this is a sort of au drabble fic based on the artwork of the wonderful and talented CJ, I started writing this awhile ago, and left it sitting on my computer, so it really doesn't accurately represent CJ's concepts. E.g Anti comes across more malicious than he should be.
Tl;dr, its just a story don't hate me .
Sitting down in front of his camera Jack felt a sudden wave of nausea wash over him. He ground his teeth together as a high pitched laugh echoed in his head. Just ignore him, he thought. He'll go away.
You can ignore me all you want, Jackaboy, but I'm not going anywhere. Anti smirked. Jack couldn't really see him, he could more just sense the presence of his alter ego. And hear him, of course. Jack could almost always hear him.
It hadn't always been this way. Not even when his fans had dreamed up the 'antisepticeye' persona. Back when the fanart began to surface, that was all it was. Artwork. Incredibly talented and creative artwork, to be sure, but it was only art. How he longed for those days now. Jack couldn't say when it had started. Was it after he'd moved out of the tiny cabin in the woods? Or maybe it after he'd joined in on a panel Mark had done? He didn't know. The self-doubt and anxiety had come and gone over the years like waves lapping at the sand at the beach, but somewhere along the way something had changed. 'I can't' became 'You can't', 'I messed up' became 'you messed up'. Almost as if the voice in the back of his mind, the one he'd just begin to get used to silencing and pushing away, was becoming separate from him, another entity entirely, another person. The whispers began to get louder, more persistent. At first Jack didn't think much of it. It was around that time that his roommates had moved out, leaving him on his own with more space than he knew what to do with, so he'd attributed his newfound internal dialogue to sheer loneliness. As the year progressed, however, things began to get...strange. The voice would come seemingly out of nowhere, disrupting his train of thought to shred his confidence to bits over something he hadn't even noticed. A detail in a video game he'd overlooked or misinterpreted. He'd had to scrap dozens of videos because of this because he'd get so stressed out that he couldn't finish them.
It got so bad at one point that Jack contemplated seeing a doctor, but in the end he'd started distracting himself. Loud noises, he'd found, could disrupt whatever mental tirade he was carrying on. A blast of music here, a shout there. And for awhile it worked. The voice didn't go away entirely, but it would retreat, and Jack could find his peace of mind again.
About a year ago, though, things had taken a bizarre turn. The first time it happened was traumatizing, and Jack remembered that day all too well. It was a Wednesday, and he'd needed to go to shopping for a few things. He'd woken to rain and a terrible cold that made his head spin if he sat up too quickly. After much debate, he'd reasoned that it wouldn't kill him to stay in and get some much needed rest, so he'd gone back to bed with the intention of doing just that.
You're just being lazy, the voice chided. Get up and at least try to act like an adult. Jack shut his eyes tight as the painful pressure behind his eyes made his head pound. Not long ago he'd read something online, on a sort of self-help blog about battling depression, that was all about positive thinking. One of the articles suggested interrupting negative thoughts with positive ones. So he tried it.
No, he corrected his thinking. I'm just taking time to take care of myself. There's nothing wrong with that.
You and your excuses. The voice spat back. Get your lazy arse out of bed.
"I'm not lazy, I'm sick." Jack stressed aloud, albeit under his breath.
You just want to stay in bed and lie to yourself to make yourself feel better. Stop whining!
"Get out of my head!" Jack shouted. There was a second of blissful silence before the voice chuckled, suddenly much, much louder. Jack felt an chilling breeze waft over his skin, as if invisible fingers of ice were caressing the back of his neck. He jumped up with a gasp, struggling to keep his balance as the room spun around him. There was no one there.
"I've got a better idea." The voice was behind him. Jack spun around to see...himself. But at the same time not himself.
The almost mirror-image that stood in front of him smiled. It looked so...wrong, yet oddly familiar. The eyes, one blue and one a sickly green, with dark circles under both. The hair was the same, but Jack spotted gauges in his double's ears. As the double came closer Jack noticed a strange tattoo on his left arm, near his bicep. At a glance it looked like a bar code.
Jack took a half step back, but bumped into the wall. He was cornered. Anti came closer, and reached out to Jack, touching his forehead. "How about...you get out of your head!" He shoved, and Jack felt dizzy. His body crumpled, falling as if he'd fainted, but he was still lucid. His arms, neck, back, everything felt oddly numb, and his vision blurred around the edges. He felt like he was watching through a window, far away. His body began to move, no longer under his own control. Jack tried to scream, to fight, but he was powerless. His limbs refused to obey him, his own body betraying him.
He felt his hands brushing himself off, felt his feet taking him somewhere, could see the hallway and then the door to the bathroom.
There, in the mirror staring back at him, was his doppelgänger. In a flash Jack realized who he was, the eye with the emerald iris striking home.
"An-antisepticeye..." He stuttered, his voice reduced to a thought echoing in his head. His reflection winked, stretching his arms over his head.
"Ooohhh it feels good to finally be out!" He moaned.
How?! How is this possible! Anti only glanced in the mirror and smirked. Jack struggled to regain control of his body, but his limbs felt heavy and numb. Anti laughed.
"Don't bother. It's my turn now." Anti raked his fingers through his hair, savoring the moment. "All that hard work and patience is finally paying off."
"You're not real!" Jack screamed. Anti flinched but his vindictive leer never left his face.
"Didn't you know? If enough people believe in something, it becomes real." He closed his eyes, reaching for something deep within him. He sensed Jack begin to panic, to struggle, but there would be no escape for him this time. "Relax, Sean. Think of this as a vacation." Anti looked into the mirror again, seeing Jack's terrified expression reflecting back in his eyes. He winked. "And I'm your replacement." Jack tried to stay awake, to stay alert, but his eyelids were growing heavy. Exhaustion was overcoming him. The last thing he heard was Anti's victorious laughter before he slipped away into the darkness.
When he woke up it was Sunday. Confusion made his head swim, but when his last moments of lucidity came back to him he leapt out of bed. His house was still intact, though a bit more messy. Nothing was missing. His body was free of marks or the strange tattoo. With the exception of a few lewd tweets, there was seemingly no evidence of whatever had taken over his body. No one commented on any sort of behavior out of the ordinary. If he weren't missing several days, Jack might've brushed the whole thing off as a bad dream. But he knew. There was something else going on.
Racing to the bathroom Jack stared into the mirror, seething.
"What the hell are you?" He spat. Silence. Not even a thought. "I know you're there. Answer me!" Still, there was nothing. Not a whisper, not a twitch. He waited in the bathroom for what felt like hours, but in truth was probably closer to fifteen minutes. Finally he gave up, but just as he turned away from the mirror he saw his left eye flicker from blue to green.
Things were quiet for a few weeks after that. The anxiety that had been weighing him down seemed to have evaporated. His mood had improved, and he was able to focus on his channel more. Jack felt better, like he had regained control of his life.
The second time hadn't been as bad. Following a week of stress and the possibility of being evicted hanging over his head, he just felt drained. He was sleeping a lot, and the whispers were back. For the time being he ignored them, pretending they weren't there, but they steadily grew louder. When Anti appeared again, a manic gleam in his odd colored eyes, Jack greeted him with a cold shoulder and the silent treatment. His doppelgänger was not so easily deterred. Jack blacked out, only to wake up a week later on his couch sporting a new hoodie and later discovering the salt and pepper had been switched from their shakers. The lock screen of his phone had been changed to a picture of himself, gauges in his ears and one eye green, holding a piece of paper that read 'See ya real soon'.
The first thing Jack did was research personality disorders. The only one that came remotely close to his problem was multiple personality disorder, but even that didn't quite match up. For one thing his alter ego was still very much Jack-like, if a bit less reserved(which, for Jack in general, was saying something). For another a psychological disorder did nothing to explain the physical changes, such as the barcode tattoo and the mismatching eyes. They weren't hallucinations, since both were clearly visible in the picture on his phone. Not knowing what else to do, Jack kept quiet about the whole ordeal.
Over the past year, he'd simply learned to live with Anti's presence. Sometimes he was a constant companion in his head, making crude jokes and snide complaints that were more or less ignored. Other times, Jack was left to his mental peace, though more often than not Anti's silence left him feeling almost lonely, maybe even anxious. The apartment was rather quiet, after all. Anti still liked to take over Jack's body from time to time, but while the hijinks escalated- one time he'd opened a drawer to find his underwear replaced by thongs, and he had not been amused- Anti was good about keeping a low profile as far as anyone else was concerned. So, as the presence of his alter ego so far hadn't exactly been threatening, Jack tolerated him. In return he usually had some kind of forewarning whenever Anti was about to take over, usually in the form of near-invisible hands snaking down his arms, shadows just dark enough to see from the corner of his eyes as their icy fingertips traced his skin.
Like now, for example.
Jack growled, irritated, glancing at the copy of a game he'd just gotten in the mail that morning. He'd been planning on playing it tonight, and uploading the video in the morning.
"You're gonna make me late again, damn it." He gripped, feeling his consciousness beginning to slip away. A chuckle, manic and high, echoed through his mind before slipping past his lips. Anti ran his hands through his hair, glancing at his reflection on the blank computer screen with a sly smirk.
"You worry too much."