“One-in-a-million. People say it like it makes you special or something, right? But look at us!” I laughed, taking a sip of my beer as the man that could have very easily been my twin hung on my every word. “Like - If you’re one in a million, that just means there’s 8,000 people just fucking like you on the planet, and three hundred of them are right here in the gold ole’ US of A.”

“Right,” Micheal laughed, not noticing the pains I was taking to talk just a little more like him as this conversation went on, burying the shreds of my East Coast accent amongst the throatier notes of Midwest twang he preferred. “Still - you know - what are the odds that we’d both be on a business trip to Juno Beach on the same day?” he asked.

“Astronomical,” I answered with a shrug before I took another sip of my beer.

That was a lie, of course. The odds were just about one hundred percent, but that was only the case because I’d stalked Mr. Michael Peterson down online after he’d popped up in my constantly ongoing search as a 99.99% match. After I made my hair color match his and traded my spectacles for a pair of green contacts, I kissed my last victim’s wife goodbye for the last time and made very sure that Michael and I would just ‘happen to run into each other,’ while he was at a bar after a long day of shilling coatings and laminates.

His shock was hardly an exaggeration, though. The waitress had been just as surprised. “Seriously - the two of you are so similar that you have got to have the same daddy,” she’d told us as she seated us in a booth.

“Maybe,” I answered, feigning uncertainty, even though I knew it was true. Even if you’d given me proof and told me that my dad had stepped out on my mom way back when to give me a brother from another mother, I wouldn’t have believed it. It made for a fine story, of course, but I knew that wasn’t the case better than anyone.

It was just that no one was as special as they thought they were. There were so many people on the planet that everyone looked a little like two or three other people you knew, and if you searched long enough, you were certain to find an exact match.

There were only so many possible combinations, and thanks to big data, things were getting to the point where you could start to sort through them pretty quickly. With a simple program and a lot of time, you could find all the people you’d never meet and all the lives you’d never live pretty easily. I had a program in the cloud running 24/7 that found me a new possible match every other day or so, and though most of those were garbage, there were just enough hits to add to my hit list to keep it all going.

That wasn’t what we talked about, though, at the Outback. Here, I mostly just let him talk about whatever he wanted while I pretended to be as blown away as he was.

It was all an act, though. I’d done this more than once already, and tonight, after I got him to stop back by my room to show him some family photos so that we could see if our family trees might have any sort of overlap, I planned to force him to give me his laptop’s password and his atm’s pin card at gunpoint.

After that, I’d do the same thing I’d done to all the other versions of me I’d found so far: I’d bash his skull in and try his life out for a month or three.

If I liked it, I might even ride it until the wheels fell off. As far as plans went, it was a pretty good one, and the police would even be kind enough to dispose of the body for me under the name of my last lookalike, Rodger Grantham.

That was just as well, of course. Rodger wasn’t my name any more than Michael would be, but it had still been a fun three months. I’d enjoyed trying his life on for size.

I’d never wanted to be a chef, but I had learned a few things from his coworkers while I pretended like some of his memories were coming back. Sadly, his credit cards were all but maxed out now, though - life insurance would probably be enough to handle that for the widow I was about to tragically leave behind. Susan was a good woman, and after all she’d done for me, I’d want to make sure she was taken care of.

Michael, at least, was divorced. That would make things easier. “She started taking extra lessons with her tennis pro if you know what I mean,” he said with a defeated sigh when that subject had come up.

I suppressed the urge to laugh at that. I’d been in a similar boat when my wife had left me for my boss, and the second version of me I’d decided to put out of his misery had a similar story. Apparently, our shared face didn’t inspire a lot of loyalty, and honestly, that was kinda sad, but I didn’t care. I didn’t believe in loyalty anymore. I was just a hermit crab looking for a bigger shell.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

All I cared about was the growing database of names that my reverse image searches had located and the medical symptoms I was going to have to pretend I had so that I could convincingly fake a stroke when I got to the airport on Michael’s return ticket to Memphis tomorrow.

That’s why I wasn’t doing much more than smiling and nodding while he showed off pictures of his bass boat and his Harley. They looked fun, and honestly, I was looking forward to giving them a spin after my convalescence.

“So, what about you, Rodger? You ever go fishing,” he asked.

“I’ve been once or twice,” I nodded, gesturing to the waitress to bring another round. “It’s not a bad way to pass the time.”

It was a lie, of course. I’d been fishing exactly once in my second life as Milton Burner, and it had consisted of sitting in the shade while my in-laws argued about who was going to get what when I kicked it in the patio of the vacation house. I hadn’t felt bad cleaning them out before Milton had become Eric even a little bit.

“Well, the important part - especially when you’re trying to catch a predator like a bass, is that you gotta use the right lure,” Michael said before I tuned out and only pretended to pay attention.

Of course, the lure was important. It was everything, and today the only lure I needed was a credulous face that this bumpkin saw every morning in the mirror. He had plenty of money by all appearances and a pretty decent life. He’d make for a great next chapter until I was able to find someone who looked like me who was actually rich. So far, I’d struck out on that front, and there seemed to be something about my doppelgangers that largely preferred middle-class lifestyles in the middle of nowhere, but I was determined to rise above it.

That was why I hoarded all the cash I hoovered up along the way and put into some nice interest-bearing investments. I only needed to leave another half dozen bodies or so in my wake, minus their wallets and 401ks, and I’d have enough for a beach house, pretty much wherever I wanted. I had no idea if I’d do any fishing from the beach, but I was certain I’d give the sport a try before I sold Michael’s bass boat. After all, his friends would expect me to.

That’s what it all came down to. Expectations. That was why I made nice with the loser, just like I’d make nice with his friends because he was the sort of loser who expected me to, and that was how monsters hide in plain sight.

I let the conversation drag on as long as he liked to put my future victim as much at ease as possible, but when he made noises about paying, I insisted.

“No, please,” I nodded, pulling out Rodger’s card. “This one is on me, but you gotta let me take a picture of the two of us when we go outside, or the boys are never going to believe me.”

“Right?” Michael laughed. “It’s hard to believe we don’t have at least an aunt or uncle in common.”

“Well, if you don’t believe me, why don’t you come back to my room real fast, and we can flip through Facebook and look for a cross-over,” I laughed. Maybe you’ll see something I don’t.

Micheal toasted me to that, and once the waitress was tipped and the drinks were finished, we were on our way. The Marriott was just a short walk across a large parking lot, and I was already looking for a fresh chance to start over, but we never actually got there.

Halfway across, in the big empty area furthest from the lights, there was a strange sound behind me, but before I could turn I felt the knife enter my back just to the right of my spine. No, it wasn’t a knife… It was stranger than that. It was a claw.

“Aren’t you a monster,” the shadow that had been Micheal a moment ago growled. “A man pretending to be another man while you plan to kill a third and become him as well. That’s pretty cold-blooded, even for me, and technically, I’m an insect.”

Turning my head to face him as much as I could, I saw swirling shadows more than anything. A moment ago, he’d been a man with brown hair and green eyes. Now he had four glittering red compound eyes and a pair of mandibles, but beyond that - well, it was hard to say, nothing really connected to anything else. It was just madness and a slow-spreading chill.

As he spoke, the thing that had been a man pulled his giant mantis-like claw down my back down the length of my spine, and my back opened up like origami. I couldn’t see what was inside from where I stood, of course, but I caught a glimpse in the reflection of a car mirror beside us, and it looked like nothing but a bloodless, yawning void.”

“What…” I gasped. “Why…”

“You aren’t really in a position to decide whose soul I get to feast on,” Michael laughed, no longer sounding completely human, “but from where I stand, I’ll be doing the whole world a favor if I take a wolf like you out of the sheep pen.”

I wanted to ask, to understand. I couldn’t, though. The second he reached deep inside me and pulled out something vital, I felt my body start to unravel as my lights went out forever, and my last thought was to feel pity on Susan because I very much doubted anyone was going to find a body, so she could collect on the life insurance policy now.