AnOther Alice: A Novel (Undergoing Editing)

Chapter 14

Xavier was the last student to enter Greenwald College's dark screening room, guided by the light of the large projector. He waded through a row of his classmates towards an empty section before sitting down.

He looked up, eyes fixing on the images being played. The short was created by a graduate student from the previous year and ironically featured a group of partygoers being stalked by a creature that could morph into anyone whose blood it drank. Granted, the fake blood looked as real as dye and corn syrup could get. Xavier didn't pay much attention, though, as he listened to an audio recording of user, AliceNoMore, through his earphones, describing what she went through with the Otherling.

"I didn't...know what I was doing..." her tearful voice said, "it was just following me everywhere...I-I didn't have a moments rest...not even in my own bedroom."

Although Xavier noted the points he'd discuss in his essay about the moving picture, his attention spilt between the work for his major and the information that would keep him alive.

"It would come to my house at the oddest hours," the voice continued, "ringing the doorbell and screaming my name, claiming I was the imposter and that I should stop pretending to be...well me."

Even though it's something of an undead origin, this thing knows how to use Adelaide's phone, not to mention behave and speak like a normal human would, Xavier thought.

"I had a distant cousin named Alice who started acting strangely after I tagged her in a photo," AliceNoMore went on, sniffling loudly. . "She was usually a very lively and studious person, but after I tagged her, my life slowly returned to normal. Almost as if my doppel ceased to exist."

After hearing AliceNoMore say with relief that her life went back to normal, Xavier stopped writing in his notebook. He ignored the movie, listening intently to the next thing she was about to say:

"After my doppel stopped shadowing me, I filed the paperwork to change my name just to be sure it didn't come back." There was a long pause, and Xavier wondered if the audio had been cut. He snuck a peek at the progress bar on his phone. "But my cousin Alice started acting differently. She just wasn't acting like herself and her skin felt so cold...even her pulse was—"

Someone's hand suddenly grabbed his shoulder from behind, prompting Xavier to turn around only to lock eyes with Nadia, now settling in the seat in the back of him.

"What are you listening to?" she asked.

He exhaled, and stopped writing. "I was listening to another Otherling survivor." He removed one of his earbuds and passed it over to her. "Give it a listen. There's a lot of info we have to go through in order to understand this thing and avoid it."

Reluctantly Nadia took the earpiece. Xavier played the recording so they could both listen to the rest of AliceNoMore's story.

Several seats away were a handful of film majors, talking about something unrelated to the assignment at hand. Xavier was the first to tune into what they were saying, half-listening to AliceNoMore and catching wind of the name "Sloane Carmine" from the secretive group.

"You think there's a serial murderer?" said the girl with the space buns.

A guy wearing a striped hoodie, with his arms slung over the shoulder of the space-bun girl, shook his head. "I doubt that. This shit's got to be up Gabriel's alley. He's definitely a sociopath, the quiet posh-types always are, I mean, the guy practically sliced and diced up his girlfriend."

"Gabriel doesn't seem like the type," said an ash gray-haired student. "But Oliver and his crew weren't saints, they must have pissed someone off. It could be gang related."