A TWIN'S REVENGE:

"Ooh look a ten dollar note I have no use for anymore", I thought, pocketing it anyways as I strolled through the graveyard. 

You usually found a lot of strange treasures like buttons, candy, handkerchiefs and if you're lucky, cash. I had a bit of a bad habit of hoarding all these things for no reason. 
Bored and satisfied at my recent findings I returned back to my grave. 

Yeah, my grave. Did I mention I was dead ? It seems like such an insignificant detail about myself. A mood killer really. But let me tell you how death works. When a person is buried after their death, while the body stays back to feed the plants and microorganisms, their memories personify in the form of an entity you living folks like to call "ghost" that usually goes to underworld or the "After" as we call it. 

But I'd just died a week ago and still had a list of people I wanted to torture before leaving. So I hung around my grave, often talking to Graham,  when he came to guide the souls to "After", with his scythe and a stupid batman hoodie. Occasionally I'd find a lost ghost wandering around, or grave robbers I'd have to scare away but not once did I see a dead body come to life. 

So imagine my shock, when my cold dead hand pushed its way out of the ground.

I ran near my grave and cleared the mud under which I was buried while my undead self continued clawing her way out. That's something you don't see everyday. 
I stared as my undead body managed to climb her way out of the grave. 
"A little help would've been nice" she exclaimed. 

"Oh, I'm sorry, I was too shocked to see myself climbing OUT OF MY OWN GRAVE." 
If you think that sounds deranged, you had no idea how weird it looked. 

I watched as my undead body dusted the mud off her black jeans, fixed her t-shirt and tied the laces on the dirty combat boots. I gotta say, I looked good for someone who died a week ago and came back to life.

"Why aren't you dead ?" 

"I don't know, I just opened my eyes and found myself in the ground so my natural instinct was to come out of it." 

"Nothing about this is natural, my dear undead self" 

"How'd I die ?" She asked completely ignoring my comment.

I realized I had never really given it a thought. As much as I remembered, one minute I was alive and then the next minute I was looking at myself and I was dead. I couldn't recall how I died or when and how I was buried. Evidently enough I wasn't given a proper burial considering my body just clawed her way out of earth.

"I don't remember" I shrugged.

"So much for memories", she rolled her eyes. Wow, I forgot how annoying I was.  

"Well if you are done being cheeky, do you have any suggestions as to how you want to pursue this. You can't go on living a normal life, someone's bound to have noticed your death. Although why we did not get a proper burial is a myste- "

That's when we saw it. A girl, with our face walking by the graveyard. There weren't many things that could render a ghost and an undead being speechless but this was definitely one of them. 

"Stay here!", I ordered my body as I rushed after whoever it was that looked like me. Following my doppelganger inside a café, I observed while she waited for her drink. The resemblance was uncanny. 

"A tall mocha frap for Cara!" Wait, what? I was Cara. I stared in shock as my doppelganger walked over to fetch her drink. 
After a few hours of stalking her, I knew two things for sure. One, she was living my life, taking my classes, living with my family and hanging out with my friends as Cara Miller.  And two, she definitely was NOT Cara Miller. But this sparked more questions than it solved. Who was she? Why was she living my life and did she have a role to play in my death? 

I went back to the graveyard to find my body chatting up Graham. 
"Well well well, look who's wasting time flirting with the reaper, whilst I actually found out some pretty freaky information."

"I'm not flirting, I'm filling him up on current events."

As much as I wanted to retort sarcastically I decided to refrain myself and filled them both up on whatever I had seen. After listening to the entire story Graham finally opened his mouth.
"Look, this is none of my business but hypothetically if you wanted to go back to life, you would have to choose a person to kill in exchange for your soul being able to live. And I'm not saying murder is a favorable option but this doppelganger of yours certainly seems like a possible candidate." And then with an evil grin, vanished into thin air.

"I have a gut feeling that my death was anything but natural." My body piped up. 

"You know what, bod, I have a feeling you are right. Let's go get our life back." 

But soon enough I realized, we would need a disguise to go back since our doppelganger was committing an identity theft and straight up accusing her of it did not strike us as the best idea. 

We decided we would steal some money from the other Cara, since what was hers was ours, literally. After acquiring adequate cash, I got my body a complete make over to make sure she was unrecognizable. We cut short the hair, changed the wardrobe and adopted a British accent for no reason. I was now Cathy StClaire, an exchange student from London.     
Since I was my body's memory I had to go through the pain of watching myself try to speak in a broken British accent, which I seemed to be managing well.  The next step was to figure out where the fake me was, which wasn't so difficult considering she was living my life. So we followed fake me to college where she had convinced all but one friend that she was me. My best friend, Celeste seemed a bit apprehensive of fake me, which was flattering since she was literally the only one who seemed to see right through her. But ironically seemed to be looking right at me. Celeste excused herself and started walking towards us. I pulled my body behind the wall. Was letting her see me a good idea?  Would it be wrong to ask for her help? But Celeste got hold of me before I could answer all  these questions. 

"Cara?" Trust your bestie to know the real you.

"Hey Celeste, did you miss me?" My body replied. Since I could not be seen by anyone but me it was up to my body to explain what was going on. Surprisingly or unsurprisingly Celeste did not have a hard time believing the whole back-from-the-dead thing. She had suspected something was up since Halloween last week when I had disappeared for more than an hour and turned up all jumpy and weird. Now all we had to do was find out who she was, why she knew me and if she was my killer. Easy right?

It had been two hours since my body had talked to Celeste. As of now, she knew everything, including my presence as a ghost except she still could not see me. Between the three of us we made a plan to expose the fake Cara, find out her real identity and kill her to bring me back to life. Celeste was to keep her occupied, being her "best friend", and as much as she seemed to hate it, she agreed to take one for the team. 

Meanwhile we were to go back home and snoop around for incriminating evidence.  And currently, I was going through her closet while my bod was going through her bags and books. I was on the verge of giving up when I noticed a crack in the bed frame. I poked and prodded at it till a huge chunk of wood came out. Turned out it was not just a chunk of wood, it was a neatly carved out cavity filled with sheets of folded paper and a few ID cards.
'CATHERINE BLAKE' read the card. The papers looked like birth certificates and identification papers along with a few adoption papers ripped from a file. 'ST JOSEPH'S SHELTER'. I stared in shock as I realized that these were papers from the same shelter I was adopted from. Her birthdate matched mine along with her last name. 

I showed them to my body and she voiced out my fears. "The only logical explanation is her being our twin. But why now ?" As she spoke, events from the night I died suddenly came to me like a dramatic flashback. I remembered. The Halloween party, dressing up as Sally from Nightmare before Christmas, seeing my doppelganger dressed in the same costume thinking I was seeing things, having too much to drink, walking out for some fresh air when I heard my name being called. I had turned around to find myself looking at. . . myself? And that is when I had died. I was sure. Catherine Blake, my long lost twin turned evil had somehow hunted me down and killed me. But why? Why go through all this trouble? 
I explained all this to my bod. "No. Just no. This is way too dramatic. I think we would know if we had a twin. This does not make sense." 

"You wanna talk about sense ? You came back from the dead and are talking to your ghost. You have to kill your murderer to come back to life. None of this "makes sense" brochacho. Let's just wrap our heads around it and confront this identity stealer." 

And after this very meaningful conversation, I texted Celeste from the spare phone I had stolen from dad's room  and told her to bring fake Cara to where I had died. The backyard of Miller residence. 

Half an hour later, we heard a car pull up. This was it. The moment of truth, where all was to be revealed. I was getting sweaty and nervous. Could ghosts even sweat? 
"Would you relax, I'm the one who's supposed to do the talking." my body smartly said.

"So? You're still me and I'm still you. Ghosts can feel things too . . . apparently." 

We both went downstairs to confront fake Cara. Needless to say she was shocked.

"H- how, how are you alive? I killed you." she said looking at my body. Well the confession was easy. 

"Why?" Just one question escaped my body's mouth. 

Fake Cara, or Catherine gave a sorrowful smirk. "I was 15 when I found out the twin thing. I was too old to be adopted and I found your adoption papers in our file. Cara Blake, now Cara Miller. Adopted in a very well to do family. And what about me? Forgotten, left to fend for myself, barely getting 2 meals a day. When you got birthday parties and ice cream and outings with your friends and good clothes. I wanted that. So I ran away when I was 16. Followed you, learnt about your life, adopted your mannerisms. Learnt how to be you. And last week, on Halloween finally got up the courage to replace you. You were too drunk anyway, stumbling in the back yard. It was almost too easy." We all stared at her, aghast.  
 
"You're crazy." Celeste piped up.

"My only mistake was underestimating you. If you hadn't suspected my identity, I would've gotten away with it." she pointed her boney finger at Celeste. "And I guess I didn't do a good job of killing you. Oh well, two bodies to get rid of." With that she took out a revolver. Where the hell did she get a gun?! I didn't have time to answer that question. Everything happened in a flash. Catherine pulled the trigger on Celeste and my body jumped in front of her to save her. And in the panic and fear of not being able to help I desperately tried to find a weapon. I saw a rock and all I could think of was hitting Catherine on the head. Suddenly the rock moved and went flying at her head just as the bullet left the gun. Everything seemed to slow down as the bullet hit my body and the rock hit her head. Both Catherine and Cara the bod, fell to the ground and my ghost ears were ringing. I died, AGAIN?! I walked over Catherine's body and walked over to mine and started poking at it. That's when I noticed Graham standing beside me looking at dead Catherine. 
"Well, looks like you managed that well. " And with that disappeared with Catherine's body. I couldn't help but wonder if she'd come back for revenge. But I'd trust Graham to keep her dead self in place.

As I was looking at my body, dead once again, and a hysterical Celeste crying over her, I started feeling dizzy and faint. 
I suddenly opened my eyes to see my best friend still crying. 

God, stop crying you're giving me a headache. I realized I'd said it out loud as She stopped crying and looked at me. 

"Cara!", she shouted and hugged me. I realized my memories were back in my body and that I was alive. I started feeling around my gut for a bullet wound that didn't seem to be found. 

"Cara? Sweetie we're home!". We heard our parents drive home from work and started laughing. They'd never know what had happened. For them, I was always Cara. 

"Sweetie, are you feeling okay now? You ran out in such a rush this morning" my mom walked over to me and Celeste sitting on the ground laughing.

"Yeah mom, don't worry. I just. . . wasn't myself." 

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