Chapter 3
*The lookalike*
"But when you look in his eyes
Do you think of mine?
And when you look at that smile
Do I cross your mind?
I know in your head
You see me instead
'Cause he looks a lot like I did back then
Baby don't lie
He's just a lookalike" Conan gray ~lookalike
IT WAS JUST ELEVEN pm now. Its been exactly three hours since Iris was picked up by that faggot Landon for the party I blew off. Somehow a tiny part of me wondered how the party went as I buried my nose into my English essay assignment that was due tomorrow, lord knows I was tired as fuck.
My phone buzzed from beside me. It was a call from Iris's cell phone. In an expeditious motion I picked it up.
"Hey. What's up Iris?" I said thanks for the little bit of distraction I could get from studying.
"Hey Belle" her tone sounded a bit distracted and weirder than usual but apart from that she sounded like your typical hyper Iris.
"I kinda need your help" she giggled a bit. Was Iris calling me drunk right now? Oh god she always behaved so immature that I had to remain the mature one in our relationship.
"Are you drunk?"
She laughed "yeah maybe just a little. It's damn too chilly out here"
"Where the fuck are you now?" I questioned her and she fell silent for about a split minute.
"I don't really know" she continued to giggle. "I think somewhere around the woods. See Landon's car suddenly broke down on the way back and he has been gone for almost an hour, so please could you come pick me up. Its getting really spooky out here" ugh that weasel Landon, why couldn't he do anything right and he always bragged about how his car was brand new and all perfect.
"Stay right there. I'm on my way" I told her squarely, standing up grabbing the car keys off from the wooden furniture.
"Please hurry... Its really cold out here" Iris murmured, I could hear her stamping her feet on the ground trying to stay warm. I needed to move with haste. While I was driving Iris had sent me a text of her actual whereabouts, and she was located deep in the woods. Why was she there in the first place, that area was restricted. Or so I had heard.
After I jumped out I slammed the car door shut immediately pulling out my cell phone, turning on the torch. I dialed Iris's cell and I could hear the string of her ringtone echo dully from all around the thick dark forest. I flung my head to the right.
"Isabelle" I heard a voice call out from behind me which was followed by an icy touch on my shoulder.
"Jeez! Fuck Iris... Why are you creeping around like that?" I jumped around to find Iris. Her face looked so pale and white, I guess the cold must have gotten to her before I did.
"You actually came," Iris murmured, sounding surprised. Was she not expecting me to come? If I was being honest she looked rather strange to me. She looked strange, she acted strange and she spoke a bit weird.
"Yeah, why are you so surprised?" I demanded, I could feel the whispering wind all around us get even colder.
"I'm not surprised, just glad that you came," she said with a feeble smile and a low key giggle. God I could swear Iris never acted this weird before.
"So where is that idiot Landon?" I thought where that moron was, maybe I could also give him a ride then he could pick up his car tomorrow with a towing truck. Even if he doesn't deserve one bit of my sympathy, I wasn't able to leave him stranded out here.
"You worry too much Belle. Landon is a big boy and can take care of himself" Iris muttered with the same impish giggle which was starting to tug hard on my nerves last string.
"Where is Landon's car?" I kept interrogating her because something just didn't feel right to me, everything was off.
"It's parked up ahead" she continued with her giggle like she was being possessed by a demonic entity. Maybe she is just acting like this because she is drunk, I thought. Let's just get the hell outta here, maybe then she will start acting like herself because this is starting to feel very creepy.
"Sure. Let's just get out of here... Quick" I said trailing towards the car with Iris sluggishly tailing behind me. Something clearly wasn't right here. I was so preoccupied by my thoughts that I barely heard the sound of my phone buzzing in my hand. It was from an unknown number and even though I don't normally answer strangers calls I slid to answer this time.
"Hello!" No one replied. All I could hear was the upbeat sound of music coming from the other side.
"Wassup Isabelle!" A female voice finally spoke and it sounded identical to Iris's, but when I turned to look back the Iris behind me was just standing, smiling and staring at me with emotionless gaze. This was creeping me out.
"Hello, are you still there? Belle!" The voice from the other side asked.
"Yeah--" I responded, whispering a bit.
"Oh my goddess! This party is totally lit. You're really missing out a lot, trust me. You even missed the chance to see Landon dancing on a table... Naked!" She then began to laugh hysterically while I just listened.
"See I lost my phone and I can't find it so I sort of borrowed Landon's phone. I just want you to know don't wait out for me. I'm beyond wasted so I think I'm just gonna crash here tonight" oh my goddess! It didn't have to take a scientist or a tarot reader to figure out that the girl on the phone was indeed Iris. The real Iris. That would make whoever is standing behind me a clone and nothing but a fucking fake.
"Is everything OK there Belle? Are you still there because you're awfully quiet. Do you need me back? Where are you?" The real Iris shot a stream of ear-stinging questions at me. I was out, practically in the middle of bloody nowhere with some stranger that possessed the ability to look and sound like my best friend. Oh goddess what the hell do I do now.
"I'll call you back" and with those words I ended the call.
"Who was that?" The fake Iris demanded from behind me. This time she spoke there was no giggles, no nothing. She just had a straight dead serious face on. For the first time this doppelganger made Iris look intimidating.
"It was no one really important. Just another person that I owe lots of money to" I lied, but it wasn't all utterly a facade, I literally had my neck buried deep in debts and I owed dozens of people money I couldn't believe it was even possible for me to be able to pay off, not even in another lifetime. That was another reason I lived on the run.
"Ahhhh... Is that so" the fake Iris chuckled as she shook her head as though she believed my lies.
"The night air is chilly, don't you think? It reminds me of the night when we escaped from that wretched orphanage home. Do you remember that night?" I demanded, raising both of my eyebrows in anticipation for her reply.
"Ahh... Yes... How can I ever forget that silly night? I remember running so hard that I could barely breathe" her brisk tone signaled that she was unsure about what she was saying. Liar! The real Iris and I never attempted to escape from that cursed Willsbury orphanage home. That never happened. Even though I wanted to just run away countless times, Iris would always talk me out of it. This was all a test, a test that this lookalike just failed blatantly.
"That never happened" I stated "who the hell are you?! cause you're not Iris you're just a lookalike" I hissed through my teeth, staring right at my best friend's doppelganger. Suddenly, she burst out into laughter.
"When did you figure that out?" She managed to say in between laughs "I really thought that I was pulling it off"
"Yeah, at first until you started acting so fucking weird and then the phone call came" I said, my gaze unmoved. I knew that this was most likely a shape shifter or some other shape shifting creature but whatever it was, it was also after my life and for sure an epic fight to the death was about to break out because I wasn't going to just surrender easily.
"Curse that phone call. But looking at the bright side-- I succeeded in dragging you out here in the middle of nowhere. Now we are all alone" Iris lookalike chuckled with an evil smirk. It was weird seeing Iris behave like this, seeing that sinister flair in her eyes is what feared me the most.
"Well I guess I don't have any use for this face anymore" Iris doppelganger said right before she began to distort her face in an abnormal manner. I was clouded in disbelief when the person standing just a few feet away from me suddenly didn't look like Iris anymore but like Isaac, the guy I met after literature class yesterday. So he was also a monster too?
" So you're a monster too?" I asked.
"Oh Isaac Werber isn't a monster, the poor guy has been dead for months now. He was just another rich victim of mine. But I must admit his skin felt super comfortable" he burst out laughing like a crazed lunatic. Poor Isaac was killed by this sickish monster.
"So what are you then? A shapeshifter?" I inquired with a disgusted look.
"That's close enough. You see all these crappy books and fairy tale bullshit has gotten the whole world mind warped about the true concept of what exactly is a shape shifter but darling I am the real deal. I'm the all powerful trickster Alectryon" he boasted with an evil smirk. In all I learnt about how to kill a shape shifted was they could only be killed by either ripping out their hearts which was a messy option and would require me using my magic which I couldn't risk doing, the other way to kill one was by staking its heart with a wooden stake and honestly that option was more preferable by me.
"But you are indeed something else. Something rare and exquisite." He began circling me "When I got your scent it really got me intoxicated like some kind of drug. Honestly I never believed that the prophecies were true but nevertheless here I am standing before you. You're as beautiful as they said you would be. It's a shame that in a matter of minutes you would be nothing more than a dried up corpse." He growled again, this time his expression was ugly. I picked up the sharpest wooden stick I could find on the grass covered ground.
"Well are we going to fight or are you going to try talking me to death" I hissed, ready for another fight. He growled, jumping high up to the sky like a fucking cat, then he lunged at me with razor sharp talons. What the hell! He is somehow mutating parts of his body just to distract me. He had greenish scales all over his hands as he delivered a hard blow on my chest, I'm fucking going to cut his skin off for that. He tried swinging for my neck but I easily ducked diving my stake beside his midsection.
"You're a bit slow don't you think?" I spat with a scornful smile that only seemed to make him all the more furious. This time he attacked me at the same time transforming his face to different faces of people I knew. It was like he could somehow see the faces of every single person I have come across. In just a quick second he looked like Prof. Darwin the literature teacher, then like Landon and then like my mom.
"Mom!" The word escaped my lips and before I knew it I was staring at an identical figure of my mom. Her sandy blonde hair fell around her neck messily, with her pretty pair of aquarium blue eyes, she had everything. She looked exactly like her except this time she had a sinister smirk on her face. It was then I realized that I had just fallen into his trick. That was not my mom on the contrary it was just a lookalike but that was already a second too late as I felt razor like claws invade my stomach, I staggered a bit before falling on the ground paralyzed not being able to move a thing. The sickish sound of laughter was all I could hear as I began to fade away into a fog. And I was out cold.
"Lights out sweetheart".