The Mirror Humor(s): Lone Descent

A Story by Abishai100

A writer and his wife/daughter watch over a New England hotel during a closing/quarantine and may become part of its haunted dowry.

An adapted and fun fanfiction of the iconic The Shining (Stephen King). Thanks for reading,

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A young writer named Amlan was hired to look after a special New England hotel during a winter of closed operations because of the Coronavirus quarantine tribulation.

The Hotel New Hampshire is considered one of the finest in the land, and many aristocrats and celebrities tour/travel there around the seasons, but this winter, it's closed because of the Coronavirus quarantine, and Amlan and his wife and daughter are staying there as innkeepers so as to keep the place secure and clean while no guests or workers are there.

Amlan is a horror-mystery writer working on a new novel about the odd phenomenon of mirror-reflection imagination and how it literally 'warps' the mind's sense of absolute self-perception, especially when the mirror-symmetry axis is 'imagined' to be somehow 'eschewed' and therefore yields a 'warped' or distorted/delusional reflection, yielding an intuitive image of a 'fantasy' reality or alternate-reality. Amlan is going to work on this horror-mystery novel about a man who stares into a crooked/funny-mirror and sees a deformed reflection (vision) of himself and begins to hallucinate he's actually 'becoming' that eschewed 'synthetic' person-image.

He's been married to his wife Shelley for 2 years, and she's got a young adopted daughter (Shelbye) from her first (failed) marriage to a firefighter in California. Amlan/Shelley/Shelbye are now assigned to watch over the Hotel New Hampshire during the winter-closed season of quarantined/closed operations, and Shelley (Amlan's wife) is suspecting there's something 'strange' about this place.

AMLAN: The hotel is exquisite, darling, and I'll have all the quiet-time and inspiration to work on my great novel!

SHELLEY: We're both happy for you, dear; Shelbye will have joy riding her tricycle around the lobbies/hallways.

The bedroom where Amlan/Shelley are sleeping in quite nice and obviously well-maintained, and Shelbye's sleeping in the neighboring children's room. This hotel assignment should be no problem for the creative writer Amlan who's simply looking to make some extra money while working on his novel and perhaps finding room for romance with his wife.

SHELBYE: I can't wait to go exploring in the nearby New Hampshire town, daddy, and to that mirror-musem!

While inside the mirror-museum in the town nearby the Hotel New Hampshire, Shelbye sees a funny-mirror image of herself as elongated and eschewed and somehow 'completely alien' to her personage. Amlan/Shelley take photos of this strange reflection while Shelbye's staring inside the funny-mirror, and that's when Shelbye's mom (Shelley) gets a rather 'eerie' feeling that the very 'alien' reflection-personage in the funny-mirror she's seeing of Shelbye is somehow...real!

Amlan is now furiously writing his funny-mirror novel about 2 weeks later, into the hotel-keep assignment/job, and he's going insane. Shelley's been 'pestering' him about that 'strange feeling' she's been getting about seeing that funny-mirror reflection of their adopted daughter Shelbye and how it seemed too 'alien' to not seem somehow 'real' in personage. This is driving Amlan batty, since that's precisely what he's trying to conceive in this horror-mystery novel about 'inceptions' of realities through eschewed mirror-reflection. While wandering around the Hotel New Hampshire one night while working late on his horror-mystery novel, Amlan sees a ghostly ballroom 'vision' of an entire host/party of folks (from the 1920s!) dressed/dancing as if they're still alive and kicking! Amlan now fears he's losing total grip on all of reality.

SHELLEY: What the hell are you sketching, Amlan?
AMLAN: I'm 'concocting' a funny-mirror symmetry axis (imaginary) yielding a 'deformed' reflected-image!

SHELLEY: Are you thinking (seriously) of that funny feeling I had of Shelbye's funny-mirror reflection?

AMLAN: Yes; well, maybe I am; well, I think I saw something 'funny' in the hotel ballroom one night!

SHELLEY: What's that got to do with this mirror-deformed reflection image-sketch you've made here?
AMLAN: I'm simply thinking of why/how this reflected-image distortion is somehow a real vision of doom!

SHELLEY: Darling, I think you're losing all sense of comfort(s).

AMLAN: Maybe.

When the police arrive some weeks later, Amlan/Shelley/Shelbye are nowhere to be seen. However, they find a strange 1920s ballroom dance-flyer in Amlan's bedroom, and they have no choice but to speculate the trio have for some unknown reason fled the hotel entirely. They hypothesize the innkeeping family on assignment had somehow and for some reason 'witnessed' a mysterious 'image' of fear and decided it was simply too 'depressing' to stay in the hotel any longer.

In the nearby historical museum in New England, a strange jewelry set appears out of nowhere with an inscription reading Shelley on it. Rumors fly around town that the apparently 'haunted' Hotel New Hampshire may've been 'host' to some bizarre reflected ghostly disappearance of the Amlan/Shelley/Shelbye innkeeping family, resulting somehow/mysteriously in this very bizarre discovery of this Shelley-inscription fine jewelry-set in the historical museum. Did this innkeeping family simply become 'part' of the haunted Hotel New Hampshire's strange mirror-reflection 'story' of depression?