There she is, standing by the door-frame of her Cape Town studio apartment, bags in hand and a smile across her face. In her mind, she’s finally made it; coming to Cape Town is no easy feat. She walks in and around, taking in every square inch of her new abode. The tables and chairs are a little dusty, but it’s not anything a thorough cleaning can’t fix. The air smells musty from the old wooden planks that line her floors. This is certainly not luxury, but for a second-hand flat in a barely developed part of town, everything is just as Theresa expects. 

There’s only one thing that she finds unsettling: the lack of natural light. The room features no windows. Instead, the entire wall across her bed is covered in large mirrors that extend from her toes to the ceiling. Perhaps, the developers wanted to create the illusion of space, especially in the absence of light. Whatever the reason may be, Theresa appreciates the thought. In fact, she doesn’t think she has any right to complain. Growing up in a rundown government flat with little electricity and a makeshift bed, the lack of windows feels like a minuscule problem. Besides, this is all she can afford, for now.

Theresa shrugs off the thought and pops in her airpods. 

“Welcome to New York! It’s been waiting for you, welcome to New York, welcome to New York!” Swift sings in her ear.

“Welcome to Cape Town!” Theresa hums along, kicking her slippers off her feet, dancing to the beat while slowly unpacking her bags. “It’s been waiting for me!”

Theresa skips to her new workplace the next day, the same rhythm drumming in her head. She has just been hired as a journalist for a struggling teen magazine in Cape Town, and she can’t wait to begin.

Her entire floor has an interesting harsh blue hue, from the walls, to the cubicles, their separators, and even the shirts of her new colleagues. Like her apartment, her office features limited natural light, with small square windows every two meters, and all blinds down. “This place looks a bit dead, not gonna lie” she texts her childhood friend, Amy. Her cubicle extends only slightly beyond her left and right shoulders, just enough to make her comfortable in her seat. 

“Theresa, right?” a voice hollers from her right. Theresa jerks back in surprise. A middle-aged dark-haired and bearded man peeks from the cubicle next to her. “Darren” he says, extending a hand. “We’re celebrating Monday blues. Guess you didn’t get the memo” he rolls his eyes jokingly, hinting at the sea of blue office-wear around them.

“Theresa” She replies, shaking his hand. “As is obvious, I am new here” She says in playful annoyance. 

Their friendship only blossoms from there. Before Theresa’s new manager even gets to her, Darren shows her around their floor, the row of snacks in the pantry and the broken coffee machine. For lunch, he invites her to eat Biltong at a nearby eatery, highlighting the uniqueness of Cape Town’s flavor mix. Darren asks many questions, inviting Theresa to share generously about herself. Theresa has never quite met anyone so interested in learning about her. Frankly, she can’t help but feel flattered. 

“I promise, this place will feel a lot more alive tomorrow” Darren assures her at the end of their work-day, patting her on the shoulder before exiting her frame of sight. While she unexpectedly finds her work a little boring, she’s grateful for Darren’s company.

That night, with her bedside lamp still beaming and her thin gray blanket folded neatly on the corner of her bed, Theresa slips into a dream, exhausted from her first day.

She finds herself in the middle of Bree Street across a tiny shophouse with a sign that reads ‘Rosetta Roastery Cafe’ in bold curly font. 

Theresa grew up listening to stories about Bree Street from her mother, who used to braid women’s hair by the streetside until her late 20s. “It was the most empowering experience Tess, seeing young African girls like you and me cherish their god-gifted hair” She remembers her mother telling her. 

But Bree street is looking quite different from what she originally imagined. The streets are clean and wide – free from vendors and hair braiders – and lined with shophouses, left and right. It is crowded with families, flowing in and out of those shops, dressed in vibrant colors, ironed shirts and pleated skirts. Catching a whiff of freshly baked pastries, Theresa finds herself walking over to the Rosetta Roastery Cafe. Just as she is about to enter, she catches a glimpse of her reflection against the large cafe window. She is dressed in a pleated yellow maxi dress, with fabric that shimmers under the sun everytime she moves. Slung on her arm is a black mini handbag with no sign of wear or tear. “Who am I?” she mutters to herself in pleasant disbelief. 

In the midst of admiring her new self, Theresa feels a solid weight bump against her backside, followed by a hot sensation on her left thigh. A pool of brown has formed on her dress, which was once yellow. “Shit!” she hears a raspy male voice exclaim from above her shoulder. “I am so so sorry.” He apologizes over and over, while collecting his plastic cup from the ground. 

She peeks behind her, her eyes inevitably locking with his blue pair. The man towers above her by approximately a foot. He has a full head of blonde hair that bounces in the wind, with fringes that partly shield his face from the scorching sun, keeping it wrinkle-free. He looks to be in his early 20s. “Please let me get you a new dress, or at least, repay you in some way” He implores. 

“It’s alright” Theresa assures, shooting him a smile. She briskly walks off, leaving the man in a stupor. 

“Please, let me do something for you!” He runs after her. She ignores him, and exerting no agency of her own, Theresa finds herself rounding various corners until she finally reaches the front of what reads to be ‘Hyatt Regency’. To her surprise, the young man followed her the entire way.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Theresa. Is this young man bothering you?” The bellboy inquires, stepping in to separate the two. Theresa’s eyes widen as the realization dawns upon her: Does she stay here, at Hyatt?

“At least, let me take you out for lunch. There’s a beautiful restaurant called ‘Utopia’ that’s just walking distance from here. I’d love to buy you a meal,” the young blonde man begs, once again.

Theresa feels the urge to decline – her mother always warned her against pushy men. But, seeing the guilt in his eyes changes her mind. “Sure, I’ll see you there tomorrow at noon.”

A loud ringing noise blares through her eardrum. Theresa presses both palms on her ears, closing her eyes and crouching from the intensity. Once the ringing quiets, her lids flutter open. Instead of Hyatt’s whiff of luxury, Theresa is greeted by the smell of familiar musty old wood. Just like that, she finds herself back in her Cape Town flat, expected in the office in forty minutes.

“You won’t believe what I dreamed about last night” Theresa pops up behind Darren, pressing her palms on his shoulders. Darren jerks back in surprise, his face immediately lighting up upon catching sight of Theresa. She tells him every detail of her dream, from the glamor of Bree Street to the dreamy young man she met. 

“So you knew you were dreaming, the whole time?” Darren asks, amused at Theresa’s strong self-awareness and memory.

“Yes! And that’s what makes it perfect, you see. In that world, I know I can just do whatever, because nothing’s real” Theresa says, sighing and slouching back against her office chair, face tilted towards the ceiling dreamily. “It’s the perfect escape.”

Upon returning to her studio apartment that day, Theresa decides it’s time to paint over her large mirrors. While she appreciates the aesthetic, she prefers to not have a whole wall of her own reflection staring back at her every morning. In her bag is two liters of white and red acrylic paint. She wants her room more vibrant, more pastel, and more pink, enough to match her newfound energy. 

Being the inexperienced yet confident artist she is, she throws a splash of red paint onto the mirror. Why not just combine the red and white at once, directly on the glass, am I right? She thinks, considering herself a genius for finding a way to mix colors without wasting an extra bucket. She’s not very particular about her shades of pink, anyway.

“Guess what I’m doing!” Theresa FaceTimes Amy in the midst of splashing red paint, showing Amy the presently changing aesthetic of her room. 

Amy squints her eyes and inches closer to the camera. “Jesus, Tess, did someone die in your room or something?”

“It’s acrylic, silly!” Theresa says, chuckling.

“I mean, I wouldn’t do that if I were you – might cause bad luck, you know. I heard from somewhere that mirrors trap the soul” 

“Yeah right” Theresa rolls her eyes. “You know I’m not superstitious like you” 

“I mean, you do you girl” 

Theresa feels offended that Amy even thinks she would ever let herself succumb to African mythologies and ghost stories. While her ego is pushing her to continue painting in rebellion, a greater part of her is upset and simply wants to lie down and rest. She finally decides to leave the paint job for another day, leaving streaks of red dripping from the glass, onto the ground.

That night, Theresa finds herself waking up on a king-sized bed beneath thick fluffy white sheets to the smell of freshly-baked pastries. “Rosetta Roastery pastries at 10am, just as you requested, miss…” a uniformed young man tells her with a smile, parking a cart of food next to her bed, within her arm’s reach. Theresa picks up a napkin from the cart to wrap around her croissant. ‘Hyatt Regency’, it reads. 

It appears that she has returned to a land of familiar dreams. Interestingly, she notices a wall of mirrors across her bed that is as large as the one in her Cape Town flat. Streaks of red mark a portion of the glass. Theresa rolls her eyes, annoyed that she’s carried her real world frustrations to a land of joy. ‘This big ugly thing probably would not even be here, if I didn’t obsess so much over Amy’s words yesterday’ she thinks to herself. Sparing no further thought on it, she makes her way to Utopia for lunch after gobbling up her late morning pastries. 

Theresa has never been particularly fond of handsome young men; she’s always thought them to be deceitful. It’s not that she’s been hurt before, rather, her mother’s warnings still loom over her. But the young blonde man’s kind blue eyes and melodic words over lunch are shaking her walls – in fact, she’s convinced that some of its parts have chipped away. He laughs at all of her jokes and listens to her silly rants. How can she not fall? She finds him especially adorable when he smiles, when his ears perk up and his cheeks blossom.

Theresa and the young man spend the full day together, only ending the night with a warm hug in Theresa’s hotel room. She wants him to sit and stay. She wants him to drink tea with her. She wants to speak with him until the sun rises. 

But a stomach ache wakes her, and once again, she’s back in reality, tucked in her rough gray sheets that now need some washing.

Every night that week, Theresa would slip into the same dream for another opportunity to live an alternate reality. And every morning, she would come into the office with a lighter skip in her steps, a little more joyful than the morning before. 

What might he be doing right now? Theresa finds herself daydreaming in the middle of typing out a sentence for her new article. While she acknowledges the young man’s fictional nature, he feels so real to her, and she can’t help but yearn for him.

“You’re so in love” Darren perks up behind her, chuckling. 

“Oh shut up” she says, her cheeks warming as she realizes the row of yyyyyyyyyy’s she’s keyed into her computer in the middle of her day-dream. 

“I too, had a lovely dream” Darren says, sliding into his seat, beside her. 

“Do tell!”

“No no no – first, I want to hear your updates” Darren insists, leaning forward. Once again, as she does every single day, Theresa spills her heart out to Darren, updating him on every small detail of her interactions with the young blonde man she met on Bree Street. She never intends to, but her stories always seem to fill up their conversations. In fact, she’s not heard about any of Darren’s dreams, or truly listened to him. But if she’s honest, she’s not very curious about him, either, so she doesn’t really mind.

That night, she tucks herself into bed extra early. She wants to clock in more sleep hours – she needs to, because that night is the night that she plans to finally invite the young man to join her in bed.

She slips back into Hyatt Regency, a wide persistent smile on her face. 

As expected, she hears her doorbell ring at dusk, exactly post-sunset. In comes a familiar handsome face in a white cotton shirt and shorts. “Hello, gorgeous” he greets. Uttering no word, Theresa slides her hand into his and pulls him gently with her towards the bed. It doesn’t take long for him to register her intentions. In a split second, Theresa feels his grip of her hand tighten as he steps towards her. Her body heats up and cheeks redden in anticipation.

His grip further tightens, causing slight discomfort this time. He slams Theresa on the bed and pins her by her tiny wrists, a smirk stretching across his face. Before she can process the situation, she feels his teeth sink into her neck. She winces in pain, “Can you be a little more gentle?” she whispers. Upon sensing her resistance, the young man’s grip only gets firmer, his body pressing against hers, leaving her no room to breathe or move. 

“Stop” she says sternly this time. She hears him chuckle faintly, his grip unyielding. With fury building in her chest, Theresa spits in his face, attempting once more to pull away from his grip. However, he is much stronger and larger. Just as she manages to slide one leg out, she feels a row of knuckles blow against her cheeks, sending her back to her dingy Cape Town apartment.

Theresa jolts up from her bed, cold sweat breaking all over her body, her breaths rapid and heavy. A strong pain overcomes her, pulsing persistently around her wrists and neck that she can hear her struggling heartbeat. She brings her wrists towards her face, her vision clearing by the second. Immediately, she freezes, breath taken away by the sight before her. Both her wrists are blue and black in color. She glances up at the mirror opposite her and notices droplets of red sliding down her neck. All the scars from her dreams mark her body. She wipes the red off with the back of her hand, recalling her trauma from the night before.

“Hey, can I call you? It’s urgent” she texts Darren. That morning, she cries her heart out over the line, detailing every bit of the assault she experienced and the devil that attacked her.

Theresa fails to show up at work the next two days. Instead, she’s huddled in her blanket, on her floor, staring into her own bloodshot eyes through the mirror. She does not dare sleep. She does not dare relive her torture. In fact, she has not slept in over 24 hours, and does not intend to anytime soon. Every time she feels her breaths slowing and consciousness fading, she would slap herself across the face.

“I am so sorry, Tess. If only I were there, I’d make sure he doesn’t come out alive” Darren says while placing a pizza on Theresa’s dining table, before leaving her flat. He has been nothing but sympathetic towards her situation, and she owes him every little ounce of joy she is able to feel amidst the mess she’s in. Frankly, she also owes him her survival. He’s been keeping her fed consistently, since the day she first broke down crying. 

She’s never listened to Darren before, but in that moment, she realizes that perhaps, there is some truth in his words. Instead of letting herself sink in fear, why not attack the young blonde man before he attacks her, next? Why not kill him?

That night, she slides into her blanket with newfound courage and a kitchen knife, a mix of anxiety and rage pulsing in her veins. 

She wakes up next to a familiar sight: a cushion of blonde hair and heavy limbs sprawled across the bed. The young man is sound asleep, snoring heavily.

She looks down on her hands and realizes that her knife is missing. Damn it, she should have known that she can’t just teleport objects into her dreams. She looks around her hotel room desperately, but no sharp object is in sight.

Except for one. 

Staring back at her is her own reflection. An idea pops up. She picks up the hotel safe from underneath the cupboard and smashes it against the mirror, watching its shards fly all over, the hardened red paint cracking due to the impact.

The blonde man jolts up in surprise. Before he can piece together the scene before him, Theresa picks up a glass shard and leaps towards him. Their eyes lock momentarily. She watches as his pair widens in fear, as she digs the shard deep into his heart, locking him in her arms. “Theresa” he mutters in a gentle and too-familiar voice, his grip slowly weakening and limbs falling to his sides. Red liquid oozes all over Theresa’s fluffy white blankets. She’s glad she painted her mirrors, because now, she can convince herself it’s the red acrylic she’s seeing.

The next morning, she wakes up with newfound hope. “I killed the devil in my dreams” she texts Darren. With a recovered joyful skip in her steps, she turns on her TV and proceeds to tidy her bed for the first time in a while.

“Breaking news, man mysteriously found dead on a bed, in a Cape Town apartment” the anchor announces. Theresa looks up, intrigued. “Police say he passed from a stab to his chest, with no signs of break-ins and no murder weapon found.” 

Her jaw drops. She glances at the mirror before her and notices an enormous crack, the size of the safe in her dreams. “The victim has been identified to be Darren Abara, a 31 year old magazine editor here in Cape Town.” Theresa feels her knees weaken and mind drift. ‘It can’t be’, she thinks to herself.

‘Maybe Amy’s right,’ Theresa reflects. Sliding into her blanket, she recalls her friend’s words: ‘Mirrors trap the soul’. That night, she dozes off with a new air of peace looming over her, free from haunting dreams, a sadistic blonde man, and a friendship she thought was real.