This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Present_Designer3745 on 2026-05-27 01:18:43+00:00.

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I promised Bobbie I would never tell this story as long as we both lived. Well, Bobbie’s as good as dead and I can’t keep this inside anymore.

She’s going to come for me next.

Bobbie and I grew up together. Our mothers were best friends and ended up living right next door to each other. When they got pregnant, it was a bit of fate and the marvel of modern medicine that gave us birthdays on the same day. July 18th. From our first words to first girlfriends, Bobbie and I were inseparable. We even finished each other’s sentences sometimes. It would be creepy if we hadn't been so close.

That all changed in the summer of 1998.

Bobbie’s mom made a ten layer chocolate cake for our thirteenth birthday. Now, Bobbie wasn’t a popular kid at school, but he had me so we always had kids at our birthday parties. By some miracle, we convinced both our parents to let us have a sleepover that night at Bobbie’s house.

I remember in detail what each kid wore to that party even though it’s been almost twenty years. That fact is super weird because I usually can’t remember what my girlfriend wore yesterday or if we had milk in the fridge. They say trauma sharpens the memory immediately before and after something horrible happens. Like if you’re in a car accident, you remember the exact song playing on the radio and the specific scent of your air freshener even decades later. Something about the way the brain encodes those memories burns them into you forever.

I suppose watching a neighbor kid be brutally murdered in front of you counts as traumatic.

Tick, double tick.

I guess I can’t talk about this unless I mention the mirror.

Now, I’m not a superstitious person, but I’ve always been a bit jumpy around mirrors.

By that point in my life, I’d seen plenty of horror movies and knew to leave them well enough alone.

Who hasn’t seen Bloody Mary, right?

There’s nothing scarier than something everyone already has inside their home. Sometimes in every room, in one way or another.

Some cultures even believe that mirrors are a gateway to another world. A crossroads between the living and the dead. Some even feared them or used them in rituals.

Bobbie’s bathroom had a large mirror right above the vanity. It was a little ornate and had a thick oak frame around the glass. The glass itself was highly polished and dark with a deep black backing. Bobbie had said it was a special mirror his grandfather had passed down in their family for generations. Bobbie’s dad was Mexican-American and had decorated much of the house in artifacts his father had given him from his childhood home in Mexico City.

I never liked that mirror, and I avoided going to that bathroom when I came over to his house.

It gave me the creeps.

The night started innocently enough.

The girls decided to sleep in the living room and me and Bobbie would bunk in his bedroom.

When Bobbie’s parents went to bed, the girls snuck into Bobbie’s room.

We started with card games and truth or dare. There were only four of us who stayed the night.

Me, Bobbie, Jessica, and Angie.

Angie loved mirrors.

She was younger than me and Bobbie by a year or two and was always trying to impress everyone with what she wore or how she acted.

She’d fawn at herself in any mirror she could find and pose. Turn sideways. Pout her lips and pucker her lip gloss.

“Guys, does this shade make my lips look too puffy?” Angie had just walked out of the bathroom again and batted her eyelashes at me and Bobbie.

Jessica rolled her eyes.

“If you spent half as much time on your personality as you do your makeup, you’d be a halfway interesting person, Ang.”

“Wow, quick one Jess. I guess all of us can’t be blessed with such a busy little mouth to keep everyone entertained, right boys?”

Bobbie blushed a deep shade of red and looked at the floor.

Angie knew Bobbie had a crush on Jess. Not that it was a secret or anything. His emotions usually played out right on his face.

“Okay, okay. Claws away, ladies. Let's play something else. I’m bored.”

“Why don’t we play seven minutes in heaven?”

“Bobbie, there’s only four of us.”

“So, I think it would be fun.”

Bobbie had gone a deep shade of red again and went back to looking at the door.

“What about the postman's knock?”

“What the hell is that, Ang, your mom’s stripper name?”

“No, Jess, it’s a game where we deliver a message to a person in another room. Like we’re sending something through the mail. You first have to elect a postmaster and have them go into another room. Then, you knock three times and whisper your message through the door. The postmaster must write down the message and slide it under the door. If they get the message right, they win a kiss. If they don’t, they have to stay in the post office in the dark, look at themselves in the mirror, and repeat the correct message three times.”

“You’re on, but if this is just a chance for you to finally get your hands on Benjamin, that’s a bit skeevy, Angie.”

We decided for the first round that Jessica should be the postmaster and Bobbie, Angie, and me would come up with the message to send.

Jessica grabbed a pen and pad of paper, took up her post behind the bathroom door, and closed it behind her.

“Let’s make it a challenge, shall we boys?”

Angie had a determined look on her face.

“Ok, Bobbie, I want you to whisper ‘Tickle tickle, I like to tickle. I’d like to tickle Bennie’s pickle.’”

“I can’t say that!”

“Of course you can, don’t be a pussy. And make it a whisper so she has to lean in to hear you.”

She shoved Bobbie on the shoulder, and he stepped up to the door.

He knocked three times.

You could hear Jessica moving behind the door to get as close as possible to the crack between the doorjamb.

Bobbie hovered near the crack in the door and spoke very softly, almost in a hushed whisper.

The door rattled a little with the weight of her face against the wood on the other side.

“Tickle, tickle, I like to tickle. I’d like to tickle Bennie’s pickle.”

Angie had to stifle the laughter that came out of her mouth with her hand at hearing Bobbie’s small voice say those words.

The door rattled again as weight shifted. The sound of pencil scratching on paper came through the wood. Then a pause.

A thin slip of paper slid under the door.

Angie picked it up.

She slowly unfolded the paper and narrowed her eyes at the small handwriting.

“What the fuck, you cheated!”

“I most certainly did not, Angie! Nobody likes a sore loser.”

Jessica’s words were slightly muffled through the door, but you could hear them all the same.

“Fine, get out here and let’s go again.”

Jessica opened the door with a giant grin on her face like she’d won the lottery.

“Claim your prize, I guess. It’s just Bobbie, though. So, pucker up.”

Jessica’s face fell slightly, but she recovered quickly. She turned to Bobbie and pecked him lightly on the cheek.

Bobbie went six shades of red and sat down on the bed.

For the second round, we drew straws. Angie picked the shortest so she was elected as postmaster.

She turned and gave a devilish smile before closing the door to the bathroom behind her.

“I’m not going easy on her after that shitshow. No offense, Bobbie.”

“None taken.”

“I’ll handle the message, guys. I want to deliver this one myself.”

“Aren’t you worried she’ll get it right and you’ll have to kiss her?”

“Oh, she won’t get this one right. I’m sure of it.”

Jessica scrunched up her face and crept over to the door and knocked three times.

She leaned in, even closer than Bobbie had, and barely opened her mouth, so I didn’t catch what she said.

She snapped her head back from the door and walked back to the two of us standing a few feet away.

There was silence at the other end.

Then, slowly, a piece of paper slid under the door.

I was closest and reached down to pick it up before Jessica had a chance to read it, and I just stared at what was written there.

Why would you say that to me?

I looked back up at Jessica with a questioning look, but her face was unreadable. Her smile was gone, but there was something darker behind her eyes.

“What the hell did you tell her, Jessica?”

“Nothing she shouldn’t already know, Benjamin.”

The light under the door went out.

It was eerily quiet.

Jessica started to fidget a little and look uncomfortable.

“Hey, Angie, are you ok in there?”

I stepped up to the door and tried to open it, but the lock was engaged from the other side.

I leaned in close to the doorjamb and listened. All I could hear was the blood pounding in my ears at first, so I leaned even closer and put my ear flat on the wood of the door and leaned in with my whole body.

I could hear whispering. Angie was talking to someone, or rather to herself. Then I heard a sound I’ll never forget.

It was three knocks.

Except they weren’t coming from the door.

They came from the mirror.

The other side of the mirror.

Then I heard a little giggle. Like a small child. And the sound of arms or legs hitting the counter top and the faucet.

There was a pause with no sound at all. Then a wet thud like something fell to the floor.

I leaned in even closer to the door and pressed my palms flat on the wall.

Bobbie and Jessica hadn’t made a sound behind me.

Something tickled the hairs on my neck and my ears perked up. It was a subtle sound, but it came with a sensation against my skin in a fixed rhythm. I listened to it as I list...

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