The air was cool and darkness had just started rolling in with the orange-lit, grey, rumbling clouds from the east. I did as I was told and sat by the window, looking out. A habit that was becoming more prevalent. Loosing myself in a half trance, escaping reality for several minutes before remembering where I was.

It was as I was staring out of the thick glass that her shadow reflected behind me causing me to look back. It. Not her. It. Our housekeeper, you see. Her reflection had glitched, but she was normal looking to everyone else, just not to me.

My parents called it hallucinations and over-imagination but I knew something was off.

From five years old, my sight had started to change. I was at the subway station boarding a train when the officer by the door glitched. His hand had turned pitch black under his upturned sleeve before returning to its pale white shade. I had never mentioned it to them. Nor the few more glitches after that one, until it wasn't just body parts anymore. Entire bodies. Entire people. They were becoming monsters.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Jovie, was the first one to glitch and stay that way for minutes. I had been out in the yard that first evening. She had come down to call me in. She had opened her mouth to shout but I had already seen her and so, had started running back. She didn't pay attention though and still inhaled deep before her voice exploded. Or at least, I swore she had.

Her throat suddenly became bloated and expanded like a frog's as she inhaled, and then, as she yelled, the skin around her throat turned transparent. I could have see the insides of her throats. She'd had two passage ways.

I had stopped five steps away in a complete trance. When she had finally stopped, she had looked down at me and smiled. Crooked thorns. That's what her teeth had looked like before morphing back into their usual off white colour of regular adult teeth.

Nowadays,  she never does turn back into a human. She just stayed the same way that she was now, in her reflection. I spun around to face Mrs. Jovie and she nodded at me. We'd come to an agreement long ago. I had told my parents what I'd seen and they'd put me into therapy. They would never believe that Mrs. Jovie's eyes were the only things on her body close to human anymore. They'd tell me that I was living inside my head if I told them that she told me she wanted to eat me one day.

"Mrs Jovie." I nodded back at the creature wearing housekeeper's clothing.

"Dinner. Is. Served." Her voice which had been sweet and soft before now came out gravelly and with pauses. "Your. Parents? They. Want. You." Her huge, flat, lime green eyes blinked once. She knew I could see her. I knew she knew.

"Thank you. I'll be there." I turned back to the window, keeping my eyes on her reflection until she disappeared around the corner. I looked back up to see that the clouds were no longer light grey. Dark storm clouds had replaced my comfort ones. Aged seven and I was already finding comfort in unreachable things. If only my parents would believe me and fire the monsters.

As I thought this, I saw one bright light zip across the sky and wished silently, shutting my eyes in the effort. Shooting stars were rare to come by big I didn't know then that the one I had seen was the rarest of them all. No sooner than I opened my eyes back up, I knew my wish was answered, but now, as realization hit, I wished I could undo it.

Screaming started. Scattered from the yard, to the inside of the house. Then my dad. It was the most terrifying sound ever. Clear and loud. Then gurgling and choked. When he stopped, I knew he was gone.

"Zany!" Mom raced in and hoisted me up as though she hadn't stopped picking me up since I was three because I was too heavy. "We have to go! The monsters...–" She was in tears. She was yelling things that I knew to her didn't even make sense. She never looked back. She never set me down. She never slowed down. We were on a mission to escape and I was helpless as we roamed the hallways to the back door.

She ran. I bounced on her shoulders as she raced across the fields as fast as her slender legs could carry both of us. "Just a few more steps Zany. Honey, we'll be okay." She tried to reassure me but I could hear her heart racing through her back and chest. I could feel her laboured breathe. She was trying to make it all register but it wasn't quick enough. I knew she still couldn't believe any of this. "Are they following us?" She asked and I would have looked up for her but I was trying to breath, think, smile, cry, all at the same time.

We made it all the way to the train, just beside the town, boarded the train, then she finally laid me down. She hugged me close to her. Kissed me on the head. Pulled me closer to her but never took her eyes off the window. I could see her on the reflection of the booth door glass. She was still lost in her mind but her body knew where she was. Staring at reflections, that was what my therapist had recommended. It had long since become a hobby.

"We'll be okay." She repeated.  And continued staring out, through the haze. She patted my hair. "You saw everything, didn't you?" I didn't respond to her. I knew what I saw. I lowered my gaze remembering. Reflections showed you plenty but back at the house, when I'd finished making my wish, I had seen everything. Having mirrors angled around the house was probably not such a good idea, after all.

I'd seen her walk up to him, my dad, as if to tell him I'd be down. Mrs Jovie. Then she had shifted, stepped back and her head had grown with her eyes and thorn-filled mouth, until her mouth had been wide enough. She had bitten him at his torso and pulled back. His eyes had gone wide with sudden shock as he continued the scream chain, before the choked sound came out. The gruesome sight was cut off only when my mother had come in and snatched me up. I had seen him falling, the monster turning around, then the rooms had changed as mom and I had found the back stairway.

"It'll all be okay, honey. I'll take care of you." She mumbled into my hair as the rain pelted the glass accompanying the quaking thunder. The sound reminded me of Mrs. Jovie's voice. Too scared to look back up at the glass, I had cuddled closer to my mother. "I believe you, Zany." Those were the last words I heard before falling asleep beside her. The words that meant the world to me. The last few words before I lost all my freedom.