“AAAAAAAARRRRRGHHHHH”
“AAAAARRRGGGHH”
And then Amanda stopped falling, opening her eye she found herself face down on the ground. Where was she? How was she here? Why wasn’t she in catastrophic pain? Actually, why wasn’t she dead? A fall of that height should have killed her.
“OK don’t freak out”
Amanda rolled on to her back and then manically scrambled backwards across the floor until she was up against a wall. Her eyes scanned the room for an exit, there wasn’t one, Amanda’s sense of reality and depth fell away from her as she looked past the women wearing her face, the room went on for ever “Wh-wh-wh” the words wouldn’t come, she pointed pathetically at the doppelganger.
“Always so dramatic” the imposter rolled her eyes.
“Wh-why do you have m-my face? M-m-m my body?”
The pretender squatted down on her toes in front of Amanda.
“How do you know it’s your face? Perhaps it is mine. Maybe you stole my face and I want it back” The evil mirror image raised a hand to Amanda’s face, she swatted it away.
“Still some fight in you. Good. Please, have a seat at my desk” Amanda’s doppelganger got up and turned around, walking off into the infinite expanse behind her.
“There’s nothing there.” Amanda found her voice again.
“Yes, there is” with a snap of the fingers a desk apparated out of thin air.
Amanda looked at the desk and then at her copy. “Are you the devil?”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“I forgot you came from a religious world. No, I am not the devil.” Sitting down behind the desk she asked. “Are you going to join me or not?”
Cautiously Amanda got up off the floor, before moving anywhere she examined the room again. Other than the desk and two chairs there was nothing in here, the walls were devoid off all features, as was the floor and the ceiling. There were no reference points beyond the desk and chairs.
“Don’t look at it too long it will make you –”
Amanda bent over double and heaved.
“For fuck sake”
Suddenly the room bulged and popped, it was massive. There were paintings, tapestries, shelves, books, screens, tools. The room was chaos.
“Don’t judge, this fate becomes yours. Sit, please.”
Amanda did. “Where am I?”
“Home but that doesn’t matter now. I was just trying to trick you. Anyway, how did it go this time?”
“What?” Amanda was flabbergasted, what was going on here?
“How did it go?”
“How did what go?”
“The life, you came here screaming again, I guess you died. Again”
“I’m dead? Again?”
The woman sighed “No, yes, technically. It is a really difficult question to answer and I’m not prepared to explain it to you yet again. Just so in half a second you come back here and we go through this all over again.”
“What?”
“I am you, you are me. I am your future. You are my past. We are immortal. We can hop between dimensions, travel through time, create and destroy life. Recently you got bored and decided that you were going to live a life where you cannot remember any of this. You wanted something normal but somehow got involved in an assassination attempt on the Premier and now you are trying to right some wrong, I think your father is keeping a secret from you, is your sister dead?”
Amanda nodded dumbly
“Yeah that’s the secret, she isn’t. She also turns out to be the assassin. Look it doesn’t really matter, you forget all of this after you walk through that door.”
“Door?”
“Yeah we are going old school on this one. Of course you don’t have to go back through, I can return your memories back to you and we can stop this charade.”
Amanda got up and walked towards the door, something about it called to her. She knew on the other side of it there was an unfinished destiny to be completed. She stepped through it without hesitation.
“AAAAAAAARRRRRGHHHHH”
“AAAAARRRGGGHH”
Great Jo thought to herself as she looked at herself screaming on the floor, here we go again.