Michael J Mallen

IT WAS A warm evening, but Lucy shivered as she walked through the park, the shadows of the old oaks stretching long and dark. The dim lamplight barely illuminated the path ahead. With her backpack slung over one shoulder, she clutched a book on quantum physics, a comfort in a world that often felt unsettling.

     Two men emerged from the darkness, their movements predatory, their words slithering like snakes. Cornered, Lucy felt a cold knot of dread tighten in her stomach. One of them smirked and reached for her.

     In that heart-stopping moment, the instincts she had honed from years of self-defense training took over. She fumbled in her backpack, her hand closing around a familiar, cold object. As the man lunged, she didn’t hesitate.

     A single shot rang out, sharp and final, echoing through the quiet park. The man dropped to the ground, his smirk gone forever. The other man, startled by the unexpected violence, fled into the night.

     Unbeknownst to her, a man across the park had recorded the entire scene on his phone. Within an hour of him uploading it to YouTube, the video had gone viral, reaching over 1,000,000 views.

     The next day, Lucy, in the safe cocoon of her bedroom, stumbled upon the video. The sight of herself, a killer in the grainy footage, sent a wave of nausea over her. She nearly fainted. Desperate, she reached for her make-up kit, her fingers trembling as she began to transform her face, hoping to become someone else entirely.

     But her plan created an unforeseen and devastating problem for her identical twin sister, Lexi.