I walked up to the receptionist.

‘Hello. I have an appointment for — : —,’ I said.

She searched her computer.

‘Mr. K—?’ she asked.

‘That’s me,’ I answered.

‘Please, take a seat,’ she instructed with a smile. ‘Mr. E— will be with you shortly.’

I politely smiled in return and walked back in the room, seating myself on one of the couple chairs that lined the opposite wall. 

‘No, sorry sir,’ called the receptionist to me hastily. ‘This is not the waiting room. Please go through that door and take a seat there.’

I followed the woman’s finger to a door on the adjacent wall. There was a visible, distinctive plaque next to it with the words Waiting Room engraved in its golden surface. I got up, meekly apologised for my own embarrassment, and walked into the office’s waiting room.

The room was typical: a couple armchairs, a sofa, a low-set table among them with old magazines scattering its surface. The walls looked grey and uninteresting, poorly adorned in cheap paintings;—at least the wall facing the door was such. When I faced the armchairs to walk towards them, a perplexing sight met my eyes, and I was left stunned momentarily in confusion.

The room I was in appeared to be exceptionally long, with numerous armchairs and sofas stretching out beyond what my eyes could see, consumed by a dark mist after what I gauged to be about a hundred metres. The paintings on the grey wall appeared to repeat as well, and although I could not scrutinise them closely, I felt confident they were identical copies of those on the grey wall opposite just a few metres off, and in an identical configuration relative to one another. A few metres farther—though even harder to see precisely—the exact same paintings, in the exact same configuration. 

A closer inspection of the sofas and armchairs made me realise those too repeated, just like the paintings, every few metres, and they too resembled the exact sofas and armchair I had right next to me when I walked in; even the old magazines on the table were the same each time. It appeared as if I was looking into two facing mirrors, only my own reflection was missing from the infinity, and the orientation of the objects was not reversed.

I turned myself around to inspect the rest of the room, and noticed a similar phenomenon occurring on the opposite wall, however in this case I could see myself looking back. The opposite wall appeared to be a mirror, as watching myself move around in it confirmed; though the singular behaviour exhibited all throughout the room drove my eyes to confusion, with one side being a common mirror, and the other resembling a supernatural echo into infinity.

Intrigued, I chose to look closer at this repeating pattern—the side which was not the mirror. I approached it, attempting to inspect the depth; but I could only get so far before I hit an invisible wall. There was a large, clear glass pane between me and the rest of this peculiar sight, serving as the fourth wall of the room I had presumed to be missing. Squinting my eyes through the glass suggested this too repeated in each copy of the waiting room; and what I believed to initially be an indefinite extension of the room I was in revealed itself instead rather to be a repeating duplicate of the same room: the waiting room I was waiting in.

This was all utterly perplexing to me. Upon stepping into this strange room, I had been removed from the reality of waiting for my appointment, which could just as well have been considered forgotten at this stage. I could not detract my vision from that magnificent repetition, stretching as far as my eyes could see. But it was amidst this amazement that my attention was once more diverted by something peculiar in the duplicate before me.

I thought I could see something peaking out from behind one of the armchairs. It was hazel brown, and I thought it resembled a head of hair. I moved myself to the left, hoping to get a better look. Moving over to the side revealed just a forehead more, and I could not see the face it belonged to. A pool of blood was spread beneath the head.

Despite my greatest efforts, no other point of view would grant me a better look at the individual I could just only see. The glass separated us, and my mounting urgency began to drive me towards breaking it and calling for help. Perhaps I could throw an armchair and break through. I ought to call the receptionist, I thought, and tell her what I saw. I ought to have—

My thoughts were interrupted again, and this time I stood paralyzed, helpless to move despite my frantic thinking.

I looked beyond only the first duplicate chamber and into the second. My moving from side to side revealed to me something that had been concealed behind the furniture in that room.

Limply spread out on the floor, arms thrown out and legs folded under one another, lay another body and another pool of blood. The hair looked much the same as that I could just see closest to me, and I could see the black suit, white shirt and striped red-yellow tie the individual was wearing. The angle was difficult, the face was looking away from me, but with the right positioning, I could just about make out the man’s countenance.

I felt sick and dizzy. My head started spinning. I needed to look away. I turned around, regarding myself in the massive mirror. I felt panic and my breath shortened. It was like my mind was floating away. I tried to tether myself to reality, focussing on what was material and right before me: my black jacket; my cleanly-ironed white shirt; my Windsor-tied tie, adorned with its characteristic red and yellow stripes—

A door opened.

Momentarily, I was lucid again. It was the door to Mr. E—’s office. It was time for my appointment.

Mr. E— looked at me through the mirror.

‘So, Mr. K—,’ he said with a polite smile, ‘what do you say we do this correctly this time?’

18.X.2022