Doppelganger: Anamorphosis

Chapter seventeen. The Geometry of Darkness

Judy pushed herself off the floor, but the momentum was too much for her. As a result, she fell out of the portal on the other side, her breasts slamming into the wet ground.

She spat out the grass in her mouth, looked around, and groaned.

This is a safe place? Really? This place is anything but safe!

The forest surrounded the fugitive. Bare tree trunks stretched in all directions, without a single twig or leaf. A pale haze lay between them, obscuring any further view.

It was quiet. Unnaturally quiet, as if absorbent cotton had been stuffed in his ears. No birdsong, no insects humming, no wind rustling. Nothing. The pounding of her heart and the breath that came out of her mouth in puffs of vapor were deafening in this undivided realm of silence.

Judy stood up shakily and shook the dirt off her shirt. Oddly enough, she didn't feel cold, only bewilderment spiced with growing irritation.

A safe place, huh.

There was some truth to that, though: the girl really wasn't in any danger. There was nothing here but her, the trees, the hard plastic grass underfoot, and the plainly framed mirror.

In a way, she was lucky, because she could find herself in a world of creepy monsters!

- It's fucking amazing, - Judy said fervently.

Her own outraged voice calmed her down a little-at least she hadn't lost her hearing.

She shook her fist at the mirror and made a face at her reflection.

- Did you eat it, you son of a bitch?! - She grinned, - You'll never get me here.

Alas, Judy didn't believe her words.

Now she was grieving for her inattentiveness in learning sorcery. She could use some information about the protection Rick had used to seal the mirror passageway. The Faceless Ones were bound to end up in the middle of a dispute and show up for her. Unless, of course, they killed each other in the process.

That would be nice!

What kind of cat, I wondered, had run between them? - Judy wondered. The discord of the mystical couple was in plain sight. But what was the reason the monsters didn't share? Not her!

Are they both Faceless, by the way? Do they have an internal hierarchy that makes one command the other?

It's complicated!

If I were Louise Richard, it would have been nice to finish her educational excursion before handing over her guest to be eaten by a kin.

Was she the one Camila was talking about? Louise can't be trusted?

Why did the raven woman even need to warn Judy? Help her?

There was no doubt about it: Camila had deliberately distracted Nathan by encouraging the girl's escape. Hardly out of spite, just to spite her master. But why?

The girl's head was beginning to pound with all these questions.

Pondering all these inexplicable phenomena, Judy wandered between the trees.

She felt she had walked long enough, but still she found herself back near the mirror.

What next?

- What next? - she muttered. There seemed to be only one way out of here, and it was the cursed mirror. She had to summon up the courage to jump somewhere else. But where?

The risk was great. What if next time she was less lucky and ended up in some god-awful dimension? Judy was not at all happy about the prospect of close encounters with chthonic monsters. Her imagination immediately began to dance, coloring the feast that the unknown creatures would make of her puny body.