Casey Calhoun disappeared from her campus apartment on July 17th, leaving no clues as to her potential whereabouts. Everything in her residence was ordinary besides the following typed letter, recovered from the sole restroom of the apartment. The mirror was shattered, indicating a possible struggle had occurred. No signs of forced entry were detected, however. The letter reads as follows:
You saw it, didn’t you?
Standing at the corner under the streetlamp? Quickly moving out of view in the slightly open door frame? Turning the corner just ahead of you, looking back to see if you were following?
Your doppelganger.
At first, you weren’t sure. The similarities were eerie, but you wrote them off. Until you started seeing it more frequently. Now, it seems like every day, you catch a glimpse of it. Of you.
You haven’t told your friends yet. You know what they’d say. Your family, too. They’d see the conviction in your eyes and, before believing you, they’d send you to the loony bin.
It’s almost like it’s toying with you. Stringing you along, laughing from the shadows as you look about wildly. Right when you think you’ve got it cornered, it slips through your fingers. You start to wonder if maybe you do need to go somewhere, be put on drugs and enjoy the comfort of four padded walls.
Until it speaks to you. That’s next. A voice just like yours, but shifted a pitch too high or too low, off by such a small margin that even you struggle to hear it. You hear it ring out from right behind you, turn quickly, but nothing is there.
Then it starts to reach out to you. You wake up in the dead of night, the covers slightly pulled back. Sitting in class, a squeeze on your shoulder, a cold breath on your neck. You find things rearranged in the fridge and in your bag, things you haven’t touched for days. You set your phone down to go outside, and, when you come back, find it in a different room.
I saw it too. My double. A month ago now. Every day, it gets closer to taking over. I’ve started getting texts from my parents, thanking me for dropping by as a surprise. It’s not me, though.
Don’t make the same mistake as me. I thought I could get rid of it easily. If I pretended long enough, it would go away on its own. It was all wrong. The more I let it go, the more it entangled itself.
Fight it. Now. Carry a mirror on you at all times. A compact is fine: whatever you can manage. They lose their idea of you once they see themselves. Once that idea is gone, they can’t copy you again.
You only run the risk of making it mad. They can and will get violent. I’ve never been outright attacked, but I wouldn’t rule it out as a possibility. Please be safe. If I see you smiling around campus soon, I’ll know at least one of us is free.