It’s been 15 months since my first run-in with the mimics. I was done with work that day so I turned my PC off and gathered up my belongings before I stood from my desk, ready to leave work.
“Already heading out?” An all too familiar voice echoed as I brought down my card to clock out.
“Oh hey Brendon, yeah I’m all finished for today.”
“Andrew wants to talk to you before you leave.” Andrew was the head manager of our branch. I had seen him a few times although I’d never actually spoken to him.
“To me? What for?!” I asked, feeling a tad bit nervous.
“Don’t know, I guess you will just have to go find out for yourself.”
“Alright then! Will do” I exclaimed, shoving my card back into my pants pocket as I brushed past him, making my way toward Andrew’s office. When I reached the door, my fist rattled against it a few times before I was met with a “Come in.”
Opening the door, I saw a man seated across the desk, his tightly fit gray business attire matched his aged hair. The wrinkles in his brow showed his years. Right under that though were tinted sunglasses. I’d heard that he had been in this position for at least the last 30 years now.
“Come on in, Oliver, have a seat.” He gestured towards several empty chairs across from his desk and I found myself in one of them. There was a glimmering plaque on his desk facing towards me and it read ‘Andrew Linstein’.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Linstein.”
“Oh no, the pleasure’s all mine Mr. O’Bryant. And please, call me Andrew. ” He said and offered me a hand. I reached for it, however, since the incident I had problems making contact with people. Brendon’s words echoed through my mind at the thought of it. ‘Don’t let it touch you!’. I retracted my hand for a moment, and Andrew was grinning at me as I did so.
“There’s nothing wrong with being too safe, I bet you’re wondering about these, aren’t you?” his finger raised, tapping on his sunglasses.
“That’s right.” I had agreed too quickly, and I wanted to try and correct myself. Before I was given the chance though, Andrew removed the glasses to reveal that he was missing his left eye, and his remaining one had a collapsed iris. It was quite a gruesome sight. He brought the glasses back to his face and rested them on the bridge of his nose.
“You and I have gone through similar events, Mr. O’Bryant, your ability to hear was permanently damaged and you were left stricken with haphephobia, whereas my ability to see was also, for the most part, lost.” After saying this, he reached underneath his desk and pulled out a stack of files that he lay in front of me. Their height was substantial, I was curious to know their contents.
“What I have here is the total collection of accurate cases you have identified, in less than a year of being here, might I add. I guess one could say you really have a nose for these things.”
“Well, Andrew, I want to stop these creatures and others like them, as much as anyone else here.” I felt a bit flustered, this wasn’t where I had expected this conversation to turn to. Every other meeting I had in the past with bosses had been rather demeaning to put it bluntly.
“Of course you do, we all do. What’s so impressive about this stack though isn’t the volume, no. It’s the precision. Every target you have identified has been one of them. You don’t waste our field agents’ time. I’ve got a good eye for seeing talent, I kind of have to since I’ve only got the one left.” as he said this he let out a dry chuckle, but broke out into a coughing fit.
Once again, I was flustered. Not only was he not reprimanding me, but he was actually complimenting me. It was a strange feeling. I managed to stutter out. “T-Thank you, Andrew. I’m not sure what to say.”
“That’s alright, I can do the talking for a bit. As you can see, I’m growing old, and I’ll be forced to retire soon. That means someone will have to be taking my place. You understand what I’m getting at, right?”
“Andrew, I couldn’t possibly take your place, I haven’t even been here a year. I know there are other guys that have been gunning for your position for years themselves. It wouldn’t be right.”
His face twisted into a grimace before he even started speaking. “What they think doesn’t matter. The person to fill my seat must be someone who wants to put an end to these things once and for all, not someone looking for a pay raise. You being someone who’s encountered them firsthand must understand this.”
“I do… but why not one of the field agents then if that’s your criteria? Each of them has encountered dozens, if not hundreds of mimics, doppelgangers, and skinwalkers.” I tried my best to maintain my composure as I asked the question. I had several coworkers who deserved this position more than myself. Who deserved a break from fighting those things day in and day out.
“It’s because they’re ‘field’ agents that they can’t fill this position. They’re needed out there, and you are needed here. It’s as simple as that. We find them, they deal with them.”
“I’ll need time to think about that offer. I can’t just make a decision like that right away.” I couldn’t argue with his logic, although I still felt bad about the whole situation.
“That’s fine, go ahead and think about it. You can get back to me on it tomorrow.”
With that, we said our goodbyes and I left his office, clocked out, and absconded from the premises. I made my way into my car, and the all-familiar sound of the engine hummed to life as I made my way home. On the way there I pondered his offer. There was no way that I could take it, I wasn’t capable of such a position, nor did I really want it. I did like this job because I was good at it, and I felt like I was contributing to society even though it felt thankless at times. But I’m a dispatcher, not a director. I like being a dispatcher.
Usually, I’ll turn the radio on and listen to something on my way home, or even go cruising before I get home just to destress from work. The monotony of the road was easier on the mind than sitting idly in my house thinking of everything I had to bear witness to. My job wasn’t always so easy, even if I made the right calls.
Nothing, in particular, stuck out that day, but I found myself turning the volume down until it eventually clicked off into silence. I couldn’t say when it started, but you know that feeling when eyes are on you, right? The hairs on my neck stood at an end, and my eyes scoured the road in front of me, more specifically the roadside, for anything that could be considered off.
As quickly as my heart had begun to race, it began to settle. It was probably nothing, I was just being paranoid again.
Suddenly, I felt mysterious hands latch onto my neck with a vice-like grip. Near asphyxiation, I kicked and squirmed as much as I could to try and pry the cold hand away but with little luck. I then looked up at the rearview mirror, and I saw myself. The hand that had found itself around my throat was covered in fingerless gloves, but the fingertips stopped just right before my skin. If I had rashly grabbed it, it would have known everything that I know.
It was strange watching my own face, it smiled in a way I didn’t know I could as it leaned in close, resting on the headrest.
“Look forward, and keep driving.” it hissed towards me. His voice was just like mine, but more guttural like I just got out of bed or a coma, to be exact. I was so creeped out that even the sound of that thing breathing made my skin crawl.
My eyes snapped back to the road as I narrowly avoided rear-ending the person I had been behind just a moment ago. I’d unknowingly put the pedal to the metal in my fear-induced stupor.
“Why haven’t you touched me yet? You must know who I am.” Truth be told, not a single person in my department knew why these things acted the way they did. Some were easy to catch, and others had seemingly unknown vendettas against specific people.
“Of course, I know who you are Oliver, and that’s exactly the reason I haven’t brought you back yet. I wanted to talk to the human Oliver just once before sending him on his merry way.” It had a tinge of sincerity in its voice, but then again they knew how to mimic any emotion they were aiming for. My eyes flicked upwards once more, trying to capture the look it had on its face. Although traffic would not allow for that, anytime I glanced up, the cars around me got dangerously close, as if it was all some sick joke.
“You say that as if you’re going to kill me, trying to take my life once wasn’t enough for you? You’re here to finish the job?” Fear had seeped its way through my body, and what was left to boil was a hatred, a hatred for having to live my life in fear, and a hatred for all my colleagues that these things had taken out with their strange obsession for humanity. I could speed up right now, and drive into the ditch. I’d take this thing out with me. My hands tightened around the wheel, and I willed myself to turn it, but that never happened.
“Oliver, you hurt yourself, we’re just trying to help. We would never want to cause you any harm.” This time it spoke, the voice was much deeper, and had a warm base to it, a friendly, reassuring voice, one of my fathers. The sympathy in it struck me to my core.
“Why do you sound that way?! What the fuck do you want from me?!” I barked, or at least I wanted to, but all that came out were barely murmurs.
“Oliver, you’re always asking so many questions. Why don’t I ask you a question for once, just what do you think we are? Having lived as a human, what are we in your eyes?”
I didn’t feel the need to answer it, yet the answer still fell from my lips. “Parasites. All of you, you’re parasites.”
A dry chuckle echoed behind me, followed by a coughing fit. Ironically enough, my father had passed from a mixture of breathing complications caused by lung cancer, and COPD, due to years of smoking. By the end of his life, he could usually manage a short sentence or two if he was lucky, before being assaulted by a fit of coughs. “Maybe so, but you didn’t seem to think so when we played ‘Spot the difference.’ You never wanted any toys, you just wanted to play ‘Spot the difference’ with me again. Having the experience of raising you into a young man made me feel much more human than anything else.”
I could feel my eyes bulging out of their sockets and I bit my lip as I struggled to contain my rage. Was this disgusting creature really trying to imply that he was my beloved father?! The father I lost to cancer 15 years ago?! I knew that they were capable of stealing memories from those they touched, although all the training told us that this effect only lasted for three days unless that information was passed on from one to the next. For this one to have my father’s memories, it must have been passing them around for the past 15 years, diligently holding onto such memories for so long. There was no way I was going to entertain the thought that he was right. But the mere fact that I had no strong evidence to refute him, made me even more livid. At this point, I was practically foaming at the mouth.
“How dare you! First, you make my life a living nightmare now you’re trying to mess with my head! Let me tell you how this is going to go down. First, I’m gonna put a bullet through your skull and skin you alive. Then I’m taking you to our eggheads back at the lab so they can cut you open and figure out what makes you tick! And then…” Before I could finish my rant. The mimic cut my words short. The tone in his voice this time was far more serious than it had been prior.
“Sometimes sin, decay, and excess envy fall from the heavens. It all meets the ground where it forms a cyst. We feed off the emotions people throw away. Their fears, their hatred, their pain, and their humanity. This nourishment is what gives us life. A soul. All along we were too busy trying to imitate what we came from, we were too set on becoming perfect, we desired beauty, but we didn’t understand symmetry, we wanted compassion with no emotion as the backbone. We were going about it all wrong. There is no perfect human, perfection will stick out. To be truly perfect, you’ll fall when you should stand, say the right things at the wrong times, knowingly make mistakes. The entire time, we tried only to mimic what we weren’t given. The opposite of sin, fear, hate, pain, humanity. Our greatest failure, you’ll understand soon.”
With this, an icy cold finger brushed across my neck. Along with his hand, it must have been the touch of death. An immense pressure built up in my head. A slideshow of lifetimes cascaded across my vision, hundreds, thousands, millions of images flashed before my eyes. Thousands of years of knowledge flooded my mind in an instant. What was happening to me? Was he turning me into a mimic too? I remembered the sad, desperate eyes of the hitchhiker I left behind when all of this started. I remember a car slowing down, and then speeding away right before saving me. There’s no way I was going to end up like him, not in a million years. With the last semblance of consciousness I had, I violently spun the wheel of the car and we swerved right into the path of an oncoming truck. The last thing I remembered was the blinding lights and the deafening blare of the massive vehicle as it rammed into us.
I regained consciousness at a hospital three days later. The doctors were shocked that I pulled through and with little or no broken bones, no less. Brendan told me that after they found out I was in an accident, they got to me as quickly as they could and whisked me away to a hospital before I lost too much blood. I asked him if there was another body at the accident scene. To the best of his knowledge, there wasn’t. My question must have made him a bit curious but he chalked it up to the concussion I must have received from the impact. I wasn’t planning on telling anyone about the mimic run-in I had before the accident cause I really didn’t want anybody poking around in my head.
What I did plan to do was to take that promotion at work, why not. I deserved it anyway. Like the boss said, there was no better person at identifying these things than I am, and after my last ordeal, I was hellbent on finding and ending every last one of them.
Several months went by, however, and I failed to identify many of those creatures. Some were definitely not human, and it was as clear as day, yet, somehow, I let them slip through the cracks. I didn’t mean to, but sometimes I just couldn’t help it. Sometimes I feel like I’m still in that car, driving down the M-37, the heats on full blast and I get too comfortable behind the wheel. Of course I’m not asleep, I’m just a little unfocused. I always get so tired now when I think about things like that too hard. My health has been declining, noticeably enough that coworkers have even begun to point it out. I laugh it off and chalk it up to the accident I had, although, secretly, I feared the worst.
Sometimes I feel like there’s another me, one that’s constantly watching and it comes alive when I sleep. My days are becoming shorter and shorter, as my other halves become longer.
Tomorrow is Andrew’s last day before he retires, and the day after, I’ll officially take his position. But, honestly, I’m scared shitless. Can I really be trusted? Have I become compromised?
I’m I…I’m the real me, right?
Midday, when the sun shines brightest, I feel I do my best work. I write this during those times of absolute lucidity, and then hide the file away from myself. This has taken me months to write, but…
If you’re reading this, please get me fired.