Purgatory (A Place Down Under Book 1) Read online

  By

  Susan Stec

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  Acknowledgement

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  Thanks go to my most amazing line-editor, Rainy Kaye, my online family of editors at http://www.thenextbigwriter.com (special thanks to Derek Atkins) and my Artworks buddies for their constant support and guidance.

  There is a little piece of all of you in everything I write.

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  Copyrighted © 2015 by Susan Stec

  Cover Rebecca Hamilton

  Published by Susan Stec, through Createspace

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters and places are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance of the characters to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

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  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to others.

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  Doppelganger

  I am who you are.

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  I push myself into your body, absorb everything that is you, and wear it like a glove.

  Then there are two of us.

  ONE

  TAKE ME

  I glide along pavement under a blanket of night, and cling to the shadow of a young woman with perky tits. It's Friday evening and we are waiting in a line outside a bar in Orlando. She's with several friends, all of whom she clearly feels are of less importance, given her constant chatter and their rapt devotion. All she can talk about is a European vacation her family is going on in less than two days: the long plane ride, places they will stay, sexy foreign men with "to die for" accents, and the shopping she will be doing.

  I am a myth—a night fright—a demon's blunder. I have no name, no sex, no flesh . . . unless I wear one of you, a human. I will be wearing this one by the time she boards her plane.

  The line moves. I move with it, a shadow stone skipping other shadows.

  * * *

  Another bar, another Friday night, a different town—I've been wearing perky tits for five days.

  "So, CeCe, your whole family was, like, dead when you got home?" the guy on the barstool next to me says. "Crap. That had to be hard."

  Yeah, perky tits' name is CeCe. A bit too . . . adorable for me, but anyone who can drag attention from a bunch of guys in a sports bar offering free food during happy hour, is my kind of wardrobe.

  All shoulders and ass, Mr. I'm-Doing-You-A-Favor looks at me with dreamy blue eyes through jet-black bangs that hang to his lower lids. He has a chin screaming to be nibbled and a little strip of chest peeking out of his half unbuttoned shirt that makes me want to explore.

  "Yes." I take a sip of my White Russian. "It was."

  Scantily clad waitresses with plastic smiles rush from table to table with cumbersome trays of jostling liquids, overflowing ashtrays, and half-empty tip jars. Loud music pulses overhead and a group of college kids working the free food source knock it up a notch with riotous laughter and taunts. I need to get Dreamy-Eyes out of here and into me, big time.

  "So, like, you had to be totally freaked," he presses on. "I mean, hell, I'd be brain-dead if that happened to me."

  I don't want to tell him he's tipping the cranial scales on brain matter already. And I sure as hell don't want to tell him the girl with chestnut hair and eyes he's so superficially concerned with is actually on a thirty-day tour of Europe—I'm just a carbon copy. Nor do I care to mention the dead family thing is only a fantasy of mine—so wish my doppelganger, wannabe mother was in a body bag. Unfortunately, I'm sure Mommy is Down Under, perched on one of Purgatory's barstools and probably sipping her beverage of choice. I take another sip of mine and catch a reflection of my host in the half empty glass.

  When I borrowed/cloned/absorbed CeCe's persona—my kind calls it doubling up—she was sitting on a toilet at Orlando International Airport, illegally smoking a clove cigarette. The smell was horrid; the taste was worse. Sometimes, being a doppelganger is a pain in the ass.

  My poor relationship choice clears his throat. One side of his mouth turns up in a nasty little grin. I take another sip of my drink, briefly contemplate walking—very briefly—and then continue to make small talk with Blue Eyes.

  "Yep, when I found my family, I wanted to crawl in a hole and die."

  Not a lie since I live in the sewers.

  "Where were you the night they got killed?" He just wouldn't let up.

  If only they could just shut up and put out. Humans! Why all the chatter? All I want is a little steam.

  "Met this chick," I say. "I was absorbed by the possibility of a lasting friendship. We hung out half the night, found out she had to leave three days later, I made the best of it. Can we leave it at that?"

  Not a lie. I'd followed CeCe around all weekend, watched her party last Friday and Saturday nights, and then I doubled up on her. If I could've stayed longer, I would've held the real CeCe's hair while she puked into the toilet at the airport Sunday morning. But getting caught is not an option since I'm supposed to kill the host before donning it. My kind is not fond of doubling up. Mother says I should be a good little doppelganger; hit hard and run fast is her motto. Screw that.

  Just to add a little smite to my recklessness, I briefly thought about leaving the real CeCe in the restroom, and then board the plane with her family, them none the wiser. I am her double. Sure glad that didn't happen. It was a stupid idea. I don't know what I was thinking; like the chick was going to wake up, be happy she'd missed the flight, party down, and not worry in the least when no one from her family calls to check on her from Europe? Duh! What happens when Mommy and Daddy start Facebooking family vacation pictures with her in them? Talk about serious drugs and therapy sessions.

  "You're not gay, are you?" Blue Eyes blurts.

  God help me, I laugh. I could tell him the gender of my sexual partner, or for that matter, the body I choose to wear really doesn't matter much. I'm down for the ride, male or female, if they piqué my attention. Evidently my laugh is enough to quell his concerns.

  "Cool, because I like you." He runs a hand seductively up the inside of my left thigh, face moving toward mine, and fingertips taunting the edge of my black lace panties. "And because I do, I'm gonna tell you right up front, if you're looking for a high-priority, total commitment, long-term relationship kinda thing, I'm not your man." His grin curls into a borderline pervy smirk that's lasciviously delicious. "See, I can only concentrate on one thing at a time."

  Yeah, I got that the first time he opened his mouth.

  His middle finger flicks the elastic on my panties. "And I concentrate real hard."

  His other hand reaches for mine.

  Damn him all to hell. The guy is yummy enough to eat, if he would just keep his mouth shut.

  "Well, then, I guess you're my man," I say, and give his raised zipper a little squeeze.

  It takes him a few seconds. I can almost hear cogs roll as he probably plays his comment and my answer over and over in his head. I'm about ready to spell it out for him, but he finally gets it.

  "So, your place or mine?"

  "How about the alley behind the building?" I toss a twenty on the bar and lift my glass.

  "You're shitting me, right?"

  "I would never do that." Setting the empty glass down, I stand—chest not an inch from his lips—and run CeCe's store bought fingernails along his leg.

  His hand slides out from under
my skirt and lands on his knee. I give it a little pat as I toss my leather jacket over my shoulder and head for the bright red exit sign.

  Glancing at the mirror over the bar, I watch him chug his beer, slap money on the bar, and scramble to his feet.

  Outside, I strut past a dumpster and down an alley alongside the building. When I turn, Blue Eyes pushes me against the wall and runs his lips up my neck to just under my ear. The noise from the bar is nothing more than a vibration through the brick at my back. As he nibbles, I stare at the dumpster ten feet down the alley. It reeks of stale beer, rank food, wet cardboard, cigarettes, mold, and vermin.

  Rats to be exact. Ah, the smells of the street. It almost makes me feel like I'm down in the sewer—home sweet home.

  He stands over me with both hands spread on the brick wall by my head, his jeans rough as he knees my legs apart. I drop my shoulder, and my jacket falls beside our feet. Blue Eyes works the buttons on CeCe's silk shirt, and his thumb finds her nipple under a black lace bra. A moan escapes my lips as his tongue muscles them apart.

  I open my legs to his caressing fingers, breaths short and shallow. CeCe's heart thumps under the shell I'm wearing like a second skin. Together we experience a rising need, a surge of sensation from deep within.

  Blue Eyes pulls back and I moan with a strong desire to have him close again. He locks eyes with mine, reaches under my ass, and lifts me until I'm riding his hips. Head on my shoulder, teeth grazing my neck, he pins me to the wall with his chest while he unzips his jeans. Sliding CeCe's skirt over my hips, he reaches under her panties and pulls them aside.

  He grabs a fist full of my hair, and a whimper of desire escapes me as Blue Eyes slides inside. My legs tighten around his hips, and pull him deeper.

  He was right back there in the bar when he said he could only concentrate on one thing. I have a hunger to feed and he's doing a fine job nourishing it.

  * * *

  Two days and three guys later, I'm lying by the pool behind CeCe's tri-level home on Lake Harris, soaking up the rays. I'm thinking about Blue Eyes, when an old woman appears beside me. I know it's my mother the moment the host opens her mouth.

  "Get out of that body and get into this box." The wrinkled woman shoves an empty and soggy Tampax box at me. It smells like sewer water. "You're coming home with me, young lady."

  Although the smell of the sewer is an appealing reprieve from the overly chlorinated swimming pool, I am where I want to be at the moment.

  "I'm not getting in that box, Mother." I could bolt, but if I do I'll have to leave the CeCe double behind, evaporating in a cloud of black smoke. Humans are not made for speed. "Look," I say, pointing at CeCe's body, "I'm nineteen. I don't have to go anywhere with you."

  "You're a doppelganger, not a human. Age makes no difference. You're a fledgling and you're body jumping, imbibing in alcohol, having sexual relations with whatever crosses your path—I saw your little gutter-slut with that man in the alley the other night! Don't tell me it wasn't you!—and most of all, you're leaving a trail of unexplainable situations a mile long! Move it." She shakes the box at me. I wonder if she even knows what was originally packaged in it and what it was used for.

  "Gutter-slut," I say, pointing at my host's body again, "has a name. CeCe. The real CeCe was not sucking down the drinks or fornicating in an alley. I was, with her borrowed body. It could be worse, Mother. The real CeCe could be shopping across the street, or I could have told the real CeCe about us, taken her Down Under, and both of us could've joined you at Purgatory. But none of that happened—did it?—because the real CeCe is in Europe for the month. My last body was in the hospital in a coma for, like, forever! So, I am not body jumping!"

  Tampon box waving, Mother says, "You most certainly—"

  "And," I say with a fair share of drama, "if you can tell me one thing I've done that is worse than killing every human you dress yourself in, I'll hit the sewer and stay there."

  I stare at the stupid tampon box and shudder. If I shed the human double I'm wearing, the sunlight will turn me into gray powder. Mother will scoop me up, carry my remains to the nearest sewer grate, and toss me in. Once out of the sun—and the eyes of humans—I will reform into my dark, ugly, ghoulish, scare-up-a-heart-attack doppelganger self. Not going to happen.

  Mother fills her lungs with air, not something she needs to do, but it keeps the cadaver she's wearing fresh. "That is how we survive—from one body to the next—you know the rules. Doubling up is strongly discouraged."

  Slathering coconut-smelling oil over CeCe's legs and firm flat belly, I ignore the bulbous woman with gray, freshly permed hair, flowered dress, and rolled down support hose my mother is dressed in and speak directly to the monster underneath. "We have no right to play God, to take a perfectly healthy human that suits our needs, wants, or curiosities, and suck the life out of her or him just to exist for another few days, weeks, whatever. You could find someone dying in a hospital, or an automobile accident or something, and slip in five minutes before the light winks out. Or you could just double up on a human, like I prefer to do—like our ancestors did—and then whoosh, shed it like a snakeskin when there's a threat of discovery."

  "Borrowing leaves a trail and we stopped doing that hundreds of years ago for that very reason."

  The eyes on the poor woman she wears are stretched wide and beginning to milk over; the veins in her neck are near bursting. It saddens me, but I guess that really doesn't matter. My mother has already killed her.

  I put the lotion down and settle back, sliding my sunglasses on as my mother moves up beside me and blocks the damn sun on the upper part of CeCe's body. Crap, I need a distraction, and it isn't even lunchtime.

  "What if someone recognized that—" Mother points at my new host and glares with the old lady's face wrinkled in disgust. "—very ripe body fornicating with that young man in the alley, and tells someone the girl knows? Or worse yet, the young man in question confronts the owner when it gets back?"

  CeCe's perfectly manicured acrylics wave away the questions. "But she wasn't in the alley. I was. The real CeCe'll say so, should anyone ask, and all will be well with the world." I fan my fingers. "You're blocking my sun."

  When Mother sidles a bit to her right, I continue. "We may not be using the same methods we used 'hundreds of years ago,'" I say, using two fingers on each hand to accentuate the quote, "but the humans are still using the phrase 'everyone has a double,' labeling our kind politically incorrect by plastering pictures up on the Internet to back up this idiocy. Nicolas Cage's double is some guy from before the dinosaurs—humans have no clue—and the same with Justin Timberlake, and a plethora of other examples under the heading of doppelgangers—sheesh—more like reincarnation. But hey, it helps to have some idiot tell anyone that will listen that truth is weirder than fiction and doppelgangers do exist. Nobody really believes it—it's a perfect setup."

  My host's delicate fingers slide her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose, and rich brown eyes twinkle at my mother. "Besides, what's so much better about walking around in broad daylight dressed in a dead chick? Like no one notices that?"

  "You know perfectly well, seeing a ghost is much more acceptable," Mother says. "And that is the perfect setup."

  I slide the glasses back up over my eyes and point CeCe's nose into the sun. "Anyway, I always tell my . . . conquests that I'm new in town. I always make sure the body I borrow is indisposed or miles away. And I always skip out before we find ourselves in the same breathing space. So chill."

  "For the love of a ripe cadaver, you're in the girl's home!"

  "And she's in Europe! Your point?"

  My mother stands speechless, dressed in some woman's body that would've had a good twenty years left on it had it been allowed to carry on. She's holier than Swiss.

  "What are you talking about? What does this Nicolas person in a cage have to do with anything? And I have no idea where Timber Lake is."

  "What a waste of a perfectly good human ride.
You could at least try to spend a few hours a body to understand the humans you are murdering, and the world they thrive in. What the heck do you do in there?" I point CeCe's disciplining finger at my guardian. "Tell me you at least mix and mingle? Surf the net? Surely you know what Facebook is?"

  The eyes Mother is wearing look gobsmacked.

  "Do you even try to be human?" I taunt.

  My mother ruffles the old lady's brows, tightens parched lips, and spits, "I'm going home. Don't call me during your descent into hell."

  "I won't be the first, and surely not the last, of our kind to find themselves there," I yell at her swiftly moving human form.

  I can tell Mom is really pissed, because she dumps the host she is wearing, and just before the old lady winks out, I get a good look at the dark creature that is doppelganger as it slides into a drain on the other side of the pool.

  I'm restless now, and all I can think about is the release I felt with Blue Eyes the other night in the alley behind the bar. The three after were a total disappointment. Crap. I wish I'd gotten his cell number. But catch and release has been my motto forever, because until I find the right one, I will never hit them twice.

  I remove CeCe's sunglasses, spring from the chair, and make a running dive into the pool. When I surface, I feel a bit better, but it doesn't discourage me from considering another night out—a long night out.

  TWO

  CeCe

  "Damn it! This body has a burning desire to take in nourishment way too often. What an annoyingly gross necessity," I mutter as CeCe's need carries me into a small eating establishment on the side of the highway.

  It's only six forty-five in the morning, barely daylight. I guess this is what I get for staying out all night. I'd hardly showered and dressed before my host's stomach started growling.

  The place I enter has only three booths and five tables scattered around a twenty-by-twenty room, one third of which is kitchen. The overwhelming tension in the air makes it hard to breathe.