The Things We Do (Under Editing)

Going Down with a Fight

I saw the blow coming a mile away, but it took everything I had to keep my feet, much less to block an attack. My chance of dodging was only slightly better. Still, I attempted the latter, but the wannabe-me didn't fall for the same trick twice.

On the upside, the jolt that went through my jaw momentarily distracted me from the searing pain in my hip. On the downside, it was joined by the feeling of my feet leaving the ground. For one single moment, I was flying... and then I was falling flat on my face.

I've landed on pavement a million times, but smacking your face into the road because you got decked has a different flavor than wiping out on a bike. For one, it's a lot worse.

The street inches from my face started swirling and the ground shifted under me. I felt like even while lying down I could have fallen over. Darkness pushed into my vision until I could only see small pricks of light when I tried to look up.

How long my personal devil let me lie like that, I haven't the slightest idea. I lost all sense of time as I lay there, clinging to consciousness, but I know that as long as I lay there, the spitting image of me watched on. When my vision finally began to clear, I looked up at her, and she looked back. Then, I vomited at her feet.

Like a real lady, the counterfeit me waited for me to regain me feet before trying to attack again. I was still dizzy when I stood, but this fight was going to happen whether I wanted it to or not, and I was probably going to lose when it happened, so I might as well get it over with.

Unfortunately, when I faced the copycat, I also faced the spectators behind her. I had been right. Our noise had drawn attention, and what a sight they had come to see.

When she punched me again, this time in the gut, she didn't let me fall. I was tempted to vomit on her again, but sadly spite can't summon such things.

The blows came hard and fast, with the force and form of a practiced boxer, and I was trapped on my feet, forced to take each as it came. Either through adrenaline, or just pure luck, I eventually managed to sidestep her fist, grabbing her arm and twisting my body until she was behind me. Using both her momentum and my own, I drove my elbow deep into her lower chest until I felt one of her ribs crack.

She wasn't the only one with training.

Having leveled the playing field a little, I felt a touch better. Not that it was actually likely to help much. What would Wraith do if I died here?

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a flash. The onlookers had pulled out cameras and were capturing everything. What a story this would be: "Two Phantom Banshees fight for dominance". There was my answer. Wraith would be having a field day no matter which of us won. I couldn't wait.

My clone, doubled over in pain, started cursing at me as she coughed up blood. I wasn't in the mood to listen to her, so I shifted my weight, wincing as I stood on my left leg, and kicked her straight in the face. That shut her up real quick. I could now semi-honestly say that I'd kicked myself in the face. What an achievement.

Apparently she wasn't as injured as I thought, though, as, when she looked at me again, I could see murder in her eyes. Crap.

I decided my best course of action was to promptly take off in the other direction. My leg didn't carry me far, but it carried me far enough.

Underneath a wide bridge, where a few dozen supports held one street above another, I sank into the shadows, wishing I could wrap them around me like a blanket. My ragged breathing echoed off the concrete walls.

In that moment, it truly and completely occurred to me that I was probably going to die within the next few minutes. This was the second time this lunatic had done this to me, and I couldn't stop myself from shaking. After everything my life had put me through, my death would certainly fit the pattern. I just hoped that Kacie would keep all my promises to Seth.

At that last thought, I dropped my head forward. Was I really going to be the cause of him losing someone else? No. if I was going down, I would go down fighting until my last breath to make it back to him. He deserved that much.

I started laughing. With everything that was happening, I started laughing. Why? I can't even begin to answer that, but I couldn't make myself stop. The sound of footsteps, on the other hand, killed the sound immediately. The other me had arrived.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are."

I soaked deeper into the darkness and held my breath, willing my heartbeat to stop pounding in my chest. If I was going to win, I needed to fight smart. I attempted to dance around the columns, keeping directly behind one on the far side from her, and staying under the lights that had long ago burned out with no one to care enough to replace them.

Reasonably, this was a good plan. However, the echoes threw me off and I instead found myself face to face with the girl who had tried to be me. I expect anyone who knew me would have been able to tell the difference, her face was rounder and her eyes too wild. More than that, the sadistic smile, which ripped her lips apart and bared her teeth like an animal preparing to rip out a throat, was a smile I could never wear. My lust for blood would never be that strong.

To anyone else, however, she was probably a very good copy.

"Found you." She said the words in the same sing-song voice she'd said the first ones, just like a character in a horror movie.

I really hate horror movies.

When she attacked me, my leg couldn't bare both our weight, and I fell. It was nearly as bad as the time before, but I didn't stay awake long enough to feel the pain. My head hit the ground and lost my grip on the world.

So much for fighting until the end.