Failure: (Double Deception Series: Book 2) by Charles Elliot

Author:Charles Elliot [Elliot, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

C

ory didn’t recognize who was standing in front of him, yet when the strange man spoke, Duke Van Doren’s voice came out of his mouth. Still, it somehow didn’t seem odd, and when Cory thought about it, he had expected nothing less. All around him were filing cabinets as far back as his eyes could see, and they ran in horizontal lines like a running track. The room he was standing in was unfamiliar, and since he couldn’t actually see where the walls began and the ceiling ended, he wasn’t even sure it was a room.

The man he didn’t recognize was flicking through a case file, and when Cory stepped over to see which one it was, he blocked Cory’s view by turning his back to him.

Cory looked back down along the endless rows of filing cabinets. Somewhere in the shadows, he could hear a sucking sound, like a plunger being repeatedly slammed into a sink. When he turned his gaze to where the ceiling should be, he saw that the tops of the cabinets were warped and melted, like something out of a Salvador Dalí painting. Again, it didn’t seem to rouse anything except passing curiosity.

“Failure, failure, always a failure,” the man said. Cory looked at him and realized that the strange man’s back wasn’t turned anymore. He was facing Cory, and the manila folder he had been reading was nowhere to be seen. Still in that Duke Van Doren voice, he barked, “Yep, always a failure!”

“Are you talking to me, pal?” Cory snapped.

“You?” the man answered. He seemed to be looking straight through Cory.

“Yes, me.”

The man smiled, and when the corners of his mouth had turned up as far as they possibly could, they somehow continued to loop up toward his temples. Cory flinched back as the smiling man’s face contorted into an impossible mosaic of warped and twisted features. His mouth was so stretched that Cory could see the tops of his gums. Then, in an instant, his mouth settled back into the unknown face Cory had first seen.

“Is there anyone else here?” the man asked.

Where the fuck had Cory seen him before? Had he ever actually even seen him before that moment?—that was the real question. “What’s your fucking problem?”

“Ha!” the strange yet somehow-familiar man snorted. “What is my problem?”

“Yeah.”

“Why, you’re my problem,” Duke Van Doren’s voice proclaimed. “You goddamn failure.”

“Fuck you!” Cory spat, but his mind was racing. How could this man he had never seen before speak in his father’s voice? And why was he saying such horrible things?

“Ah, Joshua,” the man said, tutting and shaking his head. “You goddamn failure.”

“I’m Cory, you overbearing son of a bitch!” Cory growled. “And who the fuck are you?”

“You know who I am.”

“I know who you sound like.”

When the filing cabinets started to groan, Cory ignored them as best he could. The prick imitating his father had mistaken him for his dead twin. Even so, it was still none of his business whether Joshua was a failure or not.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.