Chapter 15: The Mirror Never Lies
1088 Words
They took her away in silence.
No screaming. No handcuffs. No resistance. The woman in Camille’s robe smiled the entire time, like it was a date, not an arrest. Camille stood motionless by the window, watching as her double disappeared into the back of a black car.
Julian stood beside her, tense and quiet. Archer paced. Lucien was already on the phone, speaking in hushed, furious tones to someone in law enforcement.
Camille’s skin still felt cold where the imposter had passed her.
“I wore this for him,” the woman had whispered. “And he looked at me like he used to look at you.”
Camille hadn’t responded. Not to her. Not yet.
She was saving every word for later—when she could scream them alone into the dark.
---
The interrogation was short. The woman—Becca, if that name was even real—refused to give her full identity. No last name. No parents. No address.
Only a statement.
“I was made to love her.”
Lucien slammed the file closed. “She’s not going to talk.”
“She already has,” Camille murmured. “In everything she’s done.”
Julian reached across the table and touched her hand. “It’s over.”
Camille shook her head slowly. “No. It isn’t.”
---
That night, she returned to her home for the first time in days.
Everything had been cleaned, sanitized, checked for bugs and cameras. Her bed was stripped. Her closet reorganized. Her perfumes arranged alphabetically—probably Archer’s doing. But the air still felt heavy. Like someone was holding their breath in the corner, waiting.
She curled up under the sheets, refusing to sleep in Lucien’s or Julian’s arms this time.
She needed to remember who she was—alone.
But the mirror above her dresser showed her a different story.
There were lipstick smudges on the glass.
Not hers.
She walked to it, heart racing, and read the faint words written in red:
“You can’t wash me out.”
---
The next morning, Camille received the first letter.
It was waiting on her doorstep, wrapped in black ribbon.
Julian opened it while Lucien scanned for prints.
The message was short.
“My body is gone. But I live in every man you touch.”
Camille felt her chest constrict.
“She had these delivered after she was arrested,” Lucien said grimly. “This was all planned.”
Archer arrived fifteen minutes later with a flash drive.
“She had a digital cache,” he said. “Hundreds of files. Journals. Audio. Video. It’s a shrine.”
Camille paled. “To me?”
Archer hesitated. “To the version of you she created. It’s… grotesque. Obsessive. Worship and hate wrapped in each other.”
Lucien glanced at Camille. “Do you want to see it?”
She nodded once.
---
The files opened like a nightmare.
Clips of Camille walking through the park, unaware she was being filmed.
Photos taken through fogged windows, at restaurants, outside clubs, in dressing rooms.
Audio recordings—her voice ordering coffee, laughing, crying.
But worse were the monologues.
Dozens of recordings where the woman practiced being Camille.
“I’m Camille. I love red wine and painful men. I dream of being seen—so I dress like a wound.”
Camille pressed pause, nauseous.
“Turn it off,” Julian said sharply. “She’s not you.”
“No,” Camille murmured. “She’s the reflection of me I tried to hide. The damaged part. The reckless one.”
“She doesn’t exist without you,” Lucien said carefully.
“That’s the problem,” Camille said, voice shaking. “Neither do I.”
---
Days passed.
Becca—or whoever she truly was—remained in custody under psychiatric evaluation. But the damage had already been done. Camille began receiving fan mail addressed to her stalker. Anonymous accounts on social media posted side-by-side edits of them both.
“She’s a manifestation,” Lucien said one night as they drank in silence. “Of what the internet worships. Beauty, madness, hunger. She’s viral.”
“She’s becoming a legend,” Archer added. “And the world loves a monster more than a woman with boundaries.”
Camille looked at them both. “Then let’s give them a new story.”
---
The next week, Camille released a video.
Her first in years.
Her voice was clear. Her eyes sharp.
“I was hunted by a woman who thought she loved me. Who thought we were the same. She wore my face. But she never had my soul. My pain is not her permission. My desire is not her disguise. And my silence is not surrender.”
The video trended for three days.
Until the next letter arrived.
This one contained a lock of Camille’s hair.
With a note:
“You cut me off. But you forgot—I know where you keep your blades.”
---
Lucien doubled security.
Julian started sleeping with a gun beside the bed.
Archer hacked into every file on Becca’s digital trail and unearthed a manifesto.
It was titled:
“No More Love: The Gospel of Camille.”
Camille read the first page and stopped.
“She wrote a version of this story,” she whispered. “A twisted version. Where I fall for her. Where she saves me from all of you.”
“She rewrote the ending,” Julian muttered.
“No,” Camille said, eyes narrowing. “She wants to write it. And she’s not done yet.”
---
The final message came on Camille’s birthday.
Another card.
A photograph.
It showed Camille as a child, maybe five or six, in front of her childhood home.
She was holding a stuffed rabbit.
There was a smear of red across the image—lipstick again.
“I was always there. Just waiting to be seen.”
Camille dropped the photo.
It meant Becca had gone further than anyone realized. Into her past. Her family. Her memories.
“She doesn’t just want to become me,” Camille said, breathless. “She wants to erase me.”
---
That night, Camille stood in front of her mirror again.
This time, she didn’t cry.
She pulled out the same red robe the woman had worn.
Tied it around her body.
Then she stared at her reflection—and smiled.
“If you want me,” she whispered to the dark, “come and finish it.”
- Writer
