't know. You just don't know.
You stagger into your own bedroom, yanking on the blinds, desperate to see the outside world is still intact. It is; glowing orange pumpkins line the streets, spooky scary plastic skeletons hang from trees, and your reflection in the window, a darkened silhouette superimposed against the view outside, gives you a cheerful wave.
You scream. Out, out, out; you need to be out. You need to be away from this place. In the street, maybe; just somewhere, anywhere, where there are other people. Maybe they can take you to the loony bin, where you obviously belong. You should call the paramedics yourself, you realize; you must be having a schizophrenic episode. You snatch the phone from your desk while pointedly avoiding looking at your sneering reflection in your bedroom window, beginning a frantic sprint to your front door.
As you stagger into your apartment floor's hallway, you raise your phone in a trembling hand, fully intending to call the emergency number. But in that instant before you manage to flick the screen on, the black mirror of the phone's dark display shows an ${Name} there, waggling a finger at you chidingly. You can't tell if it's terror or disbelief that makes you freeze in place; maybe you're getting used to being mad. But a tiny part of you wants to see what your reflection... does. It's just a reflection, after all. What can a reflection even do? It can't hurt you. Worst case scenario, it can't get out, right? The ${Name} in your phone's dark screen gives you a warm, wide smile, as if reading your thoughts. In response, it pulls an arm back, and punches your phone's screen from the inside.
You can't help but drop your phone entirely when its screen cracks from the blow, and you leave the broken phone behind on the floor. Hyperventilating, you slam your apartment elevator's call button over and over. Anywhere but here. You just need to escape. You need to get out.
With a melodic ding, the elevator's doors slide open. You dash inside as if possessed, punching the button for the ground floor over and over like a hyperfixated animal. Anxiety like a vice grip squeezes your brain from all sides; how surreal this all is feels almost dreamlike. As the elevator's doors slide shut, you close your eyes and take deep breaths, trying desperately to calm your shrieking nerves.
But your eyes snap open when the elevator gives an unusual lurch, its cables creaking. You look up with terror at the LED displaying the floor - which is now displaying an "E" for "error". The elevator is stuck.
You're stuck.
You're stuck with the sound of footsteps behind you. Footsteps, in an empty elevator.
Oh, no.
You turn around, your back pressed against the elevator's sealed doors, to face the elevator's other three interior walls. A large mirror hangs from each one.
Three floor length mirrors.
Three of your reflections, three ${Name}s, are surrounding you from all sides. All three of them making eye contact with you.
All three of them laughing.