I lost my phone in March of this year. I’m a bit of a technophile. It was the latest and greatest Samsung Galaxy smartphone and I adored it. I had a protective case on it, screen protector, and every level of security and encryption you can get. I had the thumbprint scanner set as my password and one failed swipe led to a lockdown that required an account password to reactivate. When I checked my bag after returning from lunch one day, it was gone. I called the diner, I called the bank where I had stopped for a quick withdrawl, I called the phone a hundred times. When I couldn’t track it down in an hour, I called my phone company and had it completely disabled. It seems a little intense, but I work in a slightly classified area of the medical field. I’m allowed to use my personal phone for work, as long as I allow my office to encrypt and track the phone. Not even our IT gurus could tell me where it went, they assumed it fell out of my bag and broke somewhere on the street. I got a replacement the next day, let IT work it over and got it back all secured and ready for a thumbprint. I locked it up and went about the rest of my week without really thinking about what happened. The next Monday, I crawled out of bed, sipped my coffee, and checked my phone. I had 39 new notifications. My heart skipped a small beat the way it does when you experience something unexpected. It was 13 missed calls and 26 text messages from a number I didn’t recognize; and what’s worse is that I, or what appeared to be me, had responded. Missed call from 99xxxxxxx 99xxxxxxx[3:41am]: hey where r u Self[3:42am]: On my way Missed call from 99xxxxxxx 99xxxxxxx[3:44am]: Hurry im fuckin freezing Self[3:45am]: It’s not that cold, you pansy 99xxxxxxx[3:47am]: easy for u to say in ur nice warm car. just fuckin hurry theres a car parked here and i think i saw someone inside of it Self[3:47am]: Do you hear the Twilight Zone theme? You should probably run. 99xxxxxxx[3:49am]: fuck u just hurry! Self[3:49am]: You should probably run 99xxxxxxx[3:50am]: what? ur not funny Missed call from 99xxxxxxx 99xxxxxxx[3:51am]: holy shit theres def someone in there 99xxxxxxx[3:51am]: where r u pls hurry pls im freakin out Missed call from 99xxxxxxx Missed call from 99xxxxxxx 990-xxx-xxxx[3:51am]: WHERE R U ANSWER NOW Missed call from 99xxxxxxx 99xxxxxxx[3:53am]: i can hear someone talking but i cant see them its too dark. im gonna walk down Major pls come get me pls I dont feel safe Missed call from 99xxxxxxx Self[3:55am]: You should probably run 99xxxxxxx[3:55am]: FUCK U ALLISON FUCK OFF Self[3:55am]: You should probably run Self[3:55am]: You should probably run Self[3:56am]: You should probably run Self[3:56am]: You should probably run Self[3:56am]: You should probably run Self[3:56am]: You should probably run Missed call from 99xxxxxxx Missed call from 99xxxxxxx Missed call from 99xxxxxxx 99xxxxxxx[3:59am]: LEAVE ME ALONE I KNOW ITS U I SAW YOU Self[4:00am]: Keep running little piggy. Oink oink oink 99xxxxxxx[4:01am]: i called the cops. fuck you. Missed call from 99xxxxxxx Missed call from 99xxxxxxx 99xxxxxxx[4:02am]: i called the cops. fuck you. 99xxxxxxx[4:03am]: i know ur hiding ur fuckin scared now huh? 99xxxxxxx[4:03am]: ur a big bitch until someone calls the police huh?! 99xxxxxxx[4:03am]: fuck you!!!!!! Self[4:06am]: I Self[4:06am]: See Self[4:06am]: You 99xxxxxxx[4:07am]: im sorry im sorry stop it now please stop 99xxxxxxx[4:07am]: ill go i wont tell anyone anything ill never call again 99xxxxxxx[4:07am]: I CAN HEAR U STILL PLS LEAVE ME ALONE 99xxxxxxx[4:09am]: IM SORRY 99xxxxxxx[4:09am]: IM SORRY 99xxxxxxx[4:09am]: IM SORRY Missed call from 990-xxx-xxxx 99xxxxxxx[4:11am]: IM SORRY 99xxxxxxx[4:12am]: IKEJM SORTRY! 99xxxxxxx[4:12am]: IKEJM SORTRY! 99xxxxxxx[4:12am]: I’;M SOERRYH! I felt the sick taste of panic crawling up the back of my throat. I scrolled through the conversation a hundred times. That wasn’t me. I hadn’t done that. I sleep like the dead and for at least nine hours every night. I get up at 6 AM and I hit my snooze alarm twice. I got dressed for work and rushed to the IT Department of my office. I slammed my fist against the door until Kane popped it open, looking about as half dead at 7:42 AM as I did. “I need your help.” I sputtered. I must’ve looked as panicked as I felt, because he silently stepped aside and waved me in. IT had individual offices for their 4 senior technicians, one of which was Kane. He had a massive multiscreen system with more USB and serial ports than I could fathom and about a billion system and network diagnostics running at all times. “What’s up?” He grunted into his coffee, plopping down in his chair. I unlocked my phone and brought up the texts, handing it over. Kane read through them and I watched his right eyebrow slowly lift into an arch. “What’s this?” “I don’t know. I was asleep.” “Well yeah, you sleep like a third grader. Nine PM to 6 AM every single day.” Kane sounded like he wanted to tease, but he was too focused. “But what is this?” I shrugged, shrugged again, and then dropped into an extra chair on the side of his huge wrap-around desk. “I have no idea. I didn’t know what else to do. Can you see… where? how?” Kane nodded, plugging the phone in and turning to his computer. “Yeah, give me a couple of hours. Want a spare phone?” I shook my head and moved back toward the door. “No.” “Really?” He was staring at the back of my head and I could feel it. Like I said, total technophile; you typically couldn’t catch me without a phone in my hand or to my ear. “Yeah, really.” I sneered it, though I didn’t mean to. I slammed the door behind me, and that I meant to do. I should clarify, as it is important to this story, that Kane and I have been friends for a long time. Almost 13 of my 25 years of life. We met online on your typical alternative-goth unique black snowflake forum and bonded pretty well. When I moved to his area for university, we bonded further. He took over the website we met on when the original owner decided he was ready to abandon the project. I stepped up as an admin and with his technological smarts and my wordsmithing, we were able to get it back up and running in a few days. We filled out the rest of the staff for further help and the misplaced misfits slowly started to find their way back. It’s a nice little online family, about 100 active members at any time. Most of them have been around for years, most of us are friends on facebook and follow each other on tumblr. Kane called me back down to his office about three hours later. I was there quicker than I probably should have been, but he was waiting at the door to jerk it open. “Get in here.” He pulled me in by my wrist and locked the door behind me. Before I could even get upset with him, he turned on me. “What did you do?” I felt my eyes widen so much I thought they might fall out. “What? Nothing!” Kane held a sheet of paper in one of his fists. “The number you were texting? The owner is a girl that was found with her face slashed up in the campsites near Burgundy.” I felt my knees turn into jelly underneath me, lowering me into a chair. my hands were folded in my lap, despite not putting them there, and I was staring at the ridiculous argyle patterned carpet for a full minute before Kane yelled “ALLISON”. I looked up at him after a second, my mouth hanging open. “She said my name in the texts, didn’t she? How did she know my name?” “Allison, I have to call the cops. I have to show them what I found. The news said there was nothing on her body, purse and all ID stolen. I have to tell them what’s on your phone. If we can prove you were sleeping, them-” “How the fuck are we going to prove I was asleep, Kane?!” I yelled it, pushing my hands through my hair. Why were there texts from a dead girl in my fucking phone? Kane went quiet. He shifted from foot to foot before unplugging the phone and handing it back to me. “I’m coming over tonight. We’ll figure this out but not on work servers. They watch what I do here.” I held the phone loose in my hands in the hope that it might fall out and shatter. I looked up to Kane with a weak smile of thanks and slipped back out into the hallway. I felt like every eye in the office was on me, like they knew. They knew there were dead girl texts in my phone. I kept my head on straight for the rest of the day. On the way home, I stopped and grabbed up a bottle of wine and a bag of cheese crackers. Kane was waiting outside of my apartment, frowning down into his laptop. “Are you leaching my wifi from the hallway?” “Yes.” He grunted. I unlocked the door and he slipped in behind me, shutting and locking it behind him. He immediately went to my kitchen table and I set a glass of wine in front of him. We were both in full business casual, the air thick and tense. “I’m sorry.” Kane said after watching me take a long swig from the open mouth of the wine bottle. “I thought about today… at work. You wouldn’t’ve brought the phone to me if you did something wrong. You wouldn’t have handed me evidence. I shouldn’t’ve… I’m sorry.” I swirled the bottle against the tabletop a little before taking another long swig. I slammed it back down and politely rubbed the wine kiss across the back of my hand. “I understand.” I had spent all afternoon at work reading every article I could find on the body. No one had been reported missing, no one had seen or heard anything despite over seventy campers scattered across the grounds. She had wandered into the campground where she was found, police had said. They followed a blood trail for almost a mile until they lost it, but it was going deeper into the forest. There were no signs of sexual assault or defensive wounds, but all of the wounds were ‘pre mortem’, caused before she died. She wandered the woods with her face and throat slashed to pieces. The only blood on her was her own, her arms covered in it from trying to hold her skin together. I shook myself out of the thought and swallowed another dry mouthful of red wine. “Do you think someone would try to set you up for this?” Kane asked after holding out his glass for a refill. I shrugged as I poured. “I don’t have any enemies that I can think of. No jilted ex’s, no ex friends.” “You’re the perfect description of ‘mild-mannered’.” Kane agreed with a sigh as he leaned back in his chair. “And generally a very anxious person.” I pointed out, staring at my phone in the middle of the table. “So, this happened after we got you a replacement?” I nodded. “Same number, most of my stuff was saved on the cloud so I imported it and it was like the same phone again.” “Did you ever recover the one you lost?” Kane pulled out one of his notebooks from his bag and started taking notes. I shook my head. “No, I looked everywhere. I retraced my steps for days but never found it.” “And we couldn’t track it, so it’s not on.” I ran my tongue against my teeth and stared at the edge of his notebook. “What if someone could transfer the information off of it without turning it on?” Kane shook his head. “It’d need to be on, at least for a second. On the cloud it’s different, it’s your off site storage. Your encryptions and work sensitive information never transferred off the phone unless at a licensed station. They couldn’t get anything important.” “What if they didn’t want anything important? What if they just… needed a new number?” Kane looked up. “A new number to stalk someone from?” My throat was dry but Kane looked invigorated. “I didn’t even think of it like that.” He pulled his laptop out and I leaned back in my chair. He started clicking away and, with nothing better to do, I made us some dinner. We ate and drank and brainstormed until late into the night. I fell asleep on the couch the the soft click-clack of Kane’s keyboard. When I woke the next morning, it was still dark outside. My head was aching and my guts were churning. Kane was hunched over the kitchen table, out cold with his face in the warmth of his laptop’s fan. I grabbed my phone off the table and went to the bathroom. I took care of business, then decided this headache deserved a bath. I popped some painkillers with tap water, ran a bath so hot the air became thick, and crawled in. As usual, I started to browse Reddit on my phone. I’m a lurker by a choice, a silent participator in things like secret santa and the occasional contributor to writing subreddits. I’ve always loved nosleep, but I’ve never posted there. Not ever. Not once. But as I scrolled down the front page, my notification for a message went off. It was a comment reply, something mild and pointless, but when I went to comment in question… I didn’t write it. I sat up in the water and started to check other things. Tumblr, Facebook, Triviacrack. They all had activity that I hadn’t done. Not that I didn’t remember doing, but things I had not done. Unlike most creepy stories, I have suffered zero lost time. I have a meticulous, vaguely OCD schedule and every minute of my life is well accounted for. I drained the tub, threw on a robe and ran to Kane. I shook him awake and showed him what I found. He blinked hard at the phone a few times before… smiling. “There she is.” I lowered myself in the chair beside him, cold and drippy. “What? What do you mean?” “I found her last night. She’s been all over Blacklight. She’s been all over our private Trello board. It’s nothing like I’ve ever seen before. She’s just… pretending to be you. It’s the most ridiculous identity theft I’ve ever seen. She literally took over your Clementine moniker.” “Why the fuck would anyone do that? If she wanted it, she can fucking have it. It’s the internet.” Kane shrugged and brought up a grainy image of a girl in a dark room. It was a small apartment with paneling on the walls. She had black hair and thick black shadows covering her eyes. “I got into the laptop she transferred your info to and this is the best picture I could get.” I was pacing now, staring at that face. “Any idea at all why she would do this?” Kane shook his head. “No… but I bet I can find out.” I had decided to make coffee. I looked up at him from where I filled the press, head tilted like a curious dog. “How?” “What if I talk to her on Blacklight? Act like I still think it’s you. Maybe I can scare her off.” Our conversation was stalling by the grinding of coffee beans wrapping the apartment in a crunchy yell of noise. As I watched the little beans get smushed and crunched and destroyed, I found myself remembering that girl’s face and wishing I could push it into a coffee press. I remember the dead girl and the text messages and wondered if my little thief could really be responsible. And then I realized how stupid it was to think she wasn’t. I turned to Kane as soon as the coffee beans stopped grinding. “Talk to her, but befriend her.” I hooked the coffee up to drip and moved back to him. “Can you make me a new account on Blacklight and give it admin? Tell her it’s a programmer friend of yours. And then, I want to fuck with her. Like our April Fools joke from last year? With the spam accounts that could directly talk to users and everyone freaked out? We need something like that.” Kane had a devious look in her eye. “What are you trying to do?” “Scare her into giving herself up. For whatever she’s done.” Kane looked at me for a moment. “You think those messages were her too?” “Unless she took the phone for someone else and let them have the sim card after she got my info, yeah.” I was the one shrugging now. “What other explanation is there?” Kane opened his laptop back up. “Alright, let’s go Catfishing.” I came back to the table with two fresh cups of coffee and a plate of milk and sugar. “This is a really weird form of Catfishing, honestly. We are who we say we are and she’s not.” Kane snorted as he tossed sugar into his coffee. “Get your laptop, Al. It’s going to be a long day.” We followed her around the internet for three days. We had Saturday and Sunday without issue, but had to separately call in to our departments to keep at it on Monday. Kane talked to her, felt her out. I programmed waves of spambots that had her name, online moniker, and threatening messages in them. Some of them were discrete, some flew right over her head. Kane even got bored at times and flat out tried to incriminate himself, but she was too daft to pick up on it. We mocked her and things she said. She was sometimes good at pretending to be me, sometimes not. ““No, I wasn’t Clementine until 2009. But I’ve been that way for ages and I’m not changing for some freaky spam. This name means a lot to me, where and when I got it are memories I’m very attached to.”” What a load of fucking bullshit. It’s from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, just like every other Clementine before the Walking Dead video games. I finally got tired of it. Kane had tracked the IPs she was posting from to a small town not too far from us. We were either going to break her or turn her in. At 5 pm on Monday, after almost 72 hours of obsessive online stalking, Kane and I each sent her one last message. (Kane)welcomeallie: nous vous verrons bientôt (Me)BillYEvret4546: nous savons qui vous êtes It was almost a full 24 hours after we sent the last messages that she posted the Nosleep post. I’m an admin on a small website & weird things have been happening. I need advice. My phone exploded with messages and post replies and I logged into a throwaway account and watched it unfold. Surely she wasn’t this much of an idiot. Kane messaged me over the private work IM with 2 throwaway account names and passwords. He and I flooded the post and private inbox with messages. They would flow into my accounts as well and I’d never touch them, seeing how long it took her to view. After two working hours like this, we took a long lunch and went back to my place. Kane had a new image of her and even without the shadows, her eyes looked like big black holes. “Creepy.” I shuddered, refreshing the page to watch new comments roll in. She was replying innocently enough, completely ignoring the solid advice that would’ve blocked us from being able to stay on her like this. Other people were making throwaway accounts to creep on her with and I couldn’t be more ecstatic. I watched her flounder and panic and then finally, fresh brilliance creeped up on me. As the comments started to slow, I found one of the creeper comments I wasn’t responsible for and replied to it for her. “Stop it. Stop. Just stop.” Her replies stopped abruptly. She stopped replying to Kane on Blacklight or in messenger and when he tried to call her on skype, the call forwarding pushed it to my phone. We had to go back to work, but I sat on the silent accounts for the rest of the day. I watched everything go dark and silent and I assumed she was pretending to take the helpful Nosleep advice she had received. But that night, new texts started rolling in. Self [09:09PM]: Where are you? 99xxxxxxx [09:11PM]: Library. Self [9:11PM]: Want to hang out? 99xxxxxxx[09:15PM]: No, studying. Self [9:16PM]: Hang out with me!!! 99xxxxxxx[9:22PM]: YOU should also be studying Self [9:22PM]: Fine, I’ll come to the library. 99xxxxxxx[9:34PM]: hey are you still coming? The power went out in the building, I think everyone left pretty quick, I don’t hear anyone around. Could you come up to Floor 6 and walk down with me? I’m creeped out. Self [9:34PM]: I’m here. 99xxxxxxx[9:34PM]: Where??? Self [9:34PM]: here (: I wasn’t waiting for it to go any further. I wasn’t about to have text messages from a dead jane doe on my phone again. I called Kane and told him what was happening. He was at my door 10 minutes later with 4 new text messages in. He connected my phone to a small tablet device and started to do some crazy pc guru stuff as my phone kept going off. I paced and waited, reading the messages on my screen. 99xxxxxxx[9:45PM]: I guess I’m heading downstairs. Self [9:45PM]: Are you? 99xxxxxxx[9:47PM]: The door to come out of the stairwell on Floor 3 is fucked, I’m trapped between 4 and 3. Please come open the door. Self[9:48PM]: Coming (: And then... 99xxxxxxx[9:49PM]: Holy shit I think I just heard someone screaming. Do you think someone tripped on the stairs. Are you close? Self[9:49PM]: Headed your way! (: “Holy shit.” Kane was on his feet, groping for his car keys. “They’re at the Technical University.” I already had the door open and he was on my heels. We drove full speed to the university, straight to the library building. There were a few cars scattered in the parking lot, and a few students milling around smoking. I slammed my hand on the security call button on the sidewalk and we ran toward the library. Kane was on the phone to the cops when I opened the door and let myself in the totally black lobby. I used my phone as a flashlight and moved to the lobby desk. There was no one there, but there was a paper cutter. I cracked off the sharpened piece from the top and held it by the fitted handle like a machete. “Here!” Kane whisper-yelled from the other side. I followed his light to the stairwell and he was leaning against the door. He shined his light up into the stairwell and I could see the the floors were divided into their own mini stairwells, probably to reduce echoing. I grabbed a stack of books from a return cart left in front of the elevator and stepped inside with Kane, using it to block the door. 99xxxxxxx[9:49PM]: Where the fuck are you? I keep hearing someone yelling. I’m freaking out. And finally, it hit me. I texted her back. Me[9:49PM]: You need to get the fuck out of there. Someone’s in the library. It’s not your friend. Someone is hurting people. 99xxxxxxx[9:50PM]: Are you serious? Me[9:51PM]: Absolutely. My name is Allison and I’m trying to get to you from the lobby. Can you get out at all? 99xxxxxxx[9:52PM]: No, the door locked behind me and the one in front is jammed or something. And I know your name, Alli. Me[9:52PM]: Just be quiet and don’t answer anymore texts. Kane was already past the door to floor 2, jamming books underneath the door to keep it wide open and leaving a few others shoved into the hinges so it couldn’t swing all the way shut. “Allison!” He yelled from beyond the door. I took off up the stairs at full speed, coming around the bend in the stairs where Kane was slowly backing down. An older lady, probably 45-50, probably the librarian, was slumped against the door. Part of a fire axe was jammed into the back of her head, and the other was hooked through the door handle so it couldn’t be turned. “Hello?” I yelled. “Hello?” A voice called back. “Please, let me out. I can barely hear you, can you hear me?” I was moving toward the body and the door before I could think. “I can hear you, I’m going to get you out.” “Please!” The voice yelled. Kane was shaking as we carefully tried to unhook the fire axe and move the woman’s corpse. She was still so very warm, still bleeding, but so very dead. I tried to keep my hands steady as I watched my own tears fall into the woman’s hair. We couldn’t find a way to maneuver the axe with it still shoved in the back of someone’s head. Kane looked at me and I stared back at him as we came to a silent agreement. I heard something on the other side of the door. I put my ear to it and called. “Are you okay?” “Yeah!” The voice yelled back. “My friend is trying to get the other door open for me!” I looked down at my phone - Self [09:53PM]:Where are you? Self [09:54PM]: Where are you? Self [09:55PM]: Where are you? Self [09:56PM]: Where are you? Self [09:57PM]: Where are you? Self [09:58PM]: Where are you? Self [09:59PM]: Where are you? Self [10:00PM]: Where are you? 99xxxxxxx[10:00PM]: Fuck off you told me not to answer anymore texts. I’m STILL in the stairwell, Allison. Where are YOU? Self [10:00PM]: coming (: Kane was already jerking on the corpse as soon as he saw me pull out my phone. I threw down the paper cutter blade and grabbed the woman’s other shoulder. I put my foot against the handle of the fire axe and Kane braced himself against the door. With one hard tug and a disgusting sound of wet flesh separating, the librarian slumped forward towards our feet. Vomit swelled up my throat and I had to look away as Kane dragged the woman out of the way. The fire axe was shoved under the end of the handle, the wood dented and splintered from the force. Kane took to propping himself up on the stair railing and kicking it with all of the force he could muster. I slammed my fist into the door. “THAT’S NOT ALLISON, I’M ALLISON. SOMEONE IS TRYING TO HURT YOU.” The axe splintered into two pieces in a bone breaking crunch and I heard a meek voice reply. “I know.” We jerked the door open and a body fell into me. I screamed, thinking she was dead, but she held onto me with all of her might, whispering. “it’s in there, it’s in there.” Kane had the paper cutter blade in one hand and his phone flashlight in the other. “Come out, you fuck. We already called the police. We have all of the evidence of what you did and were trying to do!” I was holding onto the sobbing girl like she was the last solid thing on this planet. I pushed a hand through her hair and my hand came back dirty with blood and some sort of black dust. “What is this?” I whispered to her. “Are you hurt?” “It’s covered in it. It grabbed me right before you opened the door but it let go.” She whispered into my chest, her fingertips digging into my back. Kane looked over his shoulder. “Is she okay?” I nodded up to him. “I think so. She-” Kane’s head jerked suddenly, a hard thump sounding from the other side of him. I watched his eyes roll back and he toppled over. The paper cutter blade slid across the floor and his flashlight hit the ground with a crack of glass. In the shadows, I could see the left side of a face. Her cheeks looked more hollow than the photos and her hair was heavy with sweat and oil. Her hands were as black as her eyes, wrapped around the bottom of a fire extinguisher. The girl in my arms screamed and I pushed her toward the stairs. “Go! GO! GO GET HELP!” She stumbled down the first few before finding her footing and disappearing. I heard her opening and closing doors and I knew the books were still in place. By the time I turned back, everything was black. She was practically on top of me, her eyes so close to mine that all I could see was the black dust pressed into the lines and curves of her eye sockets. I took in a sharp breath and immediately regretted it. She smelled like rot and death. I tried to open my mouth to scream and she grabbed my face. She pressed her fingers into my closed eyes and started to rub. “Just like you.” She whispered, rubbing black dust onto my eyelids and cheeks. I was frozen and somehow still shuddering against her. Her body was hot, almost feverish, and she pressed it completely against me, pinning me to the wall. She was exactly my height, almost exactly my build. “Allison.” She whispered in a sing-song tone. “We are Allison.” My eyes stung and burned like fire, but my foot, in an attempt to brace myself, felt the paper cutter blade on the floor. I tried to ease it closer with my toes as she rubbed and whispered on my face. Tears escaped from between my lashes and smeared the dust farther down my face. “We are Allison.” She said again, harder. I finally opened one of my eyes as far as I could and stared at her. She was surprisingly human. Dirty, emaciated, homicidal, but human. She had a kitchen knife tucked into the front of her jeans and the handle was almost solid black and smeared with blood. I felt her weight against me release a little and I pretended to faint. The whole shebang; I rolled my eyes back, let out as much air as I had in my lungs, and went limp. I didn’t expect her to drop me, but she did. I slumped down the wall and fell off to one side, trapping the blade of the paper cutter between myself and the wall. I wrapped my fingers around it and listened to her pacing, muttering. “We are Allison, both. Two Allison. One Allison. The only Allison. Can only be one Allison. I must be Allison. Me. I’m Allison.” Her voice was getting louder as she got closer. I could feel my muscles aching with adrenaline. I heard the blade of the knife click against the button of her jeans. I could hear her breathing over me, something dripped down onto me. And I rolled over, screaming as I swiped the blade of the paper cutter as hard as I could. It sliced the flesh of her legs apart right beneath her knees and she fell with a shriek. I rolled onto my stomach and crawled over her as she laid on the floor. I pressed the sharp side of the blade against her belly and leaned over her, glaring through bleary eyes. “I. Am. Allison.” I spat in her face as I said it and she flinched as if I had hit her. “ME. ONLY ME. WHO ARE YOU?” I was screaming by the time I was finished, hysterical. The girl beneath me shook as I pressed the blade against her dirty sweatshirt. The stairwell suddenly filled with light. It was white and blinding and I had to turn away from it, staring back down at her. And suddenly she wasn’t so terrifying. In fact, I recognized her. I stared down into her face with my jaw hanging open as my brain tried to register the filthy face below me and where I had seen her before. “Nous sommes des agents de police! PLEASE PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPON!” I looked up toward the voice and slowly lowered the blade, bringing up both of my hands. “Je ne peux pas voir. Je ne vais pas lutter.” The dark blurs approached me slowly and lifted me off of the girl below, sliding cuffs on my wrists and leading me down the stairs. The police officer escorting me opened the book-ed door to the next floor down and I heard it, so softly; a sobbing whisper. “Who am I? Who am I? Who? Am? I?” Her name was Caroline Evrett. We went to school together. I remember her being quiet, but nice. When we went to University, we both went to the Technical School in Troyes. We were in the same study groups. We were never close, but we were friendly. Police found evidence she had been living in storm drains around campus and found a ‘nest’ under one of the science buildings. She had been following me for almost a year. She had my schedules written down, my friends, what languages I spoke, my preferred snacks and drinks. I got to see a lot of it, and it made me very sick. I had always considered myself so careful. She was batshit insane, but she was also crazy smart. They found dozens of diaries written about me and my life with scary accuracy. She really did want to be me, and she was killing anyone who knew us at the same time so she could do just that. The girl from the stairs was also a study buddy of mine. She had been under the impression that I was back in school and reaching out to her to be study buddies again. We cried and hugged in the ambulance as they checked us for injuries and cleaned coal dust out of our eyes. Kane had a small gash on his head from the fire extinguisher and a mild concussion, but mostly he was upset to be knocked unconscious before “the good stuff”. The girl from the woods? Once they got her identified via dental and DNA records, I recognized her as a tutor of mine. I was horrible in history and she had a steel trap of a memory. She was a nice girl, and she tutored Caroline and I both. It was the only reason she died, because she tutored both of us. But what will never leave me, and what motivated me to post an update to a story I never posted, is what Caroline said to me when they were taking her away. I stopped them and asked her, point blank, why she wanted to be me, why she wanted to take my life away from me. “In the church yard in the canyon, where the myrtle doth entwine. There grows roses and other posies, fertilized by Clementine.”
