HANNAH

I yawned as I awoke, the sunlight filtering through the blinds. I'd been in the semi-fugue state of pre-wake, but the light in my eyes, and the odd buzzing in my chest, had been impossible to ignore. I reached up from under the duvet and rubbed a bit of sleep from my eyes, my hand becoming blurry as it came close to my eyes.

I groaned and rolled over in my oversized bed, reaching for my glasses, and came face to face with myself.

For a brief second, my sleepy brain didn't register anything as wrong. "It's just a mirror, Hanners," it was saying to me.

I don't have a mirror next to my bed, I said back.

"Oh," it replied. "Well, feel free to freak out then."

I freaked out. Shrieking a little, I rolled in the opposite direction, falling out of the bed in panic. I bounced back to my feet and flattened myself against the wall.

The other me didn't move. It just lay there, on top of my bed, perfectly still.

After a few seconds of nothing, I pushed down the fear and peeled myself off the wall.

"...hello?" I asked. I waved my hand to try and get its attention, but nothing happened. I tried again, a little closer; maybe it hadn't seen.

I don't think there was any response, but I wasn't sure, due to being distracted by the fact that I couldn't see my hand.

Mute, I inspected the space where my hand was telling me it was. Nothing, not even a glimmer… okay, scratch that, there was the tiniest bit of shimmering when I moved, but if I didn’t do that, nothing.

My chest suddenly felt very tight, my vision tunneling down to a pinprick as I struggled to breath.

“Okay, calm down, calm down,” my brain was saying, dim behind the thumping of my pulse. “We know how to deal with this. And breathe in, 2, 3, 4, 5. Out, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. In, 2, 3, 4…”

Slowly, my breathing settled, the pressure in my chest lessening, my vision clearing.

I took a deep breath. What the hell is going on? I absentmindedly went to rub at my forehead, but halted when I remembered about my hands. Speaking of…

I looked down at where my body should be. Yep, still not even a glimmer.

Wait, am I a ghost? Is that my body? That was a disturbing thought and I quickly ran back through my actions. I hadn’t fallen through the floor, and I’d hit the wall, but maybe ghosts… I dunno, could only go where people could?

I tapped the carpet with my foot, and there was a soft thump. So I was probably corporeal. But just to check, I reached over slowly, trying not to make any sudden movements, and snagged my glasses from the nightstand. It was disconcerting, seeing the glasses move, knowing that I was moving them, but not actually being able to see it. I drew backwards again, and slid the glasses onto my face, brushing aside a few hairs that got caught under the arms. For a split second, the frames hung in front of my face, then they too disappeared, leaving me perfectly invisible once again.

That cinched it. The thought had been floating lurking in the back of my mind the whole time, but I'd been intentionally ignoring it, worrying I'd be getting my hopes up over nothing. But there was no doubt now.

I, Hannah Eiling-Kingsford, was a superhero.

Well, not a superhero, per se. Person with superpowers would be more accurate, paranormal would be more common. But I had powers, and I had no intention of committing crimes with them, and if that isn't the definition of a superhero, I don't know what is.

First things first. What exactly could this new power, or powers, of mine do?

"Start with what you can observe, and work from there," my brain suggested.

What could I observe? I was invisible, as were my pajamas and my glasses. So I can assume from that-

"Don't assume yet, just observe."

Right. Okay, when I held the glasses, they were still visible, but when I put them on, they disappeared.

What else? There was... something on the bed that looked exactly like me.

"How do you know it looks exactly like you?"

I didn't. I moved closer to the doppelgänger, previous fear completely gone, and took a closer look. Yep, that was me, alright. Long strawberry-blonde hair, thin face, wide nose, all present and correct. It even had the tiny burn scar in the middle of my left eyebrow, from the time as a kid when I got too close to some frying bacon and got splattered with a bit of boiling oil. The imitation was perfect in every aspect.

"How do you know it's an imitation?"

Right, no assumptions. The... anomaly (Dad would be proud of me) appeared exactly identical to me.

I reached forward with one finger and poked myself lightly on the cheek. My finger sank in, the anomaly' cheek feeling exactly as warm and soft as real flesh. Just to check, I poked myself in the same spot, and thankfully, it felt the same. Next, I felt its neck, searching for a pulse. Nothing, both there and on the wrist. I could feel the veins, but they were perfectly still, as if the blood simply wasn't flowing.

I went to the bathroom quickly and grabbed my hand mirror from the basin where I'd left it, before quickly returning. Holding the mirror over its nose and mouth revealed no fogging, not that I expected any. I held the mirror in front of me face, and it clouded like normal: one more piece of evidence on the 'not a ghost' pile. Or astral projection, or some kind of spirit, or whatever.

The anomaly was wearing pajamas that once again seemed to be exact copies of mine. But, curiously enough, it wasn't wearing a copy of my glasses.

Okay, that seemed to be everything-

"What about the room? Has anything changed?"

"You're starting to get annoying, imaginary representation of my psyche," I muttered under my breath.

"Shut up, you know you love me."

I looked around my bedroom. I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary; bed, duvet, nightstand, carpet, half-open blinds, all present and correct.

Okay, now that should be everything.

So what can I infer?