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Doppelganger
I met Amber two days after I throttled her boyfriend, Chris Parker. A week later we were in love. Or rather, I was in love with her. It took a while on her part. After all, she thought I was him.
Let me explain~I am a doppelganger.
Not many people have heard of us before. We're a pretty secretive race. So secretive, in fact, that I don't even know that much about myself. Most of what I know about my kind I learned from my mother, and she wasn't all that informative. I can't even tell people my name. I don't have one. Not that I was born with, anyway. My mother always said names are worthless to a doppelganger. So the whole time that I grew up, she was she, and I was me, that's as far as it ever got.
The problem is that doppelgangers are loners. We don't keep in touch. We don't call each other or send postcards. We would never e-mail. There's no annual doppelganger convetion or home base or family reunion. When you're a doppelganger, you're on your own.
Maybe there just isn't much to know about us. We're pretty simple, actually~primitive, one might say~which is how we've managed to survive for so long.
But there are a few things to know. The most important is that we are shapeshifters. We can change the way we look, the sound of our voice; we can even change our sex, though we prefer not to. We are like chameleons, but taken to a higher level.
And it's a good thing we are shapeshifters, because in our natural state we're ugly as sin. Really hideous, to the point where we can barely stand to look at ourselves, let alone others of out kind. A doppelganger mother will even turn from her own child in disgust. I'm sure it's hard to imagine such a thing~after all, a human mother will love even her ugliest child~but with us, it's true. It must be an evolutionary thing or something. If so, it works really well~a doppelganger can rarely be found in it's natural form. I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen my mother in her own skin. Who knows, maybe I just blocked the other times out of my head. Between the mottled and transparent flesh, the bulging eyes, and a face with no nose or mouth other than a few slimy slits, you've got the making of a real freak.

David Stahler Jr.
Great author
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