Goodbye Lilly

Stop looking at me like I'm Insane! I'm not! I only did what was right, what would stop others being hurt. I was thinking of other children who suffered like I did, who lost actual lives because of her.
Lilly had to be stopped, and I was the one to do it.
Myths say that the only way to kill a Changeling, if you can find one, by using fire. What myths don't tell you, and if you are a changeling you would know, that the one and only true way to kill a changeling, is have the changeling see themselves in a reflection when they are at thier weakest.
Or in Lillys case, while she was missing her borrowed human face.
I had to find a reflective surface, and fast, before she came back for the face. I was still in the parking lot so I smashed the closest mirror to me, unfortunetly it was the side mirror to his truck.
How? Oh I did it like in the movies, I put my hand into my sweater, made a fist and smashed it. No, I didn't take the time to take it off, I just pulled the sleeve up, like *this.*
I'm not a very fast person to begin with, so moving with broken pieces of glass in my hands did not go very well. As quickly as I could I ran back to the rumpled face on the ground and stuffed it full of the broken mirror.  I didn't think it would work from the start. Really, who would put on a face full of glass? Or anything full of glass.
What I never believed would happen... happened.
I heard a scream behind and me she was on top of me. Scratching and clawing at my face, arms legs, whatever she could get a hold of.  I didn't want to look at her face, so I closed my eyes and I fought back, tooth and nail for my life. I felt the glass crunch underneath me and for the first time I felt pain from her injuries. I remembered who I was fighting for then, I was fighting for the ones the at I knew at the camp, the ones that I babysat, the ones that I grew up with. One day I may have a child of my own and I didn't want her to become a changeling, I didn't want her to turn into the monster that I was confronted with now. I didn't want her to become the alter ego that I had befriended that many years before.
I opened my eyes and glared right into the bloodshot eye of the changeling Lilly and with a burst of energy that I had not had before I flipped her over and pushed her face into the borrowed glass full face that she had cast off not too long before. She screamed and turned over the face held on by the glass, but she had seen herself at her weakest.
She screamed again and again and again and again and again by then I lost consciousness, again.
I woke up in the hospital.
Then I remembered...

Confrontation

I had heard stories of children being nabbed by wood fairies, wisked away and never seen again. These children were replaced with look alike, creatures, that acted the same way, walked the same way, talked the same way, even looked the same way, but they were not the same. These creatures could not replace the children they had stolen away. Only mothers knew the difference. I had heard years ago a mother was placed in the insane asylum because she was convinced her child was a changeling. The child dissapeared soon after, there has been no sign of it since.
We were all warned when were young to be aware and be frightened of being left alone in the woods, things could happen. When I was growing up the fear was set into us that the animals would try to eat us, or we could be poisoned if we ate the wrong berry or touched the wrong tree. In my mothers time it was be aware of who lives out there, she grew up where skyscrapers replaced the trees and roads were actually paved. Not me, I was raised out here where my fathers family grew up, on the farm.
I'm sorry doctor, but, I promise, it's all relevent.
When I was younger I loved to play out in the woods. As a single child I was spoiled rotten. Well, hah, not rotten, but I was spoiled. I had a puppy, a play house, and as much free land I could roam on as I wanted.
As I look back on it now, I still can't remember having a puppy. I never owned a dog, but the pictures proved that I did. I broke my arm when I was riding the pony Paige, she was hit by lightening when I was eight, poor thing, but the scar I had where the needle pierced my skin as the doctor stiched me up were gone. All pictures of me after six lacked the stitch marks, lacked the puppy, even lacked the bump I grew after falling out of the apple tree in the backyard.
I asked my parents about it, over the phone, and they said, one day, they woke up to check on me and all marks I had were gone. They didn't know what happened, I went to bed with a big bruise on my left cheek and the next morning it was gone.
They called the doctors, the hospital, even a few specialists, so they said, but it couldn't be explained. That morning as well Lindsay dissapeared as well. She was found way down in the back field. The shierff said that a wild animal got to her, as the police report read, but she was in my crib went I went to bed... how could she have gotten out?
I can't recall anything past my sixth birthday. But the second time I passed out after seeing Lilly, it all came back to me.
Lilly and I, it seemed, were not so different after all. We were changelings. She had made only one mistake: She had forgotten to erase the part of my memory where I had seen her, looking into my crib late at night, whispering how to be human, how to behave, how to act, how to talk. I can see her through the crib rails, her face covered by a tattered blanket she had stolen from another bedroom years before. She was the one who killed Lindsey. She was the one responsible for making the switch convincible. She was the one that tried to make me human.
She was the one who killed my human twin.

Infection

I remember hiding in the car, I couldn't move, I was too scared to. I really was.
Could she infect the camp? Was she a Monster, like Frankenstein? Was there an alien inside her body, wearing her like an prom dress, like in MIB? I was frightened beyond belief, I don't like scary movies now, I can't stand them. Actually, I don't watch movies in general anymore...
Right, Lilly, or whatever she was. Maybe she was a changeling child, and we had stumbled upon her secret, that was the most fearsome bit. What could she do? Would she pull herself together and ask what was going on? Would she find the real Lilly and replace her just to drive us all insane?
What could happen?
I noticed in my hysterics that the camp had grown silent, as if all were in hiding. But that couldn't be right, there were still children down at the docks swimming and still more were in sports down by the field. Could she be affecting me? I looked out of the window of Carl's truck, somehow I had gotten in there, I think I climbed in there I don't remember and looked around. The face of Lilly was still on the ground, near the picnic table, as well as her blue backpack that she had gotten as a handmedown from her brother. But she, it, whatever Lilly had become was gone. Gone.
*Tap* *Tap* *Tap* *Tap*
It was a fingernail on the drivers window. I closed my eyes, plugged my ears and screamed.
And screamed.
And Screamed.
AND SCREAMED.

Monster

I don't normally faint doctor. I feel really woozy and seasick but I don't faint. Ever. When I hit the ground I woke up.. looking at the face of Lilly.
Literally. It was only Lillys face. When I fell I still held the thread that held her together, so I had pulled her down with me. The flesh of her face was on the ground next to me, I let go and scrambled away from it. If you have ever seen a skinned chicken before it has been cooked, it looked like that. Dead pale skin that resembled a childs face. It was crumpled on the ground where moments before my head had been.
I looked up to the changling child and, I'll never forget.
The eye was still hanging off her face but the other to my vantage point on the ground, almost looked like it had a glint of evil in it. How right I was.
Lilly still stood there, in her camp clothes, holding the rock, one eye hanging down her face, the other glaring at all around her. With her face gone her teeth gave the eerie smile you see in Halloween skulls in front yards. Thats all there was. There was no muscle, or babyfat or, anything. Just a skeleton face under her human one. Her hair framed her face as her curls used to, but she no longer looked like the happy ten year old that she was not long ago.
The other campers had began to grow scared but they couldn't move, neither could I. I was frightened for the first time since I had tried to pull the eyelash out of her eye. I regret to this day trying to help her.
She turned away from me, still holding the rock and ran her hand along the degrading picnic table that we use for our crafts. I saw another string become attatched to the table and her hand began to pull apart as well. Turning back to me and her peers she softly laughed. Her laugh broke the spell she had on us.
The campers scattered screaming for thier mothers, a few had cell phones, calling their pampered parents. I was still shocked. Carl, dear Carl, pulled me away from Lilly and practically dragged me away from her to wait by his truck. 
When Carl let me go I realized that the children were in more of a danger than I was, they were running for the road!
Lilly was still standing there, next to the table, but she had turned around. I couldn't see what she was doing from where I was. Sewing herself back together? Pulling more off? Did she know what was going on?
Was she a monster like we had seen in the movies?

Changelings

I'm sorry, I must have used half of the box of tissues on you, but I'm still so upset about it. How could that happen? She just..
Yes, yes, I'll start where I left off... with the eyelash. 
She turned toward the sunlight and I saw the eyelash so I pulled on it with the very tips of my fingernails. She didn't mind, she was just a kid, probably did it a hundred times with her mother.  So I told her to look the other way while I tried to pluck it out. I figured if she was annoyed by me we could go up to the Lodge and use the tweezers that we use typically for splinters. We never needed the tweezers. A needle and some thread would have been nice but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Oh yes, I'd like another tissue thank you. 
But like I said it was innocent enough, an eyelash in her eye. I plucked it with my finger, but it kept coming out. At first thought I thought it was a piece of her hair in there, that must have been annoying. She had very long reddish goldish hair, curly when ever it got wet. When it obviously wasn't the eyelash, I told Lilly "Lill, its a piece of your hair, I'm going to keep going. Or do you want to wait until we get to the lodge and we can use a tweezer?" She said "No Dana, it's fine. Just get it out. It's getting itchy."
The last thing I remember thinking before I went into shock, was 'Itchy? Why is it getting itchy now?"
What was in her eye was not an eyelash. It was not a piece of her hair. It was thread.
I gently pulled what I thought was hair out of her eye, then it jumped from her eye up to her eyebrow, and like a badly sewn seam on a pant leg, it began to one by one undo the eyelashes. The eyelashes popped out of her brow and went along her eye to the left, near her ear. The seam stopped at the end of her eyebrow then traveled down her face to outline her face. Lilly looked at my shocked face and began to back away which pulled the stitches out further, traveling under eye along the bottom lashes. Before anyone could give a shout of warning, her eye sank out of socket and hung by the optic nerves. As Lilly turned her face to look at her peers the eye swayed gently on her cheek.
I fainted here. The poor child...

Stitched Lilly

Lilly was one of my students, happy go-lucky kid, tall for her age. I'd say she was eight or so. She had a brother that was very bright but not good socially, Daniel I think his name was. I babysat them sometimes, before they went to camp with me, and be in my group. See what I do is work in the out door wilderness area of the camp, Camp Tree Lake, it empties into Glass River, can't miss it if you go down Box Lane, turn at Winchester farm follow the old goat path. The camp takes a more direct route, going right down Fern Road and taking a left at Four Crossings. That road was put in the year they put in the new cabins down by the lake. My part of camp is near the parking lot, usually we start when the last of the parents and tots leave, just so we can get things done without the parents being freaky about the type of glue gun we use. "Oh Johnny can't use that.. he's allergic to it! It has hepacitus B and Clorox L in it!" Or whatever they say. After five years of listening to the complaints of the parents we just play tag or some other sport until the last of the cars leave. Then the fun begins. That day were going to make our own pet rocks, with paint, glitter eyes, the whole nine yards. We had just come back from the poison ivy infested forest that we call Deplorable Woods to find small rocks that would work for our pet rocks.
We had just gotten back and Carl did the usual poison ivy check on all the kids, if he could see the tell tale red marks then he sent the kids up with one of the JC's to get washed up, if it looks worse than it really is, maybe put a little cream on it. JC work, no biggie. I was left with the six or so kids, this group of second graders happened to be really small. Usually we have about fifteen but we lucked out. Next year, there probably won't be any kids in this group, but whose to say anything?
Lilly came up to me, like she always did, she was a little show off. She started rubbing her eye so I asked her what was wrong. She shrugged and in her little high pitched voice of hers that could melt even the Grinch she said "Probably just durt." Never and 'i' in dirt with her, it was a u. I thought it was cute. I had her turn towards me and I looked in her eye, like any concerned adult would and I found an eyelash. Innocent enough, everyone has had an eyelash in thier eye before. It was right in that little spot where theres alot of pink, right next to the bridge of your nose.  Common enough occurance.  What happened next will haunt me forever.