He encounters spectral versions of himself. VIDEO

 He encounters spectral versions of himself.VIDEO

Time awaits the fatal moment of your destiny.

"What about sweets, Harry?" Raymond asked, looking at the sweets coated with sugar in his brother's hand.

"They are not for us," Harry replied, his low and serious voice. "They are for the ... others."

The brothers exchanged a look of knowledge, the weight of their mission by pressing them as a thick fog on a moonless night. They were the chosen ones, in charge of delivering these sugary lures to the edge of the forest where the invisible danger lurked. Their father had warned them about the strangers who had been seen, mysteriously similar to the people they knew. These Doppelgängers, as they had called them, had been causing problems around the people, and depended on Harry and Raymond establishing a trap and helping the people of the town to discover the mystery.

"Remember," his father had said, his eyes shone with a mixture of fear and hope, "once the Doppelgängers are trapped, we will be safe again."

But Harry had his doubts. The Doppelgängers were not so old uproar. They were reflections of the villagers themselves, twisted by a dark force in beings of pure malice. What would happen if the sweet was too tempting? What happens if they accidentally attracted someone they knew in the trap?

Raymond nodded solemnly, putting a lock of lost hair behind his ear. "Are we going to finish this?"

When they approached the tree, the air became full of anticipation. The shadows danced and played in their eyes, which hinders the distinction between the real and the imagined. The world that surrounded them felt familiar and alien, as if they had stumbled with a forgotten corner of a nightmare he had ever had.

Suddenly, a branch broke under Harry's foot, and the forest was silent. The brothers froze, their hearts squeezed. They knew they were being observed.

"Look!" Raymond whispered, pointing out a figure emerging from the trees. It was the spit of his neighbor, Mr. Smith, but his eyes were cold, his smile too wide. The Doppelgängers had arrived, and were about to find out if their plan would work.

Mr. Smith's figure looked around, his gaze resisted. His hand contracted, reaching the sweet.

"Now!" Harry whispered and Raymond threw a handful of baits coated with undergrowth in the grass. The Doppelgängers continued, their eyes shone with greed, and the brothers retired to the safety of the shadows, observing how their lures disappeared in the dark.

But Harry could not shake the feeling that his plan was defective. The Doppelgängers had been intelligent so far, avoiding detection and imitating those who sought to damage. What would happen if they had anticipated this movement? What would happen if the real danger was not in the forest, but closer than they could have imagined?

The forest remained still, the almost deafening silence. Time marked, every second is a small hammer blow in the anvil of fate. And while they waited for the trap to come out, the brothers could not avoid asking if they had just played in the hands of something much more sinister than they could have planned.

Raymond and Harry run into a town where the inhabitants love a sanctuary made of oxidized parts of abandoned cars.

Raymond walked along the dusty and abandoned road, his eyes scanning the horizon for any sign of life. The sun listed mercilessly over, throwing hard shadows on the broken asphalt that extended in front of him. His partner, Harry, continued closely, cleaning the sweat of his forehead with a dirty handkerchief. Both men were tired of their trip, their clothes made and their low spirits.

In the distance, a peculiar structure began to emerge, protruding from the sterile landscape as a metallic mirage. It became clearer with each step they took, revealing that it was an intricate arrangement of oxidized car pieces, welded in a strange and imposing sculpture. The view was so unexpected, so surreal, that he momentarily stole breathing. The more they approached, the more detailed the sculpture became: an enriched and tangled network of twisted steel and shattered glass, shining under the relentless sun.

The air became thick with a spooky mechanical buzzing, like the echo distant from a forgotten engine a long time ago. When they approached the imposing structure, they saw that it was not only a sculpture, but a living and respiratory entity. The figures moved around them, their hidden faces behind the metal masks built with the grills and headlight protectors. Their voices mixed with the cacophony of the clan metal and the squeaky hinges, creating a symphony of supernatural sounds that seemed to emanate from the core of the sanctuary of the junk deposit.

The villagers looked up from their worship while the two travelers stumbled upon the objects thrown into the ground. His eyes were wide and curious furiously hostile. They set aside to let the newcomers pass, which allowed them to better see the sanctuary. The smell of oil and rubber burned permeated the air, a marked contrast with the desolate vacuum that surrounded them. The sanctuary was not only a lot of scrap, but a place of reverence, adorned with faded tapes and tree branches in old decomposition. It was clear that this was the heart of the village, a sacred space that had been built with a strange and fervent devotion.

While Harry and Raymond looked at a peculiar view before them, they could not help asking what they had taken these people to worship such a strange deity. The mystery of the sanctuary of the junk deposit was only the beginning of what they were about to discover in this desolate but strangely vibrant corner of the world.

John looked in the mirror, with injected and tired eyes, the dark circles under them a marked contrast with their pale skin. His reflection looked back, without blinking and silent, a simple echo of inner agitation. The wall clock marked the seconds with a rhythmic persistence that seemed to make fun of his fatigue. The room was small and crowded, the thick air with the aroma of rancid coffee and the weak smell of something burning in the kitchen.

He extended his hand to touch the cold glass, his hand trembling slightly. The mirror was not only a reflection of its physical form, but a window to its fragmented soul. Every day he showed him something new, something that could never be seen. It was as if the universe itself was interpreting a cruel trick, presenting visions of his past, his present and whispers of his future, all wrapped in a single look without blinking.

The fingertips of John graze the surface, and suddenly, the image in front of him changed. The lines of his face became more clear, his eyes are a penetrating blue he had never seen before. His heart accelerated when the stranger in the mirror began to move, imitating each of his gestures with a mysterious precision that sent him a chill through the spine. He tried to get away, but his hand remained attached to the glass, his body froze in his place as the spectral appearance became bolder.

The reflection spoke, his voice is a chilling echo. "You're not alone, John," he said, the words that resonate in the room. "We are many, and we are one." Panic arose through him when he realized that he not only looked at himself, but to a legion of other John, each with his own stories, his own pains, his own destinations. The mirror had become an entrance door to an endless realm, a place where the fabric of reality was unearthed and rotated by the hands of the destination itself.

The characters are walking in circles by returning again and again on their steps because they were unable to free themselves from the invisible roads of the forest.

"Why is it happening?" Alejandro complained, frustrated.

"What's up, Alex?" Lorenzo replied, while walking.

"That we are giving the same route again."

"You're sure?"

Alejandro stopped dry. "Yes, Lorenzo, I'm. Look, there is the rock I drew an hour ago."

Both stopped and observed the rock, which seemed to smile with the face that Alejandro had drawn with chalk. The sunlight was leaked through the leaves of the high Red maple red trees and drew capricious shade on the ground. The sound of the wind rockering the branches up in the distance was the only melody that broke silence.

"We have to be careful. We do not want to lose the way or that the road loses us," Lorenzo said, worried.

"How many times have we passed through here?" Alejandro looked around, trying to look for some clue that would not be in circles.

"I think there are three, Alex. This is weird," Lorenzo admitted, adjusting the backpack on his annoying shoulder: as if squeezing the thin layer of meat from his shoulder.

Both walked silent for a while, listening to the soft creak of the leaves under their feet. Alejandro felt more and more disoriented, and Lorenzo didn't see anything sure either.

"Do you remember what the ranger said on the road of the diversion that turned to the forest?" Alejandro broke the silence.

"About invisible paths?" Lorenzo nodded. "Yes, he said the forest could get hooked as an user if you didn't pay attention."

"But who puts those darn paths?" Alejandro growled, squeezing his fist.

"He said that they are the memories of the people, that they materialize in roads. If you let yourself be consumed by their tormented thoughts, the forest will guide you along a wrong path."

Alejandro sighed deeply. "What if we don't have the darn compass?"

Lorenzo suddenly stopped. "What did we do with the compass?"

Alejandro felt his pockets. "It must have fallen."

His heart accelerated. Without the compass, they had no idea where they were. The forest, which at the beginning seemed a fun challenge, now looked at them with treacherous eyes.

This story develops in a modern society whose inhabitants are very aware of their self -destructive tendencies but cannot resist satisfaction.

"You know, it's like seeing a slow -camera car accident," Marcus said, with his smartphone's screen.

"What are you talking about now?" He responded to his brother, Lillo, without looking up from his book. He knew that he finally elaborated studying, so he expected patiently, turning page by page.

"This new application. It is like ... it is as if everyone suddenly had realized that we all rush towards oblivion, but instead of, I don't know, trying to stop it, they are only publishing videos of themselves doing even more ..., as if they did everything well perfect."

Lillo finally looked up, curiosity woke up. "Let me see."

Marcus delivered his phone, showing him the last viral madness: the people who filmed themselves by increasingly dangerous stunts with the hashtag #I'it. He moved through the clips, each more alarming than the previous one. A boy who rode a skateboard on a stretch of stairs, another boy jumping from a balcony from a hotel to a pool that was definitely too shallow, a couple of boys playing planted on the railroad tracks couragering the pride of the pride for the one who took the last one before the imminent arrival of the iron of the train of the train that was already a few meters from them. It is there the pulsation of the superstimulation that similar phenomena produces in the body in its effects to orgasms meaning in all parts of the body.

"It's as if they were user to their own potential disappearance," he murmured, moving faster.

"Exactly," Marcus nodded, his eyes illuminated with the same macabre fascination for the experience of the mortal danger. "It is as if we were all seeing the world and our own body on a bonfire located in the public square, which instead of turning it off, they are adding fuel with the fat itself to the fire resulting from its pyromaniac will."

The room was silent for a moment while both contemplated the absurdity of everything. Then, Lillo spoke again.

"But why do we find it so entertaining?"

Marcus shrugged. "Because we are part of that, I suppose. It's as if everyone was looking for an emotion to distract us from the fact that we will all end in the same way."

The silence spread, full of weight of its tacit zstd understanding. The only sound was the soft buzzer of the air conditioning and the rumble of traffic out of its window.

"Maybe we should give it a chance," Lillo suggested, a hint of a smile playing on his lips.

Marcus's head got up. "What?

But he was already agitated, his bright eyes with a dangerous idea that caused royal creaks in its brain mass. "Come on, live a little. Who knows, maybe go viral."

And with that, he ran out of the room, leaving Marcus to contemplate if he really knew his brother.