Okay Kevin, keep it together… So Ms. Truman turned into a large insect, and we are also surrounded by a hoard of fake versions of our classmates. Huh, that’s a sentence I never thought I’d say. It’s dark out here, so it’s a little hard to tell what she’s doing. The only thing I can really figure out is that she isn’t attacking us yet, for whatever reason.

Before I can figure out what to make of this, I hear a girl’s voice call out from behind me, saying “Hey there cutie!” Before I can react, I am roughly yanked to the ground by both of my arms. After a bunch of confused pushing and wrestling, I somehow end up spread eagle on the ground and at the mercy of two girls, one pinning my arms down, and the other laying across me. I recognize them from the girls’ basketball team, although I don’t know their names.

“Hey, let me go! I’m not falling for this stupid trick again,” I tell them bluntly. “I never said I want you to…”

“You don’t have to say it, Kevin, we know,” the girl laying across me cuts me off, as her friend giggles mischievously.

“No… I mean… I can’t…” But my heart is racing so hard that words start to fail me.

“You’re never going to get an opportunity like this again. Ever. Just go with it,” she tells me in a sultry voice. “Just forget about everything else and…” Suddenly, something weird happens to her. Her eyelids begin dropping, and her body language relaxes. Then, she falls face first into the snow. I feel the hands that were holding my arms unclench, and the other girl falls over as well. Zoe walks up to me and starts pulling the first girl off me by her wrist; their sudden passing out must have been her doing.

“Need a hand?” she asks me.

“Yeah,” I agree. She helps me up to my feet, and as I start to regain my bearings, I realize what they were about to do just then and begin to feel angry and humiliated…

I look around to see how the others are doing, but I do a double take when I see that other version of myself, now dressed up in a red coat identical to mine. He pushes away some girl who was coming onto Nova, saying “I got you, bro!”

“Oh, thanks Kevin!” Nova tells him appreciatively.

“Hey buddy, wait,” I call out to him. “That’s a fake…”

Nova’s head whips towards me. “Huh? Oh no, two Kevins now? Where’s Ruth at?”

“I’m over here!” Ruth calls from the crowd. I turn towards the direction of her voice to see her wrestling with two boys who I think are on the football team that have her by either arm. I run over and easily push both of them off of her.

Ruth takes a moment to steady herself, taking a deep breath. “Thanks, Kevin. Uh, Nova, the one by Zoe is the real one…”

I turn back towards Nova and see a… very awkward scene of the fake version of me patting his head, which Nova seems to be enjoying a lot. He doesn’t seem to have even heard what Ruth said. I pull my gun on the imposter, which makes him stop and back up a few paces with his hands up.

“Oh… right,” Nova says, coming back to his senses. “Sorry…”

“Where did Ashley and Ted run off to?” Anja questions as she walks into the circle. I notice that the group of fake students she’s walking away from are blinking and holding their heads, clearly disoriented.

“They managed to escape from this crowd and go into the woods,” Ruth explains. “We better go join them, shouldn’t we?”

I feel someone grabbing my arm, and a completely different girl, one who’s olive-skinned and might be on the soccer team, has snuck up on me. She flutters her eyelashes at me and asks, “Please don’t leave, the fun is just starting here!”

“Uh, Zoe?” I ask. Zoe knows what to do, and the girl who was grabbing me falls to the ground as well, seemingly fast asleep.

“I’m not waiting for another one of these weirdos to start grabbing me,” Nova resolves. “Let’s go!”

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I wrestle a boy off of me, slamming him upside down into the snow. In the confusion, I’ve lost sight of the others. The crowd is now filled with random kids grabbing and pulling on each other, laughing, screaming…

“Where did she go?” I ask to nobody in particular. I scan the horizon for a sight of the huge insectoid that Ms. Truman turned into.

“I can smell her… over yonder!” A familiar gruff voice calls out. I shove aside a few people and find Ted being thrown back and forth like a volleyball by a group of three girls, all of them laughing derisively at him. With one stroke of my sword, all of them are sawn in half at the hip, and they scream shrilly and disappear into mist. Ted falls to the ground, but quickly jumps back to his feet and points towards a forest away from the crowd.

“Let’s get out of this mess and finish this,” I tell him. We dart out of the crowd and to the edge of the woods. Before going in, I turn back and check to see if any of the others followed me, but I don’t see any of them.

“Damn it, the others must be still caught up in that,” I bemoan. “We need to go back and…”

“Something’s coming!” Ted growls. Before I can react, I feel a pair of pincers grab me around the waist and pull me into the snowy woods.

I am so fucking tired of this palace.

I’m lifted into the air and turned around, and there she is. Ms. Truman’s face is even more revolting up close. Her buggy eyes are what nightmares are made of.

“We’re not playing this game again,” I tell her spitefully. “I will not hesitate to light myself on fire again.”

“Oh, not so fast Ashley!” she says, her voice shaking with a manic excitement. “You don’t want anything to happen to your darling, do you?”

She pulls another one of her thin appendages out of the woods and holds up Zoe, who is shouting and trying to desperately wriggle free.

“I’m going to show you both what happens to naughty girls who interfere with my pursuits!” she tells us savagely.

I try to fight her off as well, hating her guts, but the pincers are just as firm as the vines were. I have no choice but to bring back my other form… but what about Zoe? But wait, is this the…

Completely unrelated to anything I did, the arm holding me bursts into flames, causing me to fall and hit the snow with a crunch. Ted has caught up to us, his teeth bared and his eyes wild.

“Oops, butterfingers!” Ms. Truman taunts as she carelessly tosses Zoe through the air. Zoe screams, and I hear crashing branches…

I don’t think. I leap to my feet and sprint into the night in the direction Zoe was thrown. I hurtle past tree after tree, scanning the canopy for signs of her. Then, I hear the loudest crack yet. I turn my head to see that Zoe had flown into a narrower tree with enough force to splinter it. I jump underneath her with my arms out and catch her. However, the tree then falls forward and on top of both of us, knocking us onto the snowy ground.

It doesn’t hurt too badly, but the tree is heavy enough to where I struggle to push it off me. I turn to see Zoe trapped in a similar predicament.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Zoe, are you okay?” I ask.

Her expression changes to a wide smile and big googly eyes. “Oh Ashley, my hero! You saved me! How about you come and get your complimentary make-out session?”

It’s the fake Zoe. God. Damn it.

I scream with agitation and punch the tree trunk. It doesn’t really help move it, but I do feel a little better afterwards.

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Soon after entering the woods, we don’t need Ruth’s guidance to find the right spot; the sound of gunshots and the bright glow of fire are more than enough to guide our way. We arrive at a part of the forest where most of the surrounding trees seem to be burning down, and in the middle of them, Ted the armadillo is putting up a vicious fight. Ms. Truman is trying to grab him but seems to be struggling because of his small size. Ted would simply leap out of the way, or burrow rapidly through the snow to pop out behind her, and then use the opportunity to take a shot at her flank.

“YOU CAN’T KEEP GETTING AWAY FROM ME, YOU LITTLE RODENT!” Ms. Truman screeches, more furious than I’ve ever heard her.

“Hey guys, watch this,” Nova says. He starts spinning that hammer around really fast, and then sort of propels himself super-fast right into her side.

I don’t know what he thought this was going to do, but I don’t think it worked how he planned it. Ms. Truman yelps and scuttles over with her spindly legs, catching herself before falling over. Then, before Nova could hit the ground, she grabs him and pulls him in front of her to look at him.

“Oh, you remind me of that boy from years ago!” she tells him dreamily. “Such lovely dark skin…”

“Eurgh! Let go of me!” Nova shouts, trying to squirm out of her grasp.

I jump forward, finding to my own surprise that I’m able to clear many yards with just one jump. I use this newfound agility to leap up onto the arm holding Nova. I shoot the arm near where the pincer is, causing her to drop him to the ground. However, saving him came at a price. The other pincer quickly catches me and hoists me into the air…

“LET HIM GO!” Screams an awful female voice that I don’t immediately recognize as being Zoe’s. Then, right next to Ms. Truman’s head, what looks like a mini nuclear warhead explodes, scorching her face with a blinding burst of green light.

Ms. Truman quickly starts moving through the trees, away from the others… I try to fight myself free, but well, there’s a reason why Nova couldn’t get out on his own.

“I must have you… you’re mine… mine…” Ms. Truman says in a low, raspy voice that sort of reminds me of Gollum from Lord of the Rings .

But then, I hear more gunshots, and I turn my head down to see that Ted had somehow grabbed onto one of her legs and is holding on for dear life with one hand while randomly firing towards her head with the other.

“I ain’t letting you get any child again!” he booms in his southern drawl.

“I ain’t asking for your permission!” Ms. Truman hisses back. She flicks him off with her other hand, sending him hurtling into the trees.

She brings me up to her face, looking particularly demented now that it is partially burned by Zoe’s attack. Then, to my utter horror, she brings me steadily closer and closer to her mouth. I make a last-ditch attempt to pull myself free or reach my gun, but it’s no good.

She brings me into her mouth… I’m put into a slimy tube which sends me sliding down. With a thud, I land somewhere which… uh, doesn’t look anything like a stomach.

I’m in a simple chamber, dimly lit by candles around the walls. A few feet away is what looks like a hot tub. Inside of it is Ms. Truman, back in her previous form, with the blonde hair that turns into vines. But, except for her head and the ends of her knees, she’s entirely underwater, and I realize that…

I turn right around and start scrambling to climb back up the tube, but it is too slippery for me to make any headway. Then, something grabs my ankle and pulls me towards the water.

“Let’s just get you all warmed up, and then we’ll go back and join the party…” Ms. Truman says.

“No! Stop it! Don’t do this!” I plead. But Ms. Truman just shakes her head at me with a smug, satisfied smile of finally getting what she wants.

My feet enter the warm water, and I lay there on my front as the vines begin caressing me. “You want to know when I knew you were the one?” she muses from behind me. “When you talked about that trip to California… and I realized you’re another one of those boys who nobody would take the word of over mine. Given your history, nobody will even think to challenge my word…”

I feel something biting me through my robe, which doesn’t really hurt but instead makes my skin crawl with a thrilling sensation. I whip my head around to find, with utmost horror, that the ends of the vines have turned into snake heads with a yellow and light blue striped pattern.

To add to the number of insane sensations I’m feeling all at once, I hear a voice in my head that sounds like Ruth’s. It says, Kevin, can you hear me? We’re going to get you out of there. Are you okay?

I can’t think of anything to say back. I just scream, trying to kick and punch the snake-vines off me. They start to wrap around my limbs, immobilizing me…

As an insane last resort, I lower my head and sink my teeth into one of the vines, hoping this will make it release me. At first, it doesn’t seem like it did anything. But then, I see a dark, sickly rash start to spread across the vine…

The vines slacken, and I quickly use the opportunity to struggle free. I pull my feet out of the water and stand up. I quickly draw my gun and turn on her.

However, I don’t think I need to shoot. The rash has quickly spread all across her as she stares at her hands with utter horror. Her skin is turning purple and shriveled in front of our eyes… and then, the walls around us seem to be collapsing, rubble falling from the ceiling.

I hear a thud behind me and turn to see that Anja has joined us.

“Kevin! Hold on to my arm, I’m gonna get you out of here!” she tells me.

I trust her and grab hold, and she unleashes a tornado of wind at the ground which quickly propels us up the tube. Soon, we emerge from the mouth again, where I see Nova was single handedly holding it open, the stress of doing so making him go red in the face. When he sees we’ve flown out, he ungracefully lets the mouth go and falls down, landing on his face.

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I keep scrambling to drag the tree trunk off me, but I can barely get it to budge. Fake Zoe isn’t really any help. I claw at it for minutes on end, frustrated that I can’t seem to make any impact on it.

Then, to my shock, a figure emerges from the trees; me, but wearing a sparkly, pink dress. I’m even more shocked when she offers me her hand. I take it, and she slowly pulls me from under the tree, the snow just slippery enough to allow me to budge out.

I get to my feet and regain my bearings as she pulls out the fake Zoe. Something is different; both fakes have this morose demeanor. I start to wonder if something happened elsewhere in the palace which affected them.

“If I may ask, why did you help me?” I say to her.

She dislodges the fake Zoe with a final yank, and then says, “Don’t you want to be there? When she gets what she deserves?”

I ponder this vague reply. Does this mean that it’s already over?

“A-Ashley?” the fake Zoe asks in a low voice, her face as pale as a ghost. “We… we can’t play along with her games anymore.”

The other me nods solemnly.

I feel that sensation again… the same one I felt when Lucy talked to me. Only this time, it’s a different familiar voice I hear.

Ashley, where are you? Ruth asks.

I got trapped under a fallen tree, but I’m fine now, I answer. How do I find you?

And then, I feel it… something calling to me from the woods. Knowing this must be Ruth’s doing, I follow it.

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Kevin and I land in the snow with a crunch. I quickly scramble to my feet and turn back towards the insect thing, but as it turns out, there was no need.

The body is melting, changing into bloody, purple goo, all of the limbs and thorax lost to a pile of sludge, which then melts to the ground into a puddle, leaving only one identifiable figure behind. It’s Ms. Truman, but back to normal. Brown hair and work clothes. She doesn’t talk. She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t pout. She only looks at the ground with a blank expression. Nothing but defeat. Her face lit by the light of the burning trees from Ted’s earlier assault.

I look over at where Nova fell. He’s not moving… I quickly run over to him, feeling a sharp panic rise within me.

“Nova! Are you okay?” I call out. I sink to my knees, grab him, and flip him onto his front. He is unconscious… but, otherwise he looks fine. He must’ve exhausted himself from the effort he was exerting. I put my hand on him, trying to heal him… but the juice I used to blow us out of there must have been all that I had.

“Kevin, do you have healing moves by any chance?” I ask. When I don’t hear a response, I stand back up and turn to him.

Kevin is conscious, but clearly unwell. He’s sitting on the ground, holding his arms around himself and shivering as if he’s cold.

I step towards him. “Kevin?” I question. I have a flashback to when this nightmare all began, when we first went into the palace… how I felt when I was suspended helplessly…

“Kevin… did she… get you?” I ask.

“K-kinda,” he answers meekly.

Ruth is now running towards him, saying “Oh… oh no… please, don’t… how could…” She stops in front of him, gritting her teeth, and looking deeply disturbed. Then, for once, she seems to be at a loss for words.

“Do you need a hand, Kevin?” Zoe asks, walking up to him as well. She takes his hand and helps him to his feet. Looking deeply sympathetic, she moves towards Kevin to hug him, but unexpectedly, he flinches away from her.

“Oh… okay, I’m sorry,” she says, looking confused and a little hurt.

Ashley and Ted both emerge from the trees, Ashley looking so exhausted that I’m worried she might pass out too. Ashley beholds the puddle of sludge with her English teacher sitting in the middle and says, “So, that’s it, then.”

“I know I said I’d do the victory speech next time,” I say, “but honestly… I’m not really feeling it.”

I start to hear it then… an unintelligible whispering coming from all around us. I think of Ms. Truman’s hissing voice when we first entered, and I ready my gun…

“Don’t worry,” a voice says, and I turn to find that it’s Ms. Truman speaking. “They’re not here for you… but you should get out of here.”

“Hold on,” Ruth interjects. “Were you being honest earlier, when you said that the people who gave you that app would kill you?”

“If it gets out how I trapped you all here… yes,” she answers simply. “But it’s okay. I’m ready to accept whatever I get.”

Then, something rises out of the pool of sludge. Hands and arms grasp out and grab hold of Ms. Truman. Briefly, we can hear the voices clearly. Disembodied, male and female alike, all crying out in pain.

“I thought it was all just a bad dream… then I woke up, and I realized it was you…”

“You ruined everything for me… you pinned me against the wall, and you took away everything…”

“You told me to be a good sister… but I never felt the same again, I never felt safe…”

“You said if I told anyone what you did, I’d be outing myself… I was so terrified of what they’d think, so I stayed silent…”

“That wasn’t ‘the luckiest day of my life’… I just don’t feel right… I don’t know if I ever will again…”

Ms. Truman’s body was dragged underneath, and the voices went quiet, leaving only the flickering sound of the last few smoldering embers.