@oathmade plotted starter
Charlie had been nervous, moving to a new place, a small town where everyone already seemed to know everyone else and she stuck out as if she had a sign reading New Girl hanging around her neck. She attributed the odd prickle at the back of her neck to those nerves. Paranoia, nothing more. The times when she heard soft laughter coming from nowhere, when she thought there was a shadow at the edge of her vision that disappeared when she turned to look, was just her imagination. She shrugged it off. Until now.
She’d been walking at the edge of town when she heard it, a voice, not a whisper this time but clear and sure, calling her name. Why she’d followed it, she couldn’t really say. But she had. She’d allowed it to lead her into the tall grass, and then. Then it had showed itself to her. Showed... well, herself. A mirror image of her, standing in the field, wearing a grin full of malice. There was fire dancing in the other her’s eyes, and she felt rooted to the ground.
“Charlieeee, why do you run from me?” it cooed, her own voice but with something else behind it, darkness surrounding the words. “This is who you truly are! One big zippo, remember?” It lifted its hands- her hands, and she felt the heat rising around her, that oppressive, choking aura that built and built until everything around her caught like kindling.
“No,” she choked out, throat thick with fear and pain. This is not who I am, this is not who I want to be.
“Oh, yes,” the doppelganger countered, grin widening impossibly, until it nearly stretched ear to ear. “Don’t you remember? How good it felt, to get revenge?” The world wavered, and when Charlie turned her head she saw the field around them had turned to the blackened, skeleton-strewn grounds of The Shop compound.
“NO!” she screamed, hands shaking as she tried to block out the memory.