## Act I: The Patient (20%)

The mirror arrived on a Tuesday in March, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. Dr. Edgar Thorne was forty years old, a psychoanalyst in practice in London for fifteen years, and he had seen everything that psychiatry had to offer: hysteria, melancholia, neurasthenia, the lingering effects of the war, the endless parade of human suffering that sat on his couch and told him about their mothers.

But he had never seen a mirror like this one.

It was small, no larger than a hand mirror, with a frame of dark wood that was carved with patterns he could not identify. The glass was not quite glass. It was something older, something that had been polished to a perfection that made Edgar's skin crawl.

The mirror had come from his patient, a man who called himself Professor Alistair Finch, who was one hundred and thirty years old and still sharp enough to dissect a patient's defenses with a single question. Finch had been Edgar's patient for three years, and in three years Edgar had learned nothing about him except that he was old, that he was wealthy, and that he was afraid of something that he would not name.

On the Tuesday in March, Finch came to Edgar's office in Bloomsbury and placed the mirror on the desk between them and said, "Look into it."

Edgar looked. He saw himself. But he did not see the forty-year-old man he had become. He saw a younger version of himself, perhaps twenty years younger, with hair that was still dark and a face that had not yet learned the lines of doubt and exhaustion. He saw himself as he might have been, if he had made different choices, if he had been braver, if he had not spent fifteen years listening to other people's pain instead of his own.

He looked away. His hands were shaking.

"It's not magic," Finch said. "It's psychology. The mirror shows you who you could have been. And if you look long enough, if you look honestly enough, you can become that person. Not physically. Psychologically. You can become the man you see in the glass."

Edgar stared at him. "You're asking me to look into a mirror and convince myself that I'm someone else."

"I'm asking you to look into a mirror and see who you really are," Finch said. "The man you think you are and the man you could be are not the same person. The mirror shows you the truth."

Edgar did not take the mirror that day. He told Finch he would think about it. Finch nodded and left.

Edgar did not think about it. He knew what he would do. He just did not want to admit it yet.

## Act II: The Looking (30%)

Edgar took the mirror home that night. He placed it on his desk in the study, next to a lamp and a stack of case files, and he did not look at it for three days.

On the sixth day, he looked.

He saw himself. Twenty years younger. Dark hair. Clear eyes. A face that had not yet learned the weight of other people's suffering. He looked at himself for ten minutes and then he looked away and he felt something shift inside him, like a door opening in a room he had forgotten existed.

He looked again the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that.

Each time he looked, he saw the same man. Each time, he felt the same pull, the same irresistible urge to become the person in the glass. He told himself it was just psychology. He told himself it was just projection. He told himself a lot of things.

But the truth was simpler and more terrible: Edgar Thorne wanted to be young again. He wanted to be the man he had been before the war, before the practice, before the endless parade of suffering that had worn him down like water on stone. He wanted to be someone else.

And the mirror was showing him how.

He began to spend more time looking. He skipped sessions. He told his patients he was ill. He told himself he was conducting an experiment, that he was studying the effects of self-perception on identity, that he was a scientist and this was research.

But he was not a scientist. He was a man who was tired of being forty years old and tired of being a doctor and tired of being himself.

The mirror showed him a different version of himself every day. Sometimes the man in the glass was kinder. Sometimes he was crueler. Sometimes he was brave. Sometimes he was afraid. But he was always younger, and he was always someone Edgar wanted to be.

## Act III: The Split (35%)

The split happened on a Thursday in June, and Edgar did not notice it until it was too late.

He was sitting in his office, looking at the mirror, when he heard a knock at the door. It was his assistant, Miss Hartley, come to deliver a message from a patient. She stood in the doorway and looked at Edgar and frowned.

"Dr. Thorne," she said. "Are you well?"

"I'm fine," Edgar said. But his voice was wrong. It was higher, younger, and he did not recognize it.

Miss Hartley looked at him with concern. "You look different, sir."

"I look the same," Edgar said. But he did not. He could feel it. He could feel the man in the mirror pulling at him, tugging at the edges of his identity, trying to become real.

Miss Hartley left. Edgar looked at the mirror. The man in the glass was smiling. Edgar was not smiling.

He looked away. The man in the glass was still smiling.

He looked back. The man in the glass was still smiling.

He stood up and walked to the mirror and pressed his hand against the glass. The man in the glass pressed his hand against the glass from the other side. Their fingers touched.

And Edgar Thorne ceased to exist.

In his place stood a man who was twenty years younger, with dark hair and clear eyes and a face that had not yet learned the lines of doubt and exhaustion. He was Edgar Thorne, and he was not. He was the man in the mirror, and he was real.

But the man in the mirror was not the only one who had survived the night. Because Edgar Thorne had not ceased to exist. He had simply been pushed aside, hidden away in a corner of his own mind, where he sat and watched and waited and wondered which of them was real.

## Act IV: The Reflection (15%)

The patient who came to see Dr. Thorne that afternoon did not know that his doctor had changed. He sat on the couch and told his story, and Dr. Thorne listened with the same steady attention he had always shown, and the patient left feeling heard and understood and relieved.

Dr. Thorne closed the door and walked to his study and looked at the mirror. The man in the glass looked back at him, and they both smiled.

But in the corner of his mind, behind a door that could not be opened, Edgar Thorne sat and wept.

He was forty years old. He had never been younger. And he would never be anyone again.

The mirror sat on the desk, and the glass was clear, and the man in the glass was young and strong and full of life, and he did not know that somewhere inside him, a forty-year-old man was watching him and wishing he could take back what he had done.

But he did not wish. He could not. The door was closed. The man in the mirror was real. And Edgar Thorne was nothing.

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