Chrometide Wraith

Every polished surface in the flooded lobby showed a guest behind us. His dinner jacket was full of tide. Where his face should have been, he reflected the room. We turned. Nothing.

When we looked back, Sima's sleeve opened from shoulder to wrist. The Wraith slid out of a luggage cart, cut once, and poured through its own wake into the elevators. We'd seen it avoid dull surfaces. We covered the lobby in extinguisher powder until only one chrome column stayed clear.

It appeared there, crowded by its lost reflections. Sima hit the column. As it buckled, the ghost fell into a shallow wave smelling of cologne and deep seawater.

The person who checks behind most often draws its attack. It seems to want recognition while punishing attention. From a reflection it enters thin water, strikes, and leaves before the surface settles. It even cleans chrome with its sleeves and floods rooms to connect separated mirrors.

A photograph of its former face may halt it. The wrong identity provokes a frenzy. Powder or soot reduces its routes; algae and rough cloth can also dull them. In darkness without reflection, it is trapped in the last surface it entered.