"So you figured it out?"

"I think so."

"Why didn't you let me come out and play then, hmm?"

It isn't the hyena laughter that sets the girl on edge, but the fact that it's rolling out in her voice. When it wears down, the mirror twin rolls a shoulder into a lazy shrug when it doesn't get an answer.

"Earth to Audrey Horne. Are you there little girl?"

Her voice, her own voice coos out that "little girl" in a tone that she imagines a man luring a child into a van would use, lecherous and sweet all at once and it makes her shudder.

"I'm here. Are you the one that killed Laura?"

It seems like the right thing, somehow, to ask.

"Negative. I'm all yours baby."

"I'm going crazy.."

Audrey stares down at the faucet, focuses on it instead of those blind eyes because the bile is already burning its way up her throat, and if she looks now then she's going to lose it. And isn't that just peachy?

"Absolutely bombers."

"How..?"

She remembers the horror stories surrounding the man she had once, in her own way, loved. Of how one of those had gotten to him, clung to secrets kept tucked away and rode him like a horse. How that same man had killed after she was thought to have been blown to pieces.

"How? How what? How did I get in? How have I not taken over? How do you make a bitchin' red velvet cake? How what?"

It's toying with her, and she knows it. She flips the tap to cold and brings her hand beneath the water.

"How did you get in?"

"That's simple, sugarpop. When you went funny boom-boom and blew through my hometown, I just hitched a ride. It makes sense if you stop to think about it."

She stares at the water, transfixed as it slides between splayed digits, her voice dreamy soft. She's trying to will herself to calm down, trying to force herself into a daydream but her doppelganger won't let her.

"I don't know how any of this makes sense."

"Then I'll enlighten you. How many humans do you know that have actually survived an explosion?"

"None, personally, but people survive them all of the time."

There's that laughter again, cruel and sharp.

"How many survive with not so much as a scratch? The only reason they weren't picking you out of trees for miles around was because I wouldn't let it happen. I need ya baby, just like you need me. You go kaboom? I go kaboom.?

The remnants of last night's dinner threaten to flood her mouth, leaving a bitter, acidy taste on the back of her tongue.

"Why haven't you taken over then? I mean, that's what you do right?"

For once, the creature seems impressed. It crosses its arms over its chest, vicious smile holding fast to a smugness that looks strange on Audrey's face.

"How do you know about all of that then, hmm?"

Audrey laughs and it's a dry, soft thing.

"I watch a lot of television."

"Good girl! And here I was thinking that you were too pretty to be anything but stupid. Shows what I know, huh? Well, I guess I can tell you. I can't get out because you won't let me. It should be cut and dry and it isn't. I'm not even sure why I'm sharing your body, but low and behold I am."

"Maybe it has something to do with you not being real," she says, almost pleads, and she can hear the creature clicking its tongue against the roof of its mouth. Tunk. Tunk. Tunk.

"Say that enough and you might start believing it. I swear, you humans are all alike. What sweet little lie do you tell yourself to pretend that the blond bitch isn't actually a vampire?"

Audrey rolls her eyes up, something dark and child selfish flicking behind the gaze. As the corner of her mouth tugs into a silent snarl, her mirror twin watches with all of the nonchalance of someone smoking a cigarette outside of a convenience store. It knows it has her where it wants her.

"So this is your big plan? You're just going to taunt me? Are you gonna tell me that my hair is stupid, or that I smell like poop?"

Audrey In The Mirror jerks around as if it has been shot, hands placed over its chest.

"You wound me! You really do!!"

"Well you've not given me a lot to really work with."

"Oh, I've given you plenty but you won't take it and I. Want. To. Know. Why."

"Because you're just a voice in my head, that's all."

"You know better than that."

"I'll just ask Dr. Shilo for something that'll make you go away."

"Oh Audrey! You really can't be that thick. We're both different sides of the same coin, chickpea. While you're at it, ask him to give you a lobotomy."

Audrey By The Sink clenches her hand into a fist, panic flooding over her in gut clenching waves. She's going to be sick and it isn't simply because she is letting a voice in her head get to her. It's because this voice in her head isn't really a voice at all. Whatever is standing behind that mirror has taken her reflection hostage and watches her reactions with the glee of a starving wolf cornering an especially fast young deer.

She knows that look, even if she doesn't acknowledge it. The wolf has been chasing the deer for quite sometime now.

"I don't have to listen to this. You're not real. You're not real."

"So you've said. I'm as real as you are. So what are you going to do? Let that bitch beat you to a pulp again? You Hornes are really something. Stubborn stubborn. If you'd let me stretch my legs, I could do some damage."

"That's not..."

"You should have seen your face! Standing there like a fish while your twu wub got cut to ribbons. Really romantic."

The creature is baiting her and the tragedy is that Audrey is falling for it.

"You don't know anything.."

"Oh no, see, that's where you're wrong. I know everything about you, since I am you. A much cooler version, might I add. Do you think that your lady love is gonna keep you around if you continue to be so damned useless??

"Mags wouldn't do that..."

There is hesitation in her voice, a pause that Audrey In The Mirror pounces on like a fresh kill.

"Oh, wouldn't she? I think she would. Her kind is fickle. Tricky. If you're lucky, maybe she'll just toss you to the curb, or--if you're not--.maybe you'll be a midnight snack."

"Stop it,? she mutters, voice ebbing and flowing on a tide of warning.

"And think about when you get old! Think she'll be pawing you when your boobs are hanging to your knees?"

"Stop. It.?

"Face it. You need me. I'm the only thing you've got when it comes down to it. You're *mine* Audrey. You'll always be mine, and one day you'll slip up and there I'll be. I think she would like me better anyway."

"STOP IT! Stopitstopitstopit!"

Audrey doesn't want to hear anymore, doesn't want to hear the taunts and the baiting, and she brings her fists up and slams them with every ounce of strength that she can muster into the mirror. It shatters into a million dangerous pieces and the pain flooding her hands is sharp enough bring reality crashing back to her. Brilliant flashes of white hot pain and she stands back, stares down at the shards of broken, diamond backed glass.

Audrey In The Mirror stares up at her with a downright wolfish grin from a million tiny points of reflected light. The creature throws its head back- her head- and howls out, wolf call trailing off with a series of excited little yips.

"That's the spirit! Let it out! Come on baby, let tiger come out to play-eee!"

Audrey stumbles back, cradles her torn hands to her chest and falls into an undignified heap against the side of the bathtub, a*ss hitting the floor hard enough to send a whole new sort of pain zipping up her spine.

This isn't happening. This isn't happening. Thisisn'thappening.

?But it is. Thank that twig for me. That whack upside your noggin really did the trick. Naptimes over.?

Audrey doesn't know what to say, can't find the power to speak if she wanted to. The pain and the confusion and the fear and the panic swirl around her head, all things best kept apart from one another. Her head is swimming, swaying on her neck.

?Oh god. You aren't going to faint are you? You know what, on second thought, take a nap.?

Sprawled out there beside of that bathtub, hands bleeding from a dozen gashes and staining her nightgown bright red, she doubles over and her stomach rolls, sends everything retching from her mouth and onto the floor. Audrey In the Mirror tut tut tuts in nothing short of disgust.

?And that's my ?gotta go? signal. Really, clean yourself up. I know it's hard to sweep a train wreck beneath a Persian rug, but it isn't impossible.?

Audrey doesn't say a word and just stares at her reflection in a broken shard propped up against the sink. When it becomes apparent to Audrey In The Mirror that it isn't going to get anything else from the girl, it huffs and turns its back to Audrey On The Floor, one finger twirling in the air next to it's head.

Its strange, but in that instant the gesture strikes Audrey as a charismatic one and the thought fills her with entirely different breed of dread.

?Remember to get some rest, eat your vegetables and give Blondie a slap on the a*ss for me.?

Silence then, and Audrey attempts to move to her feet only when it's obvious that her mirror twin is long gone. She stands on shaky legs that may as well be made of jello and inches around the vomit and the glass, careful not to step in either. She tears some toilet paper from the roll by the sink and turns to look at the mess that she has made.

At first it reminds her of some surrealist painting gone wrong, but that's not right. No, it looks like the artist of a surrealist painting exploded in the small bathroom and the thought brings a grim smile to her face.

She elbows the medicine cabinet open, mindful of the jagged pieces of glass still sticking from the mirror's frame. She grabs a small brown bottle with her left hand, the one that still has some feeling in it, and pulls the black rubber stopper out with her teeth and spits it into the sink.

Iodine the color of ancient blood is dabbed onto each and every wound, the sting nothing when compared to the throbbing ache surrounding those gashes. The toilet paper is wrapped around, the ends tucked into the band of a wrist watch that had ceased working the moment she had set foot on Rhydin soil.

Cautious, cat curious glances are tossed towards the broken pieces of glass on the floor but it's her own paranoia staring back at her.

She flexes the fingers on her left hand and decides that it isn't nearly scratched enough to warrant another quilted quicker picker upper bandage. Already her mind is beginning to rationalize the events, salvaging what it can out of the thread thin strand of her sanity. She was sleepwalking.

That's it. I was sleepwalking and I had a nightmare.

She flicks the light-switch off on her way out of the door and casts one last look over her shoulder. She can clean it up tomorrow, have that mirror replaced and no one would be the wiser.

?Oh Audrey.?

She stops dead in her tracks, the baby fine hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. The voice isn't coming from behind the door but from somewhere inside of her already rattled skull.

?I'll be seeing you?