Plastic Tulips
by Brian S. Wheeler
The town of Portis doesn't fault Sophie Carter for gunning down Samantha Tosh in the local grocery store. Knowing that a copy of a younger, more beautiful you walked the streets around your home would drive anyone to murder. Nor was Samantha a person. She was only a synthetic, and Franklin Tosh should've known better than to think a clone could substitute for a human wife.Sophie Carter shakes after killing Samantha Tosh in the produce aisle of Diekemper's Grocery and Goods. She bakes cookies for town functions. Everyone in the community loves her like a grandmother. Sophie had never believed murder could germinate inside her. Yet she gunned down Samantha Tosh between the onions and avocados without hesitating. Franklin Tosh should not have ordered a clone made to match the young Sophie Carter he had fallen in love with so many lost years before. Sophie might have broken Franklin's heart so long ago, but she did not deserve to be haunted by that synthetic person whose never-aging beauty reminded Sophie of what she had once been. So Sophie Carter trembles as the world descends upon her small community of Portis, determined to decide if a synthetic's blood should be valued as much as any woman or man's.