In each mirror before him he saw himself holding a knife. He looked down to find his hands empty.
They mirrored his step as he circled his enclosed pen, bearing sneers, grotesque expressions that did not at all match the refinement of their ballroom attire. As he neared any one mirror, the figure beyond the frame appeared to approach him in tandem, with swinging hands and legs directed forward, but its image moved backward. Out of the corner of his eye, while the one in front of him shrank, the others grew nearer. Larger.
His burnished black shoes clicked atop the hard cement floor. It had to have been at least two hours now since he strayed from the group and found this half-opened door. His outrage that no one had come searching for him had quickly subsided, a whining dread now ever nipping at his heels.
Unarmed in a sea of his own phantoms, his phone inexplicably out of signal. His hair felt frazzled by sweat and the predicament. The cool figures beyond the silver screens all maintained his signature golden-orange coiffed locks.
He'd tried talking to them. Their mouths didn't open as his did. He was sure that their gazes hardened, coldened, when he opened his mouth to address them, as if he'd stoked a deeper hatred within.
Before long the scene had lost its horror-movie quality and become simply surreal. Something must have slipped something in the punch, he'd decided; he'd never done substances, even throughout college. It had always surprised him to see so many esteemed last names popping this or that in open view of their contemporaries.
After walking in circles for so long, he'd started walking up to each mirror, tapping them for any secret compartment or give to any of the corners of the mirrors. Touching the mirrors seemed to bristle each image of himself, yet none seemed capable of retaliation. He could do with a few glares, he thought, if it meant getting out of here.
He brushed a frizzy lock of hair away, trying to nest it within the rest of his wildly-curling tresses. Doing so, he sighed and took a step back.
Curiously, the him in the mirror across from him seemed to come closer. Its size still shrunk, as they had when he approached a mirror, but instead of appearing farther and farther away, this one seemed to both shrink and draw nearer.
The discovery made him laugh. He could manipulate them, after all. He turned and tried with another mirror, causing a miniature version of himself to start to walk toward their mirrored barrier. Each mirror, each one of him seemed able to do it, and he felt accomplished in finding a little blemish in the room's perfect design.
Wondering how small he could turn the figures of himself, he walked right up to one of the mirrors, then took a full breadth of the room in paces backwards, watching the image of himself shrink smaller and smaller, nearer and nearer.
His amusement turned to terror as the visage of him stepped out from the frame. A hand gripped his shoulder from behind.