((Enter Maya's Doppelganger - CS coming soon))
A woman stood alone in a sterile white room. Her arms wrapped around her torso, held in place by an uncomfortable jacket that matched the white walls. The room smelled of bitter metal and rubbing alcohol. With her head tilted curiously to the side, the woman stared unblinkingly into a mirror. The person staring back at her was, in the simplest of terms, pretty; supple flesh draped flawlessly over well-defined bone structures, forming a sophisticated, regal appearance. While slightly disheveled, her silver-white hair rippled like silk. A smile stretched across her face, causing her cheeks to twitch from fatigue, but the discomfort was a simple superfluous firing of neurotransmitters. She felt no pain. Her eyes, which gleamed like puddles of congealed blood, failed to convey the same cheeriness of her pearly whites and dimpled cheeks. They were like voids that threatened to devour any living thing that their gaze fell upon.
A mental disconnect severed the woman’s cognitive presence from her physical existence, causing her to question if she was even in the suffocating confines of the white room. She was more or less detached: an observer trapped within a body. Her thoughts were quiet, merely melancholy echoes floating about a foggy, shapeless landscape. As she continued to stare into the mirror at the awful grinning woman, a dreadful feeling clawed at her stomach. She knew the woman, but the pieces weren’t connecting. After minutes, or possibly hours, she realized the woman was herself. Yet, it wasn’t her all at the same time.
The smile tugged tighter across the woman’s face. The corners, cracked from dehydration, blushed red with stinging drops of blood. The pain failed to evoke any reaction.
One.
One.
One.
The number seared its way into her thoughts. Her smile widened. The muscles in her face screamed for relief.
There…can only be…one.
Still gleefully barring her teeth, her eyebrows furrowed at the invasive thoughts that gnawed through her brain like maggots.
There can only be one.
O-one.
Images of a woman who looked like the woman in the mirror, except for her eyes which blazed a brilliant blue instead of crimson, seeped into her mind. While the woman was unaware of it, she was a splinter of a shadow of a soul…a mere facsimile forged into existence. Indeed she possessed a “human” body; however, she lacked her humanity. The fog which clouded her mind was slowly dissipating, perhaps a consequence of drugs wearing off, yet the divorce between mind and body remained, leaving her to feel the numb bite of nothingness.
The sickening vision of the blue-eyed imposter, which now completely consumed her thoughts, prompted the woman to violently thrash back and forth against her restraints while making guttural, inhuman screeches until the bindings reluctantly gave way. Upon release, her arm hooked forward, smashing her bare fist into the mirror, shattering both the glass and her knuckles. Her smile, still unfading, reflected in the thousands of blood-splattered pieces.
There can only BE ONE.