I looked around, a dazzling garden around me. I climbed to my feet and walked over to the flowers. They were sparkling, and as I reached out to touch it I noticed they were covered by something clear and hard.

"Crystal. Isn't it beautiful?" A voice asked. Whirling my head, I saw a figure wearing a hooded cloak. "These flowers are perfect. And that's how they'll stay."

There was nothing I could think to say except one thing. "Why? Why are they like this?"

The figure laughed. "I like them like this. I let them grow until they're perfect, then I trap them in crystal so they can't change."

Before I could come up with a response, he continued. "After all, you live your life in stasis, don't you? You can't stand change!"

This got an instant response out of my mouth. "What are you talking about? I'm totally alright with change!"

The figure laughed, pushing his head back. "Don't lie to yourself!" What was under the hood was a head of thick blond hair, and pasty skin. Perched delicately upon its nose was a pair of glasses with a thin brown frame and blue arms. A perfect copy of my own face, save for the yellow, catlike eyes.

"You don't want to wear contacts because it'll be too much of a change! You don't want to drive because it'll ruin the delicate little balance you have set up! You don't make friends because new people bring chaos to your worthless excuse of a life!"

Tears sting my eyes as I shout back, "No! I have lots of friends now! And I'm going to make more-"

"When I go to collage." The fake finishes, cutting me off. "They talk to you out of pity now, because you're too inflexible and insufferable to have real friends. And when you go away to collage, you're going to find out that the real world has no place to pity someone like you. Someone who refuses to improve!"

I look straight at it, but I can't. It's always in the edge of my vision. I turn to look t it, it moves so it's never in my direct focus. It always hung on my peripheral vision, which was especially unnerving.

I heard the door behind us open. In through came two boys and two girls. The first boy had a silver bowl-cut and held a longsword in his hands. The second boy had slicked blond hair and held a metal plate. The first girl had black hair and a red cardigan. She held fans in her hands and the second girl had brown hair and held a parasol in her hands.

The fake kept talking as if they weren't there. "You can't survive in the fast-paced world of today. You'll be left behind in the dust. Just give it up now."

As the false copy had been talking, at the corner of my mind an old hymn crept in. One I had sang a few times when I went to Church with my Grandmother. I could only remember the first line:

Eternal, Unchanging, we sing to thy praise

It was about God, who was perfect, and had no need to change.

I am human, and so I need to change. I need to adapt to survive. "Shut up! I can change anytime!"

The copy chuckled. "No you can't. You're a dead end. There's no where for you to go. You can't move forward, and you can't move back!"

I was not going to take any ore of this. "What gives you the right to think you know how I feel!?"

I have that arrogant little smirk that was just like mine when I knew I was right about something. "Because I am you, of course."

"That's a load of bull if I've ever heard one!" I think I heard some say something, but it didn't matter. "You're not me!"

The fake me roared with laughter. "Yes! Say it again! Give me more!"

"You're not me! You'll never be me!"

Everything fades to black, and the only sound in my ears is that horrible, mocking laughter, endlessly repeating.

A long time ago, a friend had me take a personality quiz. I was the Death. All the research I could find gave no Reversed Death, but said that it was the transformation, or death of one thing and rebirth of another. So I took that to mean the Reversed Death is stagnation and decay.

As much as I hate to admit it, that describes me perfectly...