I first noticed I was missing on a Thursday. Red and I had already been for our walk and he went to sleep on the bath mat while I was taking my shower. Red is a Cairn terrier.. He’s bath mat size. After the shower I was standing in front of the mirror in a toweling robe brushing me teeth. When I looked up I was gone.
It didn’t startle me at first, not exactly. I thought it was just some trick of the light, a fog that had built up on the mirror, but when I wiped my sleeve over the medicine cabinet I still wasn’t there. My toothbrush was there, floating by itself several inches out from the cuff of my robe, and the robe was there, the collar and shoulders filling out the bottom of the mirror’s frame, but I was missing.I moved from side to side a couple of times trying to fit myself back into the picture, but all I saw was the open shower curtain behind me, the tiles of the tub, the built-in shelf that held the shampoo and conditioner. I spat out the toothpaste and there it was in the sink looking exactly like toothpaste. That was when I thought: stroke. Pieces of my vision were missing, even though I couldn’t imagine what kind of stroke would just remove a face, a neck, a hand. Leaning forward toward the mirror, I gently tapped my invisible fingers against my invisible cheek and what had once been a finger was stopped by what had once been a face. Curiosity was quickly being replaced by a rising wall of panic. I was fifty-four years old, and I was gone.
– Jeanne Ray
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