by Eric Beetner
“Sammy, what the hell?” He smiled, probably thinking he’d stumbled into some sort of kinky role playing. Might have been fun on any other night.
“You’re not safe. Calder and Rizzo are going to kill you.” I had his attention. No frisky business tonight.
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said! Calder and Rizzo are going to kill you to keep you from moving forward with the case. You’ve got to go.” I thought about the other woman and how I could see through her eyes and wondered if she watched through mine right then. “But, don’t tell me where. Just go and I’ll find you later.”
“Did you get this info from work? I’ll call in to Cranner—”
“No. Move. Now.” Cranner was my supervisor at the DEA. He couldn’t help anyway, but I needed more time to try to figure out how I could explain all this and everything that came before. I put my hands up to Lucas’ face, held his cheeks. Touching him felt good. “Honey, please. You’re not safe here. You’ve got to go.”
Lucas was fully awake now and after the distraction of my ranting faded he began to notice my torn clothes, the dust on me, the bruise on my chin and the droplets of blood on my shirt.
“Sammy, what the hell is going on here? Are you okay?”
I grunted in frustration. “Lucas! Listen to me. I’ll explain later but right now you need to go. They’re going to kill you.”
I looked right into his eyes, trying to get him to grasp the seriousness. Sometimes, though, things are truly unbelievable I guess.
“Calder and Rizzo are coming here right now to kill me?”
“Well, not them. Someone else.”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter.” My voice rose in volume and pitch. “You need to get out of here and go someplace that isn’t obvious. Someplace I wouldn’t know about. And you can’t tell me.”
The door still hung open and headlights swept across the entryway as the car squealed its brakes to a stop at the bottom of the driveway. She made good time. As she started stalking toward the house I got another good look at her, minus the fire and debris from before. She still looked like me. But how? My head felt clearer, but something was still seriously wrong. No one on the bus looked like me. The woman who lost her purse, the driver. Only this woman felt like looking into a mirror.
I punched the door closed before he could see her get out of the car. I spun the deadbolt and shoved Lucas deeper into the house.
“Move. Grab what you need. Your wallet, keys, phone. But you need to move fast.”
“Shit, Sammy, you’re serious.”
“Yes.” I pulled on his arm and brought him to the bedroom, slamming the door behind us.
“What the fuck, Sam?”
“I told you already. You haven’t got much time.”
Two blasts announced her entry into the house. Gustavo’s gun made a hell of a lock pick.
“Lucas!” My voice came down the hall. My voice, but I hadn’t said anything. In a moment of clarity I understood.
EXPLAINING THE UNEXPLAINABLE
There was something beyond the fact she looked like me. It was me. Okay, she wasn’t me, she was only half of me. We were the same person, split in two. A copy. A clone.
She came into the entryway and I felt her look at me and I could sense she felt the same unspoken truth of it. There was a connection, an understanding. Even her face had the same knicks and cuts that I had after the explosion. A short cut on her right cheek bone right where my cheek hurt, a knick on her chin where I could feel the little indent. And up close to her now I could see that our outfits did match. It hadn’t been an illusion.
It’s so hard to explain, but what I can tell you is I split. Two halves, good and evil. I was the good. She was the evil. I’ll call her Sam, trying to keep things straight in my head when absolutely nothing in my world was straight anymore. Crookeder than a dog’s hind leg. (Texas again, thanks Daddy.)
And I recognized it because it had previously been my evil, my hate. Now it went untempered by the usually decent side of me. Nothing to keep my dark side in check, to throw water on the flames when they flared too high (as I’d been known to do).
Everyone has two sides. The good side holds the door open for a person on crutches. The bad side realizes the cashier gave you back too much change and says nothing. Even Mother Theresa gave the finger every now and then.
Lucas got a confused look on his face but he continued to pull on a pair of jeans. I swiped his wallet off the dresser where he always set it in the same anal retentive place next to the laid out change from his pocket in stacks of small coins to larger ones.
Sam’s feet pounded down the hall to the bedroom. No searching the house. She knew where to find us. I lunged across the room and flicked the tiny lock on the door meant to keep kids from walking on their parents having sex, not to keep out killers.
She didn’t bother wasting another bullet on that one. We heard a kick at the door and the frame rattled.
Lucas tried his best to take charge and protect me. It would have been sweet if it hadn’t been so dumb. He put a firm hand on my arm and shoved me forward into the walk-in closet, pulled the door closed behind us.
“What are you doing?” I yelled.
“Shhh!”
“You’ve trapped us.” I wanted to curse, to call him a fucking idiot, but my mouth refused to form the words. No, swearing would be rude and my new self didn’t do rude. Fuck the new me. Sometimes a good fucking fuck is the only fucking thing that fucking helps.
Outside the closet door, with no locks mind you, we heard Sam’s foot crash through the flimsy lock on the bedroom. Behind me, Lucas shoved deeper into the hanging rows of clothes like he was trying to tunnel his way out. In the darkness I shut my eyes to see if I could get a brief glimpse of what she saw.
His little plan worked somewhat. I saw her sweep her head back and forth, land on the closed bathroom door and walk forward. If she went in there we would have maybe a second or two to make a run for it, but if she caught us inside the closet we had no chance.
“Lucas, we gotta go.”
Lucas emerged from the back of the closet and shoved something into my hand. I looked down at the heavy object, knowing we were losing our window.
My gun. The .38 snub-nose I kept at home and hadn’t fired in over six years. I didn’t even know he knew where I kept it.
Now, you might think it less than manly of him to shove a gun in my hand and ask me, the woman, to defend him. Really, it makes sense. Lucas is a lawyer. I don’t think he’s ever shot a gun in his life. I had military training and then DEA training including the same firearms course the FBI takes and six sharpshooter medals in a box somewhere else in this closet. So, yeah, I was the right choice to hold the gun.
Except my body wouldn’t let me use it.
The closet door tore open. Sam stood there with Gustavo’s big semi-auto held out in front of her. Lucas reacted on pure instinct and threw a punch. The adrenalin blasting through him must have really been working overtime because he threw a hell of a sock to the face.
I know because I felt it.
She went flailing back, dropping Gustavo’s gun as she did. I grabbed my jaw, feeling a pain I figured to be about half of what she felt. This whole mess got curiouser and curiouser.
So we could see for each other and feel each other. Good to know.
When I looked back up I saw Lucas looking down at the face of the person he’d just punched. He turned back to me. His face trembled. Lightning flashes of fear and confusion burst across his face like flashbulb pops.
“Go, Lucas. Now. I’ll explain later.”
He didn’t move.
“Run!” I screamed.
She grabbed his ankle. Her hand, emptied of the gun, now clamped above where his shoe would have been if he’d listened to me and gotten ready faster. He kicked and jerked his leg like a snake attached itself to him, and he wasn’t far off.
/> She let go and slid up to her knees and made a lunge for the gun. I came out of the closet, my own gun in my hand, but I held it like a wet rag. I stepped close to her, not sure what my body would allow me to do. Could I hit her to save Lucas? Could I even shoot her to save someone else?
The gun wouldn’t raise in my hand. That was out. I willed my arm to lift but it stayed by my side as if tied there with a rope.
She fired. Lucas yelped and slapped a hand over the meat of his upper arm below the shoulder. I knew the shot wasn’t life threatening. I hoped maybe the very real pain would finally convince him I was telling the truth.
Sam got up off the carpet and I stepped right next to her. “Stop it!” I yelled. Wow. Real convincing. That ought to do the job, no problem. Even British police carry nightsticks.
She turned and slapped the gun across my face. The metal stung as she pistol whipped me and I felt the skin over my cheek bone tear. As my head snapped to the side I could see Lucas breaking for the door. I also saw her put a hand up to her cheek, reeling at the pain she’d inflicted on me.
We both righted ourselves like two mirror images, neither one sure which was real and which the reflection.
She took a single step back as she straightened her arm and raised the gun to my nose.
“Wait,” I said, putting my hands up like a mugging victim. “What happens if you kill me?”
She paused.
“You felt that, right?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“And I felt it earlier when he hit you. If we feel each other’s pain, what happens if you shoot me?”
She readjusted her grip on the gun, the dark circle of the barrel staring me down.
“If I die, you die.” At least I was pretty sure that’s what would happen. “I think,” my mouth added involuntarily.
She held the gun to my face a few seconds more, the smell of the recently fired shot stinging my nose. “Fuck,” she said and lowered the gun. I was jealous of her vocabulary.
CLEANING UP AFTER THE PARTY
She turned and walked out of the bedroom. I heard the house rattling sound of the garage door opening and the uncharacteristic sound of Lucas revving the engine on his Audi. A brief chirp of tires and he disappeared down the street.
I followed her out into the hall in time to see her duck into Lucas’ home office at the end of the hallway.
I walked down to the open door and looked in. She tore through the papers on his desk, opened drawers and removed files. Lucas did a fair amount of work from home after hours but I knew, and therefore so did she, he kept all his work files at the DA’s office and only occasionally brought duplicates home.
“There’s nothing here,” I said.
She stopped ransacking, knowing I was right. She stood and headed for the door. When she got to me she punched me in the gut. I doubled over and she winced but kept walking. She prepared herself for the shot before she threw it. Smart.
I curled on the floor in the fetal position clutching my stomach like I was having labor pains. My God, I hoped Lucas had gone someplace safe. I couldn’t help running over all the possible places in my mind. I knew she would be doing the same thing.
I got to my hands and knees and took a moment to regroup. I tasted blood. The cut on my cheek ran a long line down my face and, bent forward like I was, blood dripped into the corner of my mouth. I wanted to spit but apparently that would have been rude to spit onto the rug because I couldn’t. I held the raw metallic taste in my mouth as I found a box of tissues on Lucas’ desk and spit into that.
I made my way back through the blown open front door and could hear her in the garage. I hated feeling so helpless. I should be trying to stop her, trying to kill her for taking a shot at my man. I couldn’t. And she knew it. She searched the house with impunity. And she would continue to hunt for Lucas. Nothing I could do to stop her.
She emerged from the garage carrying a garden hose and a pair of hedge clippers. She let the hose unroll and took a length of a few feet and bent a kink in it. She slid the clippers into the bend and snapped them shut, snipping off the length of green hose. She picked up a red plastic gas can and started walking down the driveway.
Rubber marks where Lucas’ Audi made its escape ran up into the thick ivy next to the driveway where he swerved to avoid the strange car parked at the end of his property.
I followed her down the driveway, impotent to stop her but curious nonetheless. She pushed on the tiny door to the gas tank and unscrewed the cap.
“What are you doing?” I asked, a rising panic in my voice.
She fed the hose down into the gas line and started sucking on the other end. Three big inhales and I got a sour taste in my mouth. She leaned over and spit a fine spray of gasoline, gagging as she did. I tasted the gas in my mouth and dry heaved, powerless to make the phantom taste go away.
I stood by, swallowing and gagging, as she filled the can and then marched back to the house.
She started in the office, splashing the gasoline around, me following and yelling out, “You can’t do this.” and “Stop it!”
Spoiler alert: She didn’t stop.
The can empty, she went to the living room and opened the small Indian carved box that held the fireplace matches. We bought that box together at an indoor flea market on a weekend away. We talked about going to India someday, how it would be much more exciting and dangerous than a suburban flea market. Excitement and danger were low on my list anymore.
I was helpless. I could scream, I could yell, but I couldn’t grab her. Couldn’t punch her, couldn’t raise my old .38 and shoot her. My God it was the worst feeling in the world, watching a woman—watching myself—preparing to burn down my fiancé’s house.
She stepped out the front door and waited for me to follow. Burning me alive wouldn’t exactly work with her plans. I had to stay alive for her to stay alive.
“Please,” I said. “You can’t do this.”
“I’ll find him y’know.”
I knew. She lit a match, tossed it over her shoulder with a smile. As the gas ignited she walked back down the steps to her stolen car.
She didn’t need to burn down the house. There were no files about the case there that weren’t at the DA’s office as well. This was spite, maybe revenge for Lucas punching her.
Why had she taken the deal? How could she do this to us? I guess I assumed if she shared half of me, she would love him too. Then again, love might have all sloshed over to my side of things. She could see Lucas as nothing more than an obstacle to her payday. And if she consisted of nothing but evil, her loyalties would side with the criminals, right?
Anyway, damn her. Damn me. At first it was easy to deny Sam as a part of me. If I really thought about it, she was the part that took the deal way back when. No, okay that’s not true. That part was fear. Fear for my own life. She was the part that kept on taking the money, though, even after Duane SomethingPolish got spread all over a concrete floor. She was the part that put the money in a safe deposit box until she outgrew the beginner size and sprang for the double wide. And she was so much easier to ignore when she lived inside and I could easily shut her up by buying a new pair of shoes.
I stood at the bottom of the steps watching her go. Behind me the flames grew and began to roar, warming my back. She revved the engine, turned to me and smiled again.
She was pure evil, and evil had my face.
CHESTNUTS ROASTING ON AN OPEN FIRE—MINUS THE CHESTNUTS
I turned and watched Lucas’ house burn. I kept a few clothes in there, a toothbrush, but the big move-in together was supposed to happen next month after I gave my landlord the proper notice to get my deposit back.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire and where there’s fire there are firemen, so I knew I had to get the hell out of there. The garage hadn’t caught yet and I thought of the Vespa. Lucas bought it in what he called his pre-midlife crisis. He’d ridden it about a half dozen times
since. The garage door was wide open, Lucas didn’t bother to close it on his exit. I ran in, grabbed the keys from hook next to the workbench and had no choice but to grab the helmet. There are laws y’know.
The heat from the burning house was intense as I fired up the tiny little engine and puttered away into the night.
I had no idea where to go. I also had no idea where she would head next or what damage she might do, but right then I was too exhausted to care. At night there wasn’t much she could do to the targets on her list. The other members of Lucas’ staff at the DA’s office were work friends so I, which meant she, didn’t know their addresses and likewise my coworkers at the DEA. We all kept a nice professional distance from each other. Comes with the job, I think, to keep a very private private life.
A few miles away from the burning house I pulled in to a parking lot in front of a mall. I parked far away from the entrance in a spot you’d be pissed to settle for if the mall was open and you had to walk. It kept me in the shadows mostly and that suited me fine.
I dismounted and sat down on a grass patch where I leaned back against a tree.
I shut my eyes and tried to tap in to Sam’s eyes. I got nothing. I could have been out of range or she could have been asleep. Or I could have been crazy and this whole mess played out inside my concussed brain while I still lay at the bottom of that brick pile. If so, I’d wake up to a brand new old world where there was only one of me. If I was lucky I’d be in a hospital bed with Lucas standing over me and quite possibly some internal affairs dicks from the agency. If I wasn’t lucky I’d be inside a body bag, which is kinda how I felt as I lay back on the grass, my helmet still on.
Sleep overtook me so fast I’m tempted to say I passed out.
WAKE UP, SLEEPYHEAD
I jerked awake when the dumpster I’d parked next to was hauled up by an angry garbage truck. I finally knew what it was like to live in Africa and be woken by a charging rhino.
I woke thinking, is it over? Am I a solo act again? I sure didn’t feel any different. If anything I was more sore. The bruises and cuts from the explosion the day before were left to stiffen overnight while sleeping like a drunk on a grassy median in a vacant parking lot.
