Stunt Double Trouble

by Maisie Dean

  Information that I’d stored and cataloged in my brain years ago had suddenly been flooded back. Of all of the psychiatric disorders that I’d put hours and hours into studying, DID had been the most fascinating. I’d been close to getting a role in which the character I was auditioning for was suffering from being misdiagnosed with Bipolar and Schizophrenia. The character’s case of DID included four alternate personalities, each of them geared towards keeping her safe in their own distinctive way. They had their own voices and gestures. Two of them were even male.

  My theory, that this is what was going on with Annie and Busty, grew stronger in my mind as I recalled the events of the last week and a half. Annie and Busty were the same person after all, but not in the way I’d originally thought. They might be the same physical person, but they each had their own unique identities.

  My mind, sorting out the details and looking for faults as it always did, flashed back to the photo I’d taken off the bulletin board the day I’d met Neil. The photo had both Annie and Busty in it, but it must have been faked. Owen had told me before about how simple most photo-editing software had become. Just about anyone could alter images or video if they had a mind to. I walked across the room towards the same bulletin board. Around that same corner was where I’d seen Busty disappear. As I crossed in front of the stage, a burly-looking man with a beard picked up the microphone and began introducing himself and the band. His voice filtered through my ears and into my head only distantly. There were too many thoughts racing around, attempting to tie up the loose ends that had escaped me until a few moments before.

  As I had suspected, a staff photo higher up on the board had clearly been faked. It was easier to tell in that one. Annie’s body had been added in a way that made the scale of the whole photo seem off, not to mention an impossible shadow on the left side of her face. There were even bits from another photo along the outline of her body that showed the layering of the two images. Without even glancing up and down the hallway to make sure the coast was clear, I reached up and pulled down the photo. I shoved it into my bag to have something to take back to the office as proof. If I could show Harrison something more concrete, maybe he would be able to reopen Annie’s case to get all the facts right. It was very possible that Annie wasn’t lying at all. There were cases of DID where the alters could have different chemistry and physiology. Things like prescriptions for glasses or reactions to medications could be radically different. Annie’s pain might not have the same crossover effects on Busty. Another thought came to me from my research: it was also possible that Busty could know about Annie, but that Annie didn’t know about Busty.

  My hands, flooded with adrenaline, trembled, while I tapped my fingers across the screen to make another call to Annie. It had only been a matter of a couple minutes, but I bounced on my heels praying that it would be Annie who picked up.

  “Hello, Annie—” Annie’s voice began.

  “Annie, hi. It’s Kacey again,” I interrupted. I couldn’t wait. One thing I knew about the disorder was that there was no telling exactly how or when alters might switch back and forth. I had to speak to Annie again. “I have a few questions for you, is that alright? I think it’ll get you and Busty some help,” I said carefully.

  “Okay, I guess so,” Annie said.

  I took a deep breath. I was breathless and stumbling over my words. The last thing I wanted to do was scare her off.

  “They might sound odd, but just answer whatever you can, okay?” I said.

  “Yes. I’ll try…” Annie said.

  “Do you ever lose big or small chunks of time?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Yes,” squeaked Annie’s small voice.

  “Do you find yourself in clothes you don’t remember putting on, or doing things you never remembered deciding to do?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Annie said again.

  “That feeling you said you were getting, that someone was watching you, is it a new feeling or did it just intensify over the last week?”

  “Yes, I...I’ve always had it, sort of. It just got so much worse...” Annie said. I could hear that her voice had become even less stable. Suddenly, a few desperate sobs came through the phone. “I...what’s happening? Oh no, oh no, no no…” Annie said.

  My heart started pounding. “Annie, what is it?” I asked. “Has something happened?” I could barely hear any actual words from her through the sobs that raked through her chest. “Annie?” I repeated.

  “I’m...I’m at the restaurant right now. I think I’m wearing Busty’s clothes...I don’t know how I got here. It hurts, my neck. It hurts so much. No, no, oh no. I can’t take it, help please!” Annie asked. I could tell, even through the phone, that her pain and fear were consuming her. I heard the crash of something hard being knocked over and a metallic crash.

  “Annie! Annie? Are you there?” I said. The volume level of my voice had risen to a shout, but no one in the restaurant had noticed. The leather-clad band had already launched into some noisy rock classics, drowning out my mounting concern and Annie’s despair.

  I pressed the phone even harder against my one ear, and pressed hard against the other to hear whatever was happening on her end of the line. I was about the yell her name again when I heard muffled voices. I couldn’t hear enough of the other voice to know if it was male or female. Whoever it was, Annie sounded panicked and her flow of words and sobbing became pleading. Suddenly the call went dead.

  Annie had said she was in the restaurant. Busty must not have gotten far when she’d walked away and become Annie to take my call. Without thinking of the consequences, I dashed down the hallway towards the staff entrance doors. Through the first doors was a pair of extremely tall and muscular men. I’d forgotten that in the evenings Rockburger became more of a bar than a family restaurant and they used bouncers to keep the peace. The large, tattooed men were shrugging on black jackets with the Rockburger logo just like Neil’s, but much larger. One of them was bald and the other had jet black hair. The bald one was tying up a shoelace when he noticed I had stumbled around the corner.

  “Hey,” said the bald man. “Weren’t you the one who rang the last-call bell? What are you doing in here?”

  “Sorry! No time to chat,” I shouted as I barrelled between them. The man with the dark hair tried to grab hold of me but I dodged him. They must have been more surprised than angry, because when I stopped to catch my breath down a short hallway, they hadn’t come after me.

  To my right there was a window that looked from the hallway into the staff lounge. It was a medium-sized room with shelves, a wall of lockers, and an old couch.

  The lights were on in the room. It looked empty until I stepped to the side to get a better vantage point. Beyond the legs of a tables and a few chairs, a scared, crumpled-looking figure was on the floor huddled up next to the row of lockers. It took a second for me to figure out that it was Annie! The sleek black wig was cast to the side, and tears had washed most of the makeup off of Annie’s face, leaving her skin a dark shade of grey. Her mousy, dirty-blonde hair fell around her ears. For the first time I was seeing Annie much closer to the way she had looked in the file Harrison had shown me. Her hair may have been the right color, but the weak smile from the photo was nowhere to be found. Annie’s eyes were wide open and her face was twisted in fear and pain.

  Instinctively, I reached for the door that was half open beside the window and stepped inside.

  “Annie! Are you—” I began, but it was all I managed to blurt out before I felt a thick, sharp blow to the back of my head.

  Darkness clouded my vision, beginning with the edges and creeping in to the center of my field of vision. The last thing I saw, after I involuntarily collapsed to the floor beside her, was the terrified look on Annie’s face. Her mouth had turned into a little “o” as she screamed a scream I couldn’t hear.

  CHAPTER 24

  Before I’d even opened my eyes I became aware of the intense aching throughout
my head. The memory of entering the staff lounge and being stuck by something or someone rushed back to me and fear coursed through my body.

  My eyes shot open and struggled to focus on the carpeted floor beneath my cheek. The cheap fibers scratched at my face, except near my mouth where a strip of cloth had been tied around my head as a gag.

  I tried to drag my arms and legs to help get me into a seated position, but my wrists and ankles only moved together. I’d been tied up with some kind of black electrical tape. As I lifted my painful head off the floor and propped myself up on my elbow, I caught sight of Annie.

  She had been moved to the other side of the table that sat between the walls of lockers. Like me, she had been gagged with some black fabric that must have been one of the restaurant napkins. Her limbs weren’t tied together the way mine were. They were flung out limply at her sides as if she’d tried to struggle. For a terrified moment I thought she could be dead, but there was a soft rise and fall to her chest. Annie was unconscious. She lay there like a rag doll, weak and fragile. Her dirty blond hair was spread across the carpet and tears that had collected in the corner of her eyes beside her nose.

  I tried to move closer to her but the resulting pain in my head made me dizzy and I nearly blacked out again. If I was going to find my way out of this one, I would need to bide my time and figure out what was going on.

  The band was playing loudly in the background. Even if I could manage to scream I doubted anyone would hear me. I was about to test out what sort of noise I could create with the cloth napkin shoved in my mouth when I heard a low chuckle. Slowly, I turned my body towards the door to the lounge. It was closed, and in front of it was a pair of high-heeled leather boots. With difficulty I tilted my head upwards, following the jeans that extended out from the boots and all the way up to a woman’s face. It was Vivian!

  “I’m sorry for being such a poor host, Kacey, but I’m all out of iced tea today,” Vivian sneered. She perched herself on the arm of the old leather couch and smiled down at me with narrowed eyes and a twisted mouth. Vivian had a large hole-punch in her hand. It must have been the weapon she’d used on the back of my head. Had she hit Annie too? Is that why she was unconscious? I scanned Annie’s body for signs of a wound.

  Vivian laughed again. “Don’t trouble yourself over her. I’ve given our dear Annie a sweet little cocktail that’ll knock her out for some time. I’ve done her quite the favor, if you ask me. She’s such an anxious and troubled girl. She’s much better off like this,” Vivian said. She used the hole-punch to gesture towards Annie’s still body. Vivian gazed at Annie with a look as if she’d just eaten a large and satisfying meal.

  As subtly as I could, I began pulling against the tape that bound my wrists. I had to stop suddenly when Vivian turned her attention back to me. If only she had tied my hands behind my back, I could have been working at freeing myself without her seeing.

  “I really shouldn’t have pushed those boxes onto Annie,” Vivian said. “It wasn’t pre-meditated, like you may have thought. It was more of a spur of the moment sort of decision. It’s working out well, actually, except for your needless meddling.”

  Vivian was the reason Annie had been hurt? I knew there had been something going on with the way Vivian had inserted herself into the case, but I hadn’t guessed that she’d been the very cause of the accident. I stayed still, and kept my eyes focused on her hoping she’d continue to unwittingly fill in the blanks for me. The pounding in my head, made worse by the incessant rock ’n’ roll in the restaurant, made keeping my eyes on Vivian difficult. She didn’t appear to notice.

  Vivian put the hole-punch down onto the couch and walked slowly towards Annie. She bent down to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. “I only wanted to encourage Annie to make a career change. Anything that would take her away from Rockburger, and keep her away long enough to turn Neil into the man he should become. We’re going to get married. Did you know that?” Vivian asked.

  I shook my head. The movement made me see stars.

  “Well, it hasn’t been decided yet. But all in good time,” Vivian said pleasantly. “Getting rid of Annie was the first step. Neil has always had too much of a soft spot for her. It’s been distracting him for years. If he doesn’t grow up and get serious about a real woman, he’ll never be able to step into the role he was born for, given his family fortune.”

  Family fortune? This was news to me. So much for thorough background checks from the insurance companies. I could already hear Harrison going off on a rant about respect for procedure and accountability. I wished I had called Harrison before making the stupid decision to go to Rockburger. I should have called at least one of the Bookers. My kidnapper had already injured and drugged Annie. What would she do to me, the person who had single-handedly ruined her plan and blown her cover?

  Vivian stood up from beside the unconscious Annie and moved towards me. It took everything in my power not to flinch and cower back towards the lockers.

  “I’ll ungag you if you promise not to scream,” Vivian said. “I want to know what you’ve managed to figure out in all of this.” Vivian reached behind my head and tugged at several knots and strands of tape. When the fabric was pulled out of my mouth I coughed. My throat was dry and scratchy.

  When I spoke I didn’t sound like myself. “My employers know I’m here. They are going to be here any minute,” I managed to croak. “We’ve figured out the whole case. We even know more than you. Neil was the one who tipped us off to look closer at what happened with the accident. He knows what you did! Do you really think he’s going to marry you now?” I asked. I had actually only put the business with Neil together as I said it. My bluff had become a breakthrough!

  Vivian’s face and neck had become tinged with redness. Her eyes burned and her brows furrowed deeply in anger. “You’re lying!” she hissed.

  “I’m not. He called our office last week. He wanted us to expose you so that Annie would be well taken care of. It looks like he’s pretty clear about where his heart lies,” I said. I knew it was a bad idea to rile up my violent captor, but the relief in being able to use my voice and the anger fueled by the pain in my head were a bad combination.

  “Quiet!” Vivian shouted. In a flash she had reached around the table towards Annie’s leather boots and pulled out the small hand-gun that had been concealed there.

  Fear, mixed with a pinch of satisfaction for being right about the boots, flooded my whole body. Vivian had left behind the blunt force weapon of the hole-punch for a much scarier and more permanent type of violence. I kept my mouth shut and eyes glued to the tiny barrel of the gun. It was barely bigger than the circumference of my little finger, yet the damage would be severe and most likely fatal. I was certainly not willing to lose my life over an insurance claim, and yet it might already be too late.

  Vivian shoved the black cloth back into my mouth and secured it even tighter than it had felt before. I fought against prickly tears that threatened to spring out due to the throbbing pain pulsating in my head. I wouldn’t give Vivian the satisfaction.

  Vivian pushed me down against the ground, hard. She stood and clicked off the safety on the gun. “I’ve got to go take care of a few loose ends...Don’t go anywhere,” Vivian said. She looked at me hard as she backed up towards the door. When she opened it, a few bars of a mediocre rendition of Elvis’s “Jailhouse Rock” assaulted my ears. The door slammed shut behind Vivian and the music sounded more distant again.

  I fought hard against my bindings, but they were tight and it was difficult to even find where the tape started and ended. Was I really going to be shot by a scorned lover in a tacky restaurant with the sound of Elvis Presley ringing in my ears? It was like a bad game of Clue. Everyone has their time, I knew that, but I felt determined that this should not turn out to be mine.

  CHAPTER 25

  Without Vivian watching me I went to town on my thick tape bindings. I was beginning to lose feeling in my hands and feet all together. She had wo
und the tape around my hands in such a way that limited the movement of my fingers. Even though my hands were tied in front of me, they could only grasp at the bindings around my ankles. I kept one eye locked on the door in case someone walked by who could help, and to know when Vivian returned to finish the job.

  A cold sweat had gathered on the back of my neck and my breathing had sped up. I was just about to give up on my futile efforts to free myself when there was a sudden movement out of the corner of my eye.

  Annie bolted upright into a seated position and turned to look at me. She ripped the fabric out of her mouth and spat out some black fuzz. She moved quickly across the small room to kneel beside me. Her pain seemed to have vanished, and there was a strength and deftness to her movements that impressed me under the current conditions. Her jaw was set and steady, and her eyes blazed with anger.

  The first thing Annie did was pull the gag from my mouth. The tape had gotten tangled with my hair and I grimaced as a chunk was ripped out.

  “Annie,” I gasped. “Are you alright? You were—”

  My savior spoke with a husky voice. “I’m Busty,” Busty said. “I’m the only one who knows everything that’s going on. Annie is too confused to deal with this right now, so you’ve got me, girl.”

  My mind grappled with the peculiar situation I had put myself in the middle of. At the same time though, the differences between the two women were clear and complete. I accepted, without a doubt, that I had been tied up with Annie and I was being freed by Busty.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I told Busty honestly. I rubbed at the welts on my wrists as Busty worked diligently on freeing my ankles.

  “I told you, it’s what I do. It’s my job to protect Annie. As long as I’m here, Annie is safe. I figured I couldn’t just leave you here all tied up,” Busty said. She cracked a brief grin despite the circumstances.

  “Thank you. Is Annie okay, though? She looked really hurt before…” I said.