Framing the Framer: A Twin's Revenge

I strolled into the supermarket with my livestream running, flashing a defiant smirk right at the lens. "Alright, chat. We're going big today.

The fivefinger discount challenge." The comment section instantly exploded. [Are you out of your damn mind? Shoplifting on live?

You trying to get locked up?] I ignored the scrolling text. I just started grabbing things, chucking them into my cart in a frenzy.

The second it was full, I gripped the handle and bolted straight out the sliding doors.

Thanks to my location being broadcast to the world, it barely took any time for the cops to track me down and slap the cuffs on my wrists.

In my past life, my twin sister, Peyton, murdered her billionaire exboyfriend, Vance. Then she vanished without a trace with her lover.

Because I was home alone with zero alibi to prove I wasn't the one who did it, I was the one sent to death row. When I opened my eyes again, I was back.

Back to the exact day she killed him.

If she could forge evidence placing me at the crime scene, then I would let the entire internet's livestream archive and the official police logs prove otherwise.

At the exact time of the murder, I was sitting in a holding cell at the local precinct, locked up for my fivefinger discount challenge at Walmart.

This time, she would be the one with nowhere to run. Chapter 1 I stood at the Walmart entrance, my finger shaking slightly as I hit the "Go Live" button on my screen.

The display reflected my pale face.

I pulled in a sharp breath and forced a massive, exaggerated grin for the lens. "Alright chat, today I'm doing the fivefinger discount challenge!" The comment section blew up instantly. [Is she insane?

Clout chasing has gone too far.] [Shoplifting at Walmart? Have fun in a cell!] [Reported.

You're welcome.] I ignored the blur of scrolling text, pushed my shopping cart, and headed straight for the snack aisle. The red light on the Walmart security camera blinked.

It looked exactly like the barrage of media lenses locked onto me in the courtroom during my past life. My throat tightened, but my hands stayed steady.

I grabbed items off the shelves in a frenzy. The cart quickly piled high with bulky items: familysized bags of chips, Oreos, and heavy cases of soda.

Low monetary value, but massive volume. They took up maximum visual space. The comments kept rolling in. [Just a bunch of cheap junk.

Not even worth anything.] [Yeah, she’s just engagement farming. That whole cart isn't even a hundred bucks.] [Is she actually gonna walk out without paying though?

Even for cheap stuff, she'll still get busted.] [Weak. If you're gonna steal, steal something big. This is boring.] [Probably just a prank video.

Bet she goes right to the register after this. Anything for views nowadays.] The debate sent my viewer count skyrocketing. Thousands of eyes watched me shove items into my cart.

Because I left my location tracking on, someone quickly pinpointed my exact Walmart.

The loss prevention guy in his yellow vest spotted what I was doing too, but he just gripped his walkietalkie. He didn't step in.

Feeling the weight of the entire internet watching me, I let out a loud laugh and yelled right into the camera. "Watch closely, chat.

Time to check out." I gripped the handle of my overflowing cart and sprinted straight for the sliding exit doors. The moment I cleared the threshold, the security alarms blared.

I didn't stop. I kept charging forward, the heavy thud of footsteps echoing right behind me. The chat blew up again. [Holy shit, she actually did it.] [Is this scripted?!

She literally just walked out!] [LMAO look at the security guard behind her, he literally lost his shoe! No way this is fake.] [COPS!! Look!] I looked up.

Two armed patrol cops were already blocking my path, hands resting on their holstered sidearms. They definitely caught the 911 calls minutes ago.

Before they could even shout a command, I let go of the cart and threw both hands high into the air. "Don't shoot! I surrender!

Take me in." The younger cop frowned, completely thrown off by my aggressive compliance. The older officer was already pulling out his cuffs.

The freezing metal snapped around my wrists. A violent shudder ripped through my spine. It was the exact same sensation as my arrest in my past life.

But this time, I chose it. "Let's go," the older officer grunted.

As they shoved me into the back of the cruiser, I twisted my neck to stare directly into the security camera mounted above the entrance.

That angle would catch the exact timestamp of my arrest: 3:27 PM. Plenty of time. As the squad car pulled away, I glanced out the window.

Several bystanders had their phones out, recording the whole scene. Perfect. More links for my ironclad alibi.

I leaned back against the hard plastic seat and let my eyes slide shut, letting the memories crash over me.

Chapter 2 The final image burned into my retinas from my past life was the blinding, clinical white lights of the execution chamber.

Now, I have to drag you back to where that nightmare began. I was a thriller author writing under the pen name C. Night.

Known in the indie circles, but never quite breaking onto the bestseller lists. Today, in my past life, was the day they slapped the cuffs on me.

I was racing against my publisher's deadline.

My new book, The Perfect StandIn, had just hit its climax: the protagonist discovers their identical twin hijacked their identity to commit murder.

I had just typed the line, "He stared at the security footage of a man wearing his exact face, realizing the only person capable of replicating him so perfectly was bound to him by blood," when my keyboard suddenly jammed.

Looking back, destiny is a sick, twisted joke. When the cops busted my door off its hinges, I was crouched on the floor, digging a screwdriver under a stuck key.

The explosive crack of the door splintering made me flinch. The flathead sliced right through my index finger. Drops of blood seeped into the mechanical keyboard.

Later, the prosecution paraded that blood in court as proof of my violent tendencies. "Cleo, you're under arrest for the firstdegree murder of Vance, and the robbery of a massive amount of cash from his safe." My knees gave out.

I hit the floor hard, watching them drag a bloodsoaked hoodie from the deepest corner of my closet. It had my fingerprints all over it.

And Vance's blood. "That's impossible…" My vocal cords seized up. "I haven't left this apartment in three days. That's not mine." But the security footage shattered my defense.

The screen showed a woman wearing my signature black Yankees cap. She had my backpack slung over her shoulder—a custom gift from a fan meetup, covered in Sharpie signatures.

A oneofakind item in the entire world. The camera tracked this woman stepping straight into Vance's penthouse.

Highdefinition footage caught her plunging a hunting knife directly into his chest, then emptying a stack of documents from his bedroom wall safe. The sickest part?

Vance's final expression wasn't terror. It was pure shock.

He recognized the face driving the blade into him. "So you're telling me you have a twin sister, and she was Vance's sugar baby?" In the interrogation room, Detective Sullivan tapped his pen hard against the manila file. "Yes!

Go pull his phone records. You'll find her texts everywhere." The detectives muttered something to each other and stepped out.

When they came back, they shoved a photograph across the metal table. It was a picture provided by my parents. Peyton standing at an airport gate, flashing a brilliant smile.

The digital departure board behind her clearly displayed the date and time: exactly 12:15 PM on the day of the murder. The time of death was 3:50 PM.

Her flight wouldn't have even touched down yet. My editor, Hazel, used to tell me the alibis in my thrillers were too perfect, too neatly wrapped up for the real world.

Now I knew she was right. Reality didn't work like that. My gut screamed the photo was a doctored fake. But no one believed a single word out of my mouth.

And then my parents took the witness stand. That was the kill shot.

Mom sobbed so hard she practically collapsed against the railing, yet she gripped the microphone and swore to God she and Dad personally dropped Peyton off at the departures curb that morning.

Dad even produced screenshots of her digital boarding pass and the expensive longterm airport parking receipts as proof. "Cleo was never as bright as Peyton," Dad choked out, wiping his face. "She always harbored this sick, twisted jealousy. "When they were kids, she used to take a pair of shears and shred Peyton's dolls to pieces.

But I never imagined she would be jealous enough to steal her sister's boyfriend. We failed as parents." They hyperventilated and nearly fainted multiple times during the trial.

By the end of it, the jury, the judge, the whole damn world believed I was a coldblooded sociopath from birth. Chapter 3 And me?

A shutin author who spent weeks locked inside a dark apartment banging out drafts. The security cameras in my building lobby barely caught a passing shadow of me.

On the day of the murder, zero witnesses could vouch for my whereabouts. "The defendant is a chronic recluse with severe antisocial tendencies." The prosecutor's booming voice scraped against my eardrums like a serrated blade. "Her novels detail flawless, untraceable murders over and over again, demonstrating a clear capacity for premeditated homicide." It wasn't until the judge hammered the gavel and handed down my death sentence that all the puzzle pieces finally snapped together in my head.

But it was useless. I was out of time. I was Peyton's perfect sacrificial lamb. Three hours before the lethal injection, Peyton came to visit.

Through the bulletproof glass, her lips, painted in a striking crimson, parted into a sickeningly sweet smile. "Oh, by the way, I rewrote the ending of your new book for you.

The protagonist confesses in the final chapter. Such a brilliant redemption arc, don't you think?" She didn't even stick around to claim my body.

She was finally free to run off into the sunset with the college boy toy she had been funding behind Vance's back. Yet, when my eyes snapped open, the lethal injection was gone.

I was pulled back from the void, dumped exactly two hours before the murder. I was sitting at my desk, staring at my open manuscript.

The last autosave timestamp glowed in the corner of my monitor: 1:27 PM. Peyton's kill time was 3:50 PM. I spent my first twenty minutes burning through three specific tasks.

First, I pulled up the state's misdemeanor codes, confirming that stealing merchandise under 950 dollars qualified as a petty crime.

A ticket to a brief holding cell and an easy bailout. Second, I scoured the dispatch response times for the local precincts.

The division covering the Walmart across town had the fastest squad cars on the streets. Third, I scrubbed Peyton's Instagram feed.

She had just posted a selfie at the airport departure gate that morning.

When I grabbed my jacket and bolted out the door, I made damn sure to grab the black Yankees cap and that limitededition backpack.

The exact two items Peyton used to frame me in my past life.

But right now, they were going to be caught on a Walmart security feed strapped to my body, forging an unbreakable chain of evidence for my alibi. "Name?

You got a Social Security number?" The exhausted voice of the detective yanked me back to the stark reality of the interrogation room. "Cleo. I write under the pen name C.

Night." I deliberately dropped my professional alias, planting the seed for the inevitable media circus heading my way. The detective raised an eyebrow. "An author?

What kind of books?" "Thrillers." A dry, humorless laugh scraped out of my throat. "Though looking back, reality is a hell of a lot more twisted than fiction." The analog clock on the concrete wall ticked to 3:45 PM.

Right now, Peyton would be slipping into Vance's penthouse.

According to the official police timeline burned into my memory, Peyton was currently swiping my stolen access fob to bypass the lobby security doors.

She would be turning her face slightly toward the corner camera, flashing my signature tightlipped smile.

A microexpression she spent three agonizing months perfecting in the mirror. "So you're claiming you caused a scene at the Walmart on purpose?" The detective's voice sounded muffled, like it was filtering through ten feet of water. "Yes." My fingernails dug viciously into my palms.

My eyes darted to the clock, totally out of my control. The detective slid a crime scene photo across the metal table. "Loss prevention tallied up the merchandise.

Total value is under a grand…" 3:48 PM. A violent throb pulsed at my temples.

In the highres security footage recording right this second across town, Peyton would be pulling off the Yankees cap and shaking out her hair.

Hiplength, jetblack hair exactly like mine. She even copied the split ends. Vance would freeze the second he opened his front door.

The last time he saw my face was at my book signing. "According to the penal code…" The rasping sound of the detective flipping through the paperwork perfectly mimicked the grim rustle of the judge turning the pages of my death warrant in my past life.

Chapter 4 3:49 PM. Peyton would have deadbolted the front door by now. She’d be gripping the hunting knife in her left hand.

She wasn't a lefty, but to flawlessly mimic me, she had spent months forcing herself to eat and write with her nondominant hand.

The autopsy report in my past life stated the blade's entry angle proved a lefthanded attacker. "Cleo?

You tracking with me?" My head snapped up. "Can I get some water?" The detective frowned, but he shot a look at his partner to grab a cup. 3:50 PM. Dead on the dot.

My throat closed up. The ticking of the wall clock hammered against my eardrums. Right now. Peyton’s blade would be sliding perfectly between Vance's third and fourth ribs.

The exact anatomical kill strike I mapped out for my protagonist in my manuscript. A freezing paper cup was shoved into my hands. I stared into the rippling surface of the water.

Peyton’s reflection flashed in the ripples, shoving bloodsoaked stacks of cash into my custom backpack. "You're shaking," the detective noted sharply.

I blinked, realizing the water in my cup was sloshing over the brim. 3:52 PM. Peyton would be wiping down the crime scene.

She'd use my specific brand of Clorox wipes on the doorknobs, but deliberately leave half a thumbprint smudged on the glass coffee table. My print.

Lifted with packing tape weeks in advance. "Low blood sugar." I forced a tight smile. I watched the detective scribble emotionally erratic on his notepad.

Those exact words were going to be my bulletproof vest. After that, the detective's voice turned into white noise. I knew Peyton had pulled it off.

She was probably heading straight to my apartment right now, ready to bury that bloodsoaked hoodie deep in the back of my closet. In my past life, I was dead asleep at this hour.

She moved like a ghost, so I never even heard the door open. But she wasn't getting away with it this time. She had no idea I had left a little welcome gift waiting for her.

Right before I ran out the door, I left my monitor glowing with the latest chapter of The Perfect StandIn: [The moment the standin thinks they’ve won is the exact second the protagonist strikes back.] No matter what the cops threw at me after that, my jaw stayed locked.

I had what I needed. Faking compliance took too much energy anyway