If you see a girl who looks like you, run and fight. Don’t bleed. If you bleed, blot, burn, and bleach. If you find a hole, find your parents.

Imagine that, as you read this, you get a nosebleed. How do you feel?

Probably a bit annoyed, right? Maybe coupled with a little latent embarrassment from those times you got one at school. No doubt there's a little acorn of anxiety deep down about it (what if it's a harbinger of something worse?) especially if you're not used to getting them anymore.

Now imagine that, as a result of this nosebleed, a murderous doppelgänger has just been birthed and it's on its way to kill you.

How do you feel now?! Terrified? Baffled? Terribaffled?!

Well, for Molly Southbourne, this is her daily reality- that a drop of her blood spawns a vicious duplicate of her- and in this taut and unputdownable horror novella, you will feel all of that dread and confusion and then some. Thompson's slim read is an immensely creepy affair, one that speaks to an unnamable body horror about our own identities and self-perceived uniqueness. There are allegories about parenthood, adolescence, simulacra and the multitudinous self. Beyond any literary analysis though, this is just a malevolently gruesome and unsettling story. The multiple scenes where Molly wakes up to see a molly staring at her from across her bedroom are some of the most effective horror I've read in years and I read the whole thing in just two brief sittings.

Thompson's prose is blunt and forceful, full of ambiguous spaces where reader's thoughts and interpretations can echo. It is a bizarre, brutal but brilliantly compelling short read.

Just hope you don't get a nosebleed after reading it....