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theredlamp · 05-10-2016, 04:24 AM

PLEASE BE WARNED OF A POTENTIALLY DISTURBING GIF IN THIS UPDATE

>Kate: Kick the imposter's ass. No one can beat the original.

KATE: I would totally beat her up.
KATE: Like, I would just find her and punch her in the face because, like, who even does such a thing?
KATE: I’m not going to just let her do that to me, you know?
KATE: Anyone like that deserves a good punch.
KATE: And I would also…erm….
KATE: Hm.

>Kate: He's obviously asking for advice for a real situation, and, barring an evil twin, there isn't a clone of him running around. Joe or someone Joe knows probably has some sort of mental issue. Sudden mood swings maybe?

[Image: PXxxYeF.png]

…Actually, why IS he asking this? You sort of realize a little too late that there might be more to this than you thought. You took his question a bit literally, but maybe it’s supposed to be metaphorical? Like…maybe he THINKS there’s a doppelganger, but there actually isn’t one. Or he’s kind of looking from the outside in and seeing himself ruining his own life?

You don’t even know. You can’t say you’re some psychology expert, but now that you think about it, maybe telling him “I’ll beat my clone up” isn’t the way to go. You’d beat up a real clone, not some kind of metaphor clone. That sounded better in your head.

KATE: Actually, uh, nevermind.

>I'd probably try to find out why this person is trying to ruin my life. It really depends on who it is.

[Image: kQUWHcm.png]

KATE: ...I’d totally try to talk to them.
KATE: Like, they had to have had a reason to take over my life, right?
KATE: I mean, I’d like to know how they could turn into me in the first place.
KATE: But I’d just like to discuss things out, y’know, Kate to Kate.
KATE: Yeah.

There’s a pause. And then Joe just lets out a laugh, shaking his head.

JOE: Goodness, Kate, it’s alright. You don’t need to backtrack on your answer.
JOE: I understand how strange the question is, so I do apologize for putting you on the spot.
JOE: But anyways, I did ask it because…well, let me actually tell you a story, first.

JOE: When I was a boy, I often got very sick. I was bedridden quite a lot.
JOE: Which wasn’t bad, really, but during the nighttime…
JOE: Well, I often had bouts of sleep paralysis.
KATE: What’s that?
JOE: Hm, how do I explain…
JOE: It’s like you’re awake, but you’re not really awake.
JOE: You see everything, hear everything, but every single muscle in your body is frozen.
JOE: You can’t move, essentially. It’s like you’re…dead. A corpse.
JOE: Which is morbid, yes, but that’s the most accurate description I can really come up with at the moment.
JOE: …
JOE: Anyways, Kate, you do know what a doppelganger is, right?
KATE: Yeah? That’s like your double or your clone or something.
JOE: Yes, something like that. A copy of you in every way.
JOE: I might have seen a doppelganger, once…

JOE: I remember one night, as a child, I woke up to find I couldn’t move.
JOE: Which was already becoming quite the terrible and familiar circumstance, but there was something especially strange that night.
JOE: I wasn’t alone.
JOE: There was a figure standing at the side of my bed.
JOE: It wasn’t my mother or my father, that I knew for sure.
JOE: And it was strange, I couldn’t see it’s face…
JOE: But it just stood there, and all I could do was stare because my muscles were wound as tight as a string.
JOE: …
JOE: …You know how sometimes, thoughts enter your mind, and they don’t make sense? They don’t make any logical sense at all.
JOE: Like you’re having a lurid fever dream, and your brain somehow convinces itself of truths you’ve never heard before.
JOE: In that moment, staring at that figure, I suddenly got such a strange feeling.
JOE: The feeling that that figure was…me.
KATE: What?
JOE: I know, I know, it’s odd, how could I have been so sure of that? Even I don’t know.
JOE: But that wasn’t even the strangest thing.
JOE: What was even stranger was that I was convinced that this figure, whatever it was, was the true, original Joe Verger.
JOE: I was the copy. I was the clone, the duplicate, the doppelganger.
JOE: And in that moment, I couldn’t help but understand that this original Joe was…disappointed in me.
JOE: He didn’t hate me. He didn’t really love me, either. He was just…upset. Sad. Like I was squandering whatever life I had stolen from him.

Joe pauses, and that gives you a moment to mentally step back and reassess what in the world he just told you. He got visited by some weird hallucination that was…him? When he was a kid? And what, the thing he saw was the actual Joe Verger? This is all really confusing. What in the world is making him thinking of such a weird story?

But before you can think more on it, Joe speaks up again. He starts flipping through the book of poetry as he speaks – is he trying to find his own poems?

JOE: Anyways, Kate, the reason why I shared that story is because I’ve been thinking about the nature of those masks.
JOE: You do remember how Seth’s mask talked, didn’t you?
KATE: Uh…it talked like a big super evil monster? Like a jerk?
JOE: No, no. Well, okay, it talked like that too, but I was referring to something else.
JOE: The mask never referred to itself as a separate entity.
JOE: Don’t you remember? We called that thing Seth and it believed it was, indeed, Seth. It never corrected us.
JOE: Didn’t you find that strange?

You think back, and now that you think about it…Joe’s right. That thing never talked like it was something else. It talked like it had been Seth all along, from the very beginning.

JOE: I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m slowly coming up with a theory.
JOE: What if those masks ARE us?
JOE: I don’t even know…I don’t have any evidence for that.
JOE: But I’m getting the same feeling that I did those many years ago…
JOE: That somehow, those masks aren’t just random monsters crawling about.
JOE: They’re…us, in some fashion. Doppelgangers. Why else would that mask think it’s Seth?

JOE: The reason I asked you that question, Kate, was to try to understand how those masks might feel.
JOE: If we assume they are part of us, copies of us…then maybe they see us as invaders, of sorts.
JOE: And your first answer worries me, because that’s possibly the knee-jerk reaction to seeing a copy of yourself going around.
JOE: Is that why they want to destroy us from the inside out…?

Okay, okay, you’re going to put your foot down. This is getting way too weird and convoluted to be comfortable.

KATE: Whoah, whoah, Joe, you’re like…going way too far with this theory of yours.
KATE: What the hell, we don’t know jack about those things!
KATE: That mask could’ve just been saying that Seth stuff to be super creepy! You don’t know!
KATE: Like, even if they were copies, why would that mean that they would try to kill us, huh?
KATE: Uh, maybe there are really peaceful clones out there, you can’t guarantee that they’re all bad, if they really did exist.
KATE: Your imaginary doppelganger self didn’t try to kill you all those years ago, right?
JOE: …
JOE: Didn’t it…?

You barely have time to react, because suddenly, Joe lets out a very offended gasp as he flips a page over in his book, his eyes widening in surprise.

JOE: Oh, hold on now, what’s THIS nonsense?
JOE: Who…who in the world would do such a thing?!
KATE: What? What is it?
JOE: Take a look! This is just…ugh, what a travesty!

He turns the book towards you, and you instantly recognize the title. Ash Hearts. But this isn’t a clean page at all – the poem is covered with all sorts of dark scribbles, words circled or crossed out, little sketches of things dotted all over.

At the very bottom is an inscription of some kind:

THIS REMINDS ME OF YOU
-A

Author’s Note:

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