Chapter 3

• *The lookalike*
• "But when you look in his eyes
• Do you think of mine?
• And when you look at that smile
• Do I cross your mind?
• I know in your head
• You see me instead
• 'Cause he looks a lot like I did back then
• Baby don't lie
• He's just a lookalike" Conan gray ~lookalike
• IT WAS JUST ELEVEN pm now. Its been exactly three hours since Iris was picked up by that faggot, Landon, for the party I blew off so I could study. Somehow a tiny part of me wondered how the party went as I buried my nose even into my English essay assignment that was due tomorrow, lord knows I was tired as fuck.
• My phone buzzed from beside me. It was a call from Iris's cell phone. In an expeditious motion I picked it up.
• "Hey. What's up Iris?" I said, thankful to her for the little bit of distraction I could get from studying.
• "Hey Belle!" She slurred, her tone sounded a bit distracted and weirder than usual but apart from that she sounded like your typical hyper Iris.
• "I kinda need your help" she giggled a bit. Was Iris calling me drunk right now? Oh god she always behaved so immature that I had to remain the mature one in our relationship.
• "Are you drunk?" I asked, with furrowed brows.
• She laughed then answered, "Yeah maybe just a little bit. It's damn too chilly out here."
• "Where the fuck are you now?" I questioned her and she fell silent for about a split minute. I tried to listen in on the background and all I could hear was the stillness quiet of the air and the chirping of insects.
• "I don't really know…" she continued to giggle. "I think somewhere around the woods. See the thing is, I was bored of the party and like I said before I was a little bit drunk so Landon offered to bring me home but Landon's car suddenly broke down on the way back and he has been gone for almost an hour, so please could you come pick me up. It's getting really spooky out here." ugh that weasel Landon, why couldn't he do anything right and he always bragged about how his car was brand new and all perfect.
• "Stay right there. I'm on my way to get you." I told her squarely, standing up grabbing the car keys off from the wooden furniture.
• "Please hurry... It's really cold out here." Iris murmured, I could hear her stamping her feet on the ground trying to stay warm. I needed to move with haste. While I was driving Iris had sent me a text of her actual whereabouts, and she was located deep in the woods. Why was she there in the first place, that area was restricted. Or so I had heard.
• After I jumped out of the car, I slammed the door shut immediately pulling out my cell phone and turning on the torch. I dialed Iris's cell and I could hear the string of her ringtone echo dully from all around the thick dark forest. I flung my head to the right when I heard my name.
• "Isabelle" I heard a voice call out from behind me which was followed by an icy touch on my shoulder.
• "Jeez! Fuck Iris... Why are you creeping around like that?" I jumped around to find Iris. Her face looked so pale and white, I guess the cold must have gotten to her before I did.
• "You actually came," Iris murmured, sounding a bit surprised. Was she not expecting me to come to get her? That was strange and if I was being honest she looked rather strange to me too. She looked strange, she acted strange and she spoke a bit weird, like she sounded like Iris but the manner in which she enunciated was different.
• "Yeah, why are you so surprised?" I demanded, I could feel the whispering wind all around us get even colder. She waited for a second before replying.
• "I'm not surprised, just happy that you came," she said with a feeble smile and a low key giggle. God I could swear Iris never acted this weird before.
• "So where is that idiot Landon?" I thought where that moron was, maybe I could also give him a ride then he could pick up his car tomorrow with a towing truck. Even if he doesn't deserve one bit of my sympathy, I wasn't capable of leaving him stranded out here.
• "You worry too much Belle. Landon is a big boy and can take care of himself" Iris muttered with the same impish giggle which was starting to tug hard on my nerves last string.
• "Where is Landon's car?" I kept interrogating her because something just didn't feel right to me, everything was off.
• "It's parked up ahead." she continued with her giggle like she was being possessed by a demonic entity. Maybe she is just acting like this because she is drunk, I thought. Let's just get the hell outta here, maybe then she will start acting like herself because this is starting to feel very creepy.
• "Sure. Let's just get out of here... Quick." I said trailing towards the car with Iris who was sluggishly tailing behind me. Something clearly wasn't right here. I was so preoccupied by my thoughts that I barely heard the sound of my phone buzzing in my hand. It was from an unknown number and even though I don't normally answer strangers calls I slid to answer this time.
• "Hello!" No one replied. All I could hear was the upbeat sound of music coming from the other side.
• "Wassup Isabelle!" A female voice finally spoke and it sounded identical to Iris's, but when I turned to look back at the Iris behind me. She was just standing, smiling and staring at me with an emotionless gaze. This was creeping me out.
• "Hello, are you still there? Belle!" The voice from the other side asked.
• "Yeah--" I responded, whispering a bit.
• "Oh my goddess! This party is totally lit. You are really missing out a lot, trust me. You even missed the chance to see Landon dancing on a table... Naked!" She then began to laugh hysterically while I just listened to her speak. This was Iris.
• "See I lost my phone and I can't find it so I sort of borrowed Landon's phone just to call you. I just want you to know don't wait up for me tonight. I'm beyond wasted so I think I'm just going to crash here tonight." Iris said and I felt my heart sink deeper.
• Oh my goddess! It didn't have to take a scientist or a tarot reader to figure out that the girl on the phone was indeed Iris. The real Iris. That would make whoever is standing behind me an imposter, a clone and nothing but a fucking fake.
• "Is everything okay there Belle? Are you still there because you're awfully quiet. Do you need me to come back? Where are you?" The real Iris shot a stream of ear-stinging questions at me. I was out, practically in the middle of bloody nowhere with some stranger that possessed the ability to look and sound like my best friend. Oh goddess what the hell do I do now.
• "I'll call you back" and with those words I ended the call.
• "Who was that?" The fake Iris demanded from behind me. This time she spoke there were no giggles, no smiles, no nothing. She just had a straight dead serious face on and a menacing look in her eyes. For the first time this doppelganger made Iris look intimidating.
• "It was no one really important. Just another person that I owe lots of money to." I lied, but it wasn't all utterly a facade, I literally had my neck buried deep in debts and I owed dozens of people money I couldn't believe it was even possible for me to be able to pay off, not even in another lifetime. That was another reason I lived on the run.
• "Ahhhh... Is that so." the fake Iris chuckled as she shook her head as though she believed my lies.
• "The night air is chilly, don't you think? It reminds me of the night when we escaped from that wretched orphanage home. Do you remember that night, Iris?" I demanded, raising both of my eyebrows in anticipation for her reply.
• "Ahh... Yes... How can I ever forget that silly night? I remember running so hard that I could barely breathe." Her brisk tone signaled that she was unsure about what she was saying.
• Liar!
• The real Iris and I never attempted to escape from that cursed Willsbury orphanage home. That never happened. Even though I wanted to just run away from that place countless times, Iris would always talk me out of it everytime, so I stayed. This was all a test, a test that this lookalike just failed blatantly.
• "That never happened." I stated “Who the hell are you?! Cause you're not Iris you're just a lookalike." I hissed through my teeth, staring right at my best friend's doppelganger. Suddenly, she burst out into a scary laughter.
• "When did you figure that out?" She managed to say in between her laughs "I really thought that I was pulling it off"
• "Yeah, at first you had me fooled until you started acting so fucking weird and then the phone call came." I said, my gaze unmoved from her. I knew that this was most likely a shape shifter or some other shape shifting creature but whatever it was, it was also after my life and for sure an epic fight to the death was about to break out because I wasn't going to just surrender easily. But there was this dangerous look in her eyes that sent dread to my soul, she had a powerful aura, one matched to a god.
• "Curse that phone call. But looking at the bright side-- I succeeded in dragging you out here in the middle of nowhere. Now we are all alone. Now I can have the gifts of the gifted one!" Iris lookalike chuckled with an evil smirk. It was weird seeing Iris behave like this, seeing that sinister flair in her eyes is what feared me the most. It was so unnatural, so unlike the Iris I was used too. She was completely different from my Iris.
• "Well I guess I don't have any use for this face anymore." Iris doppelganger said right before she began to distort and shift her face in an abnormal manner.
• I was clouded in disbelief when the person standing just a few feet away from me suddenly didn't look like Iris anymore but like Isaac, the guy I met after literature class yesterday, Landon's friend.
• So he was also a monster too?
• " So you're a monster too?" I asked.
• "Oh Isaac Werber isn't a monster, Isabelle. The poor guy has been dead for months now. He was just another wealthy victim of mine. But I must admit his skin felt super comfortable." he burst out laughing like a crazed lunatic. Poor Isaac was killed by this sickish monster, I was going to make sure I would avenge his death too, by killing this monster.
• "So what are you then? A shapeshifter?" I inquired with a disgusted look. I needed to know what this monster was if I was going to kill it.
• "That's close enough, but not quite it. You see all these crappy books and fairy tale bullshit has gotten the whole world mind warped about the true concept of what exactly is a shape shifter but darling I am the real deal. I'm the all powerful trickster Alectryon, the god of deceit and trickery!" he boasted with an evil smirk. In all I learnt about how to kill a shape shifting God was they could only be killed by either ripping out their hearts which was a messy option and would require me using my magic which I couldn't risk doing now, the other way to kill one was by staking its heart with a golden stake and honestly that option was more preferable by me.
• "But you are indeed something else. Something rare and exquisite." He began circling me "When I got your scent it really got me intoxicated like some kind of drug. Honestly I never believed that the prophecies were true but nevertheless here I am standing before you. You are as beautiful as they said you would be. It's a shame that in a matter of minutes you would be nothing more than a dried up corpse." He growled again, this time his expression was ugly. I picked up the sharpest wooden stick I could find on the grass covered ground. I quickly took off my magical bracelet.
• “Tre quez xilma noir rubito!” I chanted quickly at the stake, transforming it into a golden stake, capable of killing a shape shifting god. I quickly locked my wrist with my magical bracelet, holding my newly forged weapon in my hands.
• “I see you know a lot about the supernatural creatures but it would take more than a golden stick to kill me! I'm Alectryon, the all powerful immortal trickster.” He roared, causing the earth to quake at the sound.
• "Well are we going to fight or are you going to try talking me to death." I hissed, ready for another fight.
• He growled, jumping high up to the sky like a fucking cat, then he lunged at me with razor sharp talons.
• What the hell!? He is somehow mutating parts of his body just to distract me. Mixing different creatures seeming like a chimera of sorts. He had greenish scales all over his hands and body, like a snake. He delivered a hard blow to my chest, I'm fucking going to cut his skin off for that. He tried swinging for my neck but I easily ducked diving my stake beside his midsection. I saw black blood flow out of him.
• "You're a bit slow don't you think?" I spat with a scornful smile that only seemed to make him all the more furious. This time he attacked me at the same time transforming his face to different faces of people I knew. It was like he could somehow see the faces of every single person I have come across in life. In just a quick second he looked like Prof. Darwin, my literature teacher, then like Landon and before I knew it I was staring at an identical figure of my mom.
• I froze as I just peered at her image. "Mom!" The word escaped my lips. Her sandy blonde hair fell around her neck messily, with her pretty pair of aquarium blue eyes, she had everything. She looked exactly like her except this time she had a sinister smirk on her face.
• It was then I realized that I had just fallen into his trick. That was not my mom on the contrary it was just a lookalike conjured up by this trickster but that was already a second too late as I felt razor like claws invade my stomach, I staggered a bit before falling on the ground paralyzed not being able to move a thing. His talons were dripping with an acidic venom.
• The sickish sound of his laughter was all I could hear as I began to fade away into a fog in my mind. And I was out cold.
• "Lights out sweetheart." I heard him snarl.
• ‘Mother please save me!’
• ***AUTHOR NOTE**
• Okay, real question... who has listened to the lookalike by Conan gray? This chapter was literally inspired by that icon.... Check the song out bcos it hits so hard.
• And please don't forget to comment and vote! Thank you!!