Sweet Romance13 min read
The Night the Mirror Lied
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1
The wind was loud against the windows. It sounded like the house was talking in a language I didn't know.
I woke up because of two heavy knocks on the glass. "Thud. Thud." They cut through a dream of someone with glasses chasing me. The dream left a cold light behind its lenses.
I looked over. India was sleeping on her back. "She's always on her side," I thought. "Tonight she isn't."
A metallic smell filled my mouth. "Blood," I said to myself, and my throat closed.
I pulled the blanket. "India?" I said, and my hand touched something wet. The blanket came away sticky. I saw the knife first—stuck in her belly. I saw the hand that didn't belong to sleep. I saw her eyes, open and empty.
"She's dead," I said out loud, though the words felt thin.
I crawled to our daughters' rooms. "Dorothy?" I whispered, and pushed her blanket. A red line cut her throat. "Iris?" The same. Both children were gone. The faces of my girls were pale like paper.
2
"Call 110!" someone shouted outside in a voice I heard through a fog. My voice couldn't make a sound that was not drowning.
When the police came, I told them, "I was asleep. I woke up like this."
"Your fingerprints are on the knife," the officer said, looking at me as if the word "murderer" were the only thing they needed to speak.
"That knife is mine," I said. "India uses it to cut apples for me."
"Only your prints," the detective said. "We found no other prints."
3
I sat under a bright light in a cold room. The door opened. A man in a pale khaki coat walked in. He looked older than me by some years. He wore rose-gold glasses that caught the interrogation light and made them shine like a small sun.
"Mr. Mustafa," he said calmly, "I'm Franklin Coleman. I'm here to do a psychiatric evaluation. Your lawyer thinks you might be dissociated."
I felt my jaw tighten. "You mean split personalities?"
"That's one name for it," Franklin said. He sat and opened a folder. "You have been diagnosed with dissociative identity tendencies. You told me about the 'other' once."
"My name is Theodore Mustafa," I said. "I don't remember much. I don't remember killing my wife or daughters."
He watched me like someone who watches a fire. "You and your wife married at university. Your father-in-law, Elias Castro, supervised your doctorate. You were a good student but you always felt small in that family."
My mouth moved. "You know that?"
"You told me," he said. "You came here, and with India you visited my clinic many times. You said you felt like you were living in other people's pictures."
4
He guided me through photographs on the wall. "All these photos were taken recently," he said. "Three months at most. They show happy faces."
"I don't remember this photo shoot," I said. "I don't remember these smiles."
"You had a house fire earlier. Old photos were destroyed. You moved into the villa after." He sighed. "A small memory hole can hide a lot."
"Why would I kill them?" I asked. "Why would I do that to my girls?"
"Motives often hide in small things," Franklin said. "You had lost your job. Stress returns old wounds. But motive is only one part. Evidence is the other."
He paused. "There is a theory worth considering. What if someone wanted to make you look guilty?"
5
He said it softly. "What if someone wanted to frame you?"
"It would make no sense," I protested. "Why would anyone do that?"
"Maybe someone who wanted to bury a debt. Maybe someone with access. Maybe someone who wanted a body of evidence to look normal."
He pointed at the bedroom window. "See the marks on the third floor window frame. They look like a foot smear. They could be a hand. They show someone climbed from the outside."
I looked. "That window is narrow. I could not have gone through it. I am not built to climb like that."
"Exactly," he said. "Which proves an outsider might have entered. But evidence can be cooked. The glove, the rope, the footprints—they can be planted."
6
He said, "We will build a narrative that puts the crime on someone else."
I stared. "You're going to help me fake evidence?"
"No," he said. "We will uncover evidence that shows an outsider. We will let the police find a glove, a rope, something that belongs to that outsider. If the police find those, they will look away from you."
He explained the plan like a storyteller. "If a glove with foreign dust is found, and that dust matches the handprints on the window, then the police must investigate the glove's owner."
"Where will that glove come from?" I asked.
"From the trash," he said. "From the recycling pickup that comes tomorrow afternoon. If the killer threw away his tools, we can retrieve them."
7
I wanted freedom. I wanted the knot in my chest to unbind.
Franklin said, "I'll arrange it. The police will reopen the case. They will see a line of reasoning that points out a valid suspect. We will put your fear into a narrative that works."
I felt like a drowning man handed a rope.
"I'll do whatever you say," I told him. "Just make them believe I didn't do this."
"I know how to make them believe," Franklin said.
8
They took me back to the villa for a walkthrough. I was allowed to remove my handcuffs for a moment. Franklin led the way, as if he owned the place.
"You can show them how it might be possible," he urged.
I climbed to the third floor. I placed my hands on the frame. "It feels wrong," I said.
"Just try," Franklin said. "Show them the motion."
There were policemen below. "Watch," I told them. I pushed my body. I felt old muscles pull together for the first time in months. I planted a foot on a narrow lip, grabbed the frame, swung myself through like a strong kid from years ago. I landed in the room. There was a murmur from below.
"That's impossible," someone said. "He did it."
The detective Cruz Conner stared at me with new suspicion. Mark Baird clapped, half in disbelief, half in mockery.
9
Then I stood before a mirror.
My reflection didn't look like the same man who had been carried to Franklin's room months ago. In the glass stood a thin, long-limbed young man. The face looked darker, lean. I touched my cheek. The person in the mirror touched the same cheek. My throat closed.
"Who is that?" I whispered.
Franklin smiled at me from behind. "That's the picture we painted," he said softly. "You start to see him because you agreed with the story."
10
Weeks later, the police found a glove and rope in the community trash. "They match the wall dust and the fibers match sports equipment," the news said.
"They were from the university's athletic uniform kit," Mark told me while the cameras rolled. "We're looking at an athlete."
We had followed the plan exactly. A young sports student, Dylan Barbieri, owed money. He had been seen near our building that night. Franklin had found the trash, had coaxed a line of investigation toward sports gear. The police questioned Dylan.
11
Franklin arranged for a private session with Dylan. He sat in a sterile room and put his hands on Dylan's shoulders.
"Who are you?" Franklin asked softly.
Dylan's eyes were empty. "I am Dylan," he said. "I needed money."
"Think of the night," Franklin guided. "Think about the steps."
He led Dylan with words like a gentle wind. "You were on the drain pipe. You climbed. You moved across the ledge. You saw the sleeping lights. You reached the bed, and you stabbed."
Dylan's face became small under Franklin's voice. "I did it," he whispered. "I was paid."
Franklin nodded and wrote neat notes. Dylan signed a statement. The police put Dylan in handcuffs.
12
The press conference was a theater. Flashing lights, microphones, reporters. "We solved the case," someone said. "An outsider confessed."
I watched from the crowd. Franklin sat on the dais with calm eyes, like a man who had finished a well-ordered experiment.
"Was Dylan coerced?" I asked Cruz quietly.
"He confessed," Cruz said. "There is the glove, the rope, his statement."
At night, I would wake and see the mirror boy's face. Would I ever be free from him?
13
Time passed. The case seemed closed. I was free.
I thought the worst was behind me. The body of the truth, I told myself, was buried. The bones of it were only bones until someone started to dig.
Franklin started to give talks on "clinical techniques." He spoke at a conference about "restoring false memory" and "ethical interrogation." The headlines liked the sound of his name.
Then, one autumn morning, a student from Franklin's old university sent me a link. "Listen," she wrote. "This is from the athletic department. A recording."
I opened it. It was a clip of Dylan. "I didn't do it. He told me to be him."
14
I called Franklin's office. "What did you do?" I asked. He answered in one tone.
"He needed direction," he said. "He needed a reason."
"Direction?" I repeated. "You led him."
"I guided," he corrected. "To help him remember. He confessed. The law took him. You were cleared, Theodore."
"Did you put words in his mouth?"
"I used clinical suggestions," he said. "It's done for therapy."
"But he said he was told to be someone else," I whispered.
15
The line between therapy and manipulation had been wearing thin for me since the mirror. I couldn't sleep. The word "experiment" crawled under my skin.
One night, I confronted Franklin in the corridor of his clinic. "You did more than therapy."
He smoothed his coat. "People need narratives."
"You handcrafted a confession," I said. "You fed him a story and watched him swallow it."
He looked at me almost tenderly. "And in the end, a guilty narrative freed you."
I thought of India, Dorothy, Iris. They had no say in Franklin's narrative. They were objects in a draft he rewrote into layers.
16
Then the truth came out, not softly but like a storm. Dylan met with a lawyer. The lawyer studied recorded sessions, watched tape, and found a pattern of suggestion in Franklin's voice. An anonymous source gave a full audio file to the press. Dylan said, "He told me to be him. He told me the pictures, the rope, the glove—all of it."
The news broke. Franklin's lectures became headlines for the wrong reasons. Students marched with signs. The university pulled his licenses. The police reopened the case.
17
They scheduled a public hearing at the courthouse. The courtroom filled like a theater. Cameras crowded the hallway. The building smelled of coffee and paper.
Franklin arrived with a composed face. He sat. Outside in the lobby, reporters whispered. The crowd was not only there for a trial. They were there for spectacle.
The judge called the hearing to order.
"Mr. Coleman," said a prosecutor, "you have been accused of coercion, evidence fabrication, and professional misconduct. How do you plead?"
Franklin's eyes were still calm. "I stand by my work," he said. "I helped reconstruct a truth."
"Did you plant evidence?" the prosecutor asked.
"No," Franklin said. "I found the truth. I guided it out."
18
Then Dylan took the stand. He looked thin under the legal light. He spoke in a small voice, but every word cut.
"I told them what Mr. Coleman told me to tell," he said. "He asked me to climb the pipes. He asked me to remember the rope. He gave me words. I said them."
"Why did you say it?" the prosecutor asked.
"Because he made me believe I was him," Dylan said. "He made me see the pictures. He made me feel their hands."
The gallery gasped. In the press area, someone whispered, "This is worse than we thought."
19
Then came the recorded sessions. The room played Franklin's calm voice: "You did it. You climbed. It was your hands." He urged, redirected, praised the student for "recalling." He structured memory into confession.
The judge leaned forward. "This recording will be submitted into evidence," he said.
Franklin stood. His face did not move like a face that will break.
But what I remember most was the moment our eyes met. For years he had looked at me as a specimen, a patient who could be reshaped. Now he saw a man stealing his ending.
20
After evidence was played, the courtroom hearing moved to the punishment phase. The press pushed in. A crowd gathered in the courthouse square. They called for his name. They called for accountability.
The public punishment scene began as a hearing but swelled into something more. Lawyers said there would be legal consequences. I never expected a crowd to be part of a sentence, but they were now.
"Bring me the transcript," someone shouted. "Show the world what he did."
21
I was allowed to speak. I walked to the microphone with a shakiness that felt like honesty.
"You helped me," I said. "You took a man who couldn't remember and re-wrote him into a murderer. You played with Dylan. You destroyed my family and then used my story for your research."
Franklin's lips twitched. "I acted in good faith," he said.
"You acted in yourself," I replied. "You put your work first."
22
What followed was the public punishment. The courtroom became a stage. The accused, Franklin Coleman, had to sit while the prosecutor read every phone call, every note, every private entry that showed a scientist's hunger for results more than a healer's care.
I watched his face as the room's tone changed. At first, he was calm. Then it shifted to confusion. The prosecutor read his emails where Franklin wrote about the "elegant structure" and "clinical yield" of making someone confess. The audience heard him describe "guiding" subjects to produce results for a paper.
"Where is the line?" someone shouted from the gallery.
23
I saw the change in him start small. His jaw moved. He reached for his glasses and did not put them on. Sweat beaded at his temple. The crowd outside had grown, and words from the square seeped into the courtroom like wind.
"He manipulated them!" a woman cried. "He made a child say what he wanted!"
Franklin's eyes blinked faster. He opened his mouth, closed it, then tried to answer.
"I—" he began.
The room's voice rose before his answer. The press cameras flashed. The prosecutor walked to the jury box and recited a passage where Franklin called one of his patients "a perfect specimen." The word "specimen" landed like a stone.
24
The crowd reaction was instant. A hundred phones were suddenly recording. People began to boo and shout. "Shame!" a dozen voices called. "Monster!" someone else yelled. A man stood up and dumped the handouts from Franklin's lecture onto the floor like a curtain being torn.
Franklin's face lost its practiced calm.
"You see what they call research?" the prosecutor said, voice low and hard. "You see what he called his 'work'?"
Franklin's mouth trembled. He tried to stand and face them; his legs wavered. "I only—" he whispered.
25
Then came the most public punishment of all. A panel of former patients and community members were allowed to speak. One by one they rose. They told stories—some small, some raw. A mother who said her child had come home crying after a session. A student who said he felt like he had been carved out of himself.
When a woman talked about her child, she said slowly, "He trusted you." She looked at Franklin like a mother who sees a wolf in a mask.
"We trusted you to heal minds," she said. "You used them."
The room listened and then began to weep. With each story, Franklin shrank like a man in a failing suit.
26
I remember the prosecutor asking, "Do you feel remorse?"
Franklin closed his eyes for a long time. When he opened them, there was a flicker of something like shame.
"I thought I could push the edge," he said finally. "I thought clinical boundaries could be bent for truth. I wanted to prove a method. I lost sight of the people."
A single woman in the front row laughed low at that. It sounded like the tearing of paper.
"You say you lost sight of people," she said. "We lost sight of our children."
27
The next scene became almost ritual. Franklin had to stand in public and answer to a tribunal formed by professional bodies. They stripped him of his licenses. The microphone recorded every dry word. His university revoked the honors. The press printed the recordings in full.
Outside, a crowd followed him as he left the courthouse. I heard the chant: "Justice! Justice!" They held signs with phrases like "No More Experiments" and "Patients Are People."
He tried to speak to them. "I was a doctor," he said, his voice small and cracking under a new pressure. "I tried to save a man. I'm sorry."
28
"Sorry?" someone from the crowd called. "You broke us and now you say sorry."
He looked at Dylan, who was standing close to me. The young athlete's face was hollow. He did not shout. He only looked away, like a man trying to see past his own shadow.
Then Franklin tried to run from it. He stepped forward, hands raised, and a chorus of phones recorded the moment he stumbled. "Please," he said to the crowd. "I meant to help."
29
And then something happened I had not anticipated. The crowd began to clap—not in applause but in a rhythm, a counting that felt like a tally. They clapped for the survivors who had come forward. They clapped to mark the end of a study that had become a wound. Each clap was a sentence.
Franklin's hand covered his face. For the first time, his posture broke entirely. His shoulders shook. The camera caught the wetness on his cheek. He had been the man who measured tears like data points; now his own face offered the same grief.
30
His reactions changed again. "No, this isn't how it should be," he whispered at first. "You don't understand. The work—"
The crowd hissed. Someone shouted, "Save your work? Where do we fit, then?"
He moved from denial to rambling explanations. Then came pleading: "Please, I will stop. Please—"
A woman in the audience spat into the road. "You took my son's voice," she said. "He can't get it back."
31
The final humiliation came not from railing but from the legal instruments. The licensing board read their verdicts in public. Franklin would lose the right to practice. The university stripped his publications. He would be investigated for fabricating evidence. The press released all of his notes and emails.
He put his hands on the podium as if trying to steady himself. When they read that he had described patients as "perfect specimens," that he had labored to "craft recall sequences," his face collapsed into a look of stunned disbelief.
32
There was no neat ending. The crowd dispersed into small groups. Dylan walked away with a slow step. Elias Castro, the professor who had pushed for justice for his child and grandchildren, watched from the far side and said nothing. He had lost his family, and doing anything else felt empty.
I stayed until the last of the reporters left. Some called me a hero. Many looked at me with pity. I looked at Franklin as he sat on the curb, head in hands. He had been a scientist and now the world saw a broken man who had used people.
33
That night, the mirror in my small flat reflected a man who had lost everything and found something else—truth, raw and painful. I understood how the stories we tell ourselves can be weapons or armor.
I had been accused, framed, and then freed. The method that freed me had been weaponized. Franklin had been punished in public: his license revoked, his lectures canceled, his name attached to shame. He had been forced to face the faces he had used, to hear the words he had planted return to their mouths and sting.
34
Weeks later, Dylan tried to rebuild his life. I visited him once. He looked at me and said, "I don't know who I am." I didn't have an answer. We both knew the question now had weight.
Franklin was taken into investigation for evidence tampering and professional misconduct. The legal system would decide fines and possible criminal charges. The public had already judged him in the square.
35
I do not end with a clean line or a promise. The blue curtain in my clinic room still hangs in my memory like a flag. The mirror still shows me the boy who could climb and the man who could not. Franklin's final words in the hearing echo in my ears: "I wanted to prove a method."
I answered him then, in my head: "You proved only one thing—how dangerous a story becomes when someone else writes it for you."
I walk past a shop window sometimes and watch my reflection. The mirror does not lie. It shows the scars. I touch my face and remember India, Dorothy, Iris. I do not know if the world will ever forget Franklin Coleman or the method he loved more than people. But I know the sound of the crowd that day, the clap that counted off a justice made by many voices.
Maybe the last thing I learned is this: when someone tries to drive your mind like a car, you can crash. When a crowd chooses to call that driver out, they will make him swallow his own experiment in public. The mirror will be the last witness.
The End
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