The Duplicate

I keep hoping, begging for it to be a dream, a petrifying dream.

"Jeffery, for the last time, get up."

I jerk up, breathing heavily. Another nightmare. I rub my eyes hastily. With wide eyes I watch the corner, but nothing's there like every morning.

"Get up!" a monstrous scream roars from behind my door followed by thunderous stomping down the hallway. I throw my covers off of me and leap at the door. Locking it before I can catch myself, I slam against the door.

"Jeffery!" He calls slamming his fists against the door, vibrating my body. Cursing he wriggles the door knob. "Get up!"

"I'm up!" I shout back, hardly as threatening as him. My voice is still youthful and cracks at the most inappropriate times.

Hesitation. Then he releases the handle and stomps down the stairs. I wait for a few seconds until I finally relax. I slide against the door and turn to the infamous corner.

Dabbled in dried blood and paint chipping. There is where I used to hide under a blanket from my lonely father. That is 'was'. Now I see him there. Everynight before I fall asleep I see those eyes, driven with madness and twisted through an unrelenting blood thirst.

It's not just before I fall asleep. He's in my nightmares, he's there in the night. He's everywhere. Sometimes he has a shadow with long swirling tentacles, sometimes there's limp body with him

As if my sleepless nights weren't hard enough.

My father's latest Jezebel had left last night for a real sugar daddy and I just happen to live under the same dirty roof as my father does.

8:30. School.

As Mr. Invisible, or is it Mr. Waste-of-Air (I can never keep track of it), I do my solemn duty and put on my signature grey jacket, that I've had since seventh grade, and grab my head phones.

Slyly I sneak out of my room and down the stairs without making a sound. All I have to do is get to the front door.

Swinging back, I lose my feeting. The only thing keeping me from falling and sliding across the floor are the meaty finger of my father. The eyes piercing down at me were the same ones I saw in the mirror everyday. His hairless head once had the same mess of black hair as I did. We were almost mirror images of each other, except for his bulging muscles and height.

"You think you're funny." He growls.

My expression doesn't change with his peculiar question, I just keep looking at him contemptuously.

"Answer the question Jeffery." He demands through clenched teeth.

"Why?" I ask with little interest in the answer.

"Don't play dumb with me dick." He says as he pulls me off the ground with seemingly little effort. One, thirty treated like a pound.

"I don't play." I whisper more to myself as my feet dangle over the floor about an half an inch.

He waits for me to speak up but I keep quiet.

With his nostrils' flaring, he flings me into the dirty kitchen still stretching my jacket. He roughly slams me into the refrigerator. I pick self up and look back at my father.

"Open the door." He orders the veins in his forehead prodding.

I move to the side of the door becoming wary. The look in his were held something slightly more than his regular rage. It was something more dangerous and controlling. I couldn't place it on him, but I know I have seen it somewhere.

"Just open the door." He yells with a slight quiver in his voice. That's when I heard it.

Fear.

I gripped the door without realizing my hands were shaking. I close my eyes and pull the door too me.

I hear a gulp beside me and the shock of it had my eyes flash open.

Thick scarlet blood trickles the white shelves, ending in a pool at the bottom of the plastic. Ragged cuts of flesh are scattered on the little food we have. The center of the monstrosity is covered in long black hair clotted with blood. The eyes are peeled open, sewed to the skin of the arch of the eyebrows, and iris's are burnt white. What is left of the nose is bubbling red and white ooze. The mouth lay widely open, inhumanly open; cut into a bloody ragged smile. The neck, or half of it I should say, lies on the shelf with a thick jagged bone wrapped in tendons, tilting it forward. On it's cheek are raised burns that read "Go to sleep."

Him.

I fly back into the counter, holding back a scream.

"I'm done with you and you're stupid bull shit." I hear him scream, but can't respond. My whole body is frozen with fear.

The toe of my father's boot cracks against my stomach. I topple over from the force. I hear a metallic click and still can't focus on anything but the horrible face.

"Go to hell."

I turn my head to him and my eyes widen. My father's rifle is pointed at my face, his finger on the trigger.

(I should have predicted this.)

"F-father?" I say hardly audible.

His finger tenses and he starts to pull.

A step and a step, somewhere in the kitchen but my eyes are fixated on the gun. More steps and a pause. My father's eyes open widely as his wife beater becomes red. The rifle clatters too the ground along with my father's body. A figure coated in new and old blood is standing beside where my father used to stand. He turns around.

I jerk up breathing heavily. I look around and my room is so average. Nothing has changed. I check the corner and smile for the first time since my mother died. He wasn't there.

All of it, it was just some nightmare.

I glance at the clock, 3 am. My father was probably drinking and crying on the porch and my raven haired sister was hopefully fast and peacefully asleep. Still smiling I lie down and turn on my side.

I forgot to close my eyes. A scream vibrated through my throat. My father's blood soaked body saturated the sheets. His eyes were sewn and burnt just like the abomination in the refrigerator. "Go to sleep" is carved on his forehead. I jump out of bed, scrambling away from my bed. Slowly I tear my gaze away from the newly mangled monster in my bed and follow the wall to the notorious corner.

He stands there; his eyes trained on me. A large kitchen knife is clutched in his hand at ready. He's wearing a large, ratty hood covered in red and black dress pants. His face is ghastly white and covered in scars and fresh blood. White iris probe into me with a true happiness I haven't seen before. His mouth is in a permanent smile but I can tell that it's had time too heal because the edges of his skin have begun to curl in on the wound.

He points his knife at the mirror. I watch him before I stand up slowly and walk over to the mirror. I scream and suddenly my skin is on fire and cheeks are in agony.

I went from a mirror of one monster to the next.