OKAY BUT BACK TO CHARLIE

I’m screaming at the top of my lungs. My voice has long gone hoarse, my vocal cords feel like they’ve been ran through a woodchipper yet still, I keep screaming; screaming into the bathwater, only to be interrupted by me breaching to refill my emptied lungs. Bubbles filled with my agonized voice race past my gaze. My eyes seeing nothing save for my own blurry form and the white of the porcelain. They won’t shut up. The voices have been getting louder recently, so loud I can hardly sleep. They’ve been shouting atrocities at me for almost a week. Telling me to kill; kill everyone around me. I can’t even fathom why. They are usually benign. Am I losing my mind? I know it’s not normal to hear voices at all hours of the day, but I was doing so well. I hadn’t cracked, hadn’t started jabbering nonsense like all crazies in the moves did. From the outside, I probably seemed relatively normal. But now… it was like 10,000 tiny hands, pleading with me, pulling me into something I didn’t want to do. But my will to resist was waning. Suddenly a hand wrapped around me before pulling me sharply from the water. “Silence,” My aunt said. I shut my mouth, and the voices suddenly quieted. She looked down at me, before dropping me back into the water and spinning on her heel to walk away. “Come to the lab, I have something new for you,” she tossed back at me on her way out. I took a deep, shuddering breath, then rose from the water. As I began drying and clothing myself, I thought. Something new meant that she was going to perform another ritual. I looked at my elbow, where the I.V. would be inserted. I could practically feel it. I pulled my shirt over myself and dropped through the floor. Ignoring the silence of the voices for fear that my acknowledgement, even mentally, might set them off again; I considered what new ability I might be granted. I was a little excited despite myself. Who wouldn’t be? A new ability. I could already fly, see in the dark, pass through walls, and go invisible. I honestly couldn’t tell what might be next. Super strength? Speed? The ability to shoot lasers from my palms?

I was a little giddy by the time I reached the lab, but the sight of the room, my aunt standing next to a hospital bed, squinched my enthusiasm. She was in her lab coat, typing on a laptop. “Lay down,” she said. Already familiar with the process, I got on the bed, reached over to the I.V. line and performed the insertion on my left arm. I was dead quiet, my vision locked on the far wall. My aunt walked over and placed a respirator over my face. And after a few seconds, I lost consciousness.

By the time I woke up again. As usual, I was at the bottom of a pool of blood. I groggily reached out and bumped into something. I woke up to a feeling, something was touching my leg. Mind foggy, I pulled away, blood flowing around me. I almost immediately forgot about being touched, still groggy from the anesthetic, and climbed out of the pool. I began floating up and into the air, feeling the thick, half-coagulated liquid flow off of me, flopping back into the pool. I awoke to the blood pool around me swirling with motion… that’s odd didn’t I leave the pool already? I stumbled out of the pool, wiping blood from my eyes, something was going on here. I fell back into the pool, my flight cutting off suddenly no, not suddenly. I just lost focus. The blood flowed around me like a tsunami as something violently impacted it, running out of air I used my flight to shoot up to the surface. I finished wiping my eyes and opened them, my vision filling with the darkened basement. Something was definitely off. I whirled to face the blood pool trying to get a good look at what was happening. I kicked off the bottom of the pool I had just fallen in and wildly wiped my eyes trying to see what was happening. I used my ability to phase through matter to cause the blood over my eyelids to fall off and looked out at the room.

And I locked eyes, with myself. The three points of view all staring at the same naked, blood covered girl with messy chin-length brown hair, fused together into thick sticky, reddened strands. The same girl… but different. My point of view was damn near incomprehensible, like three different images all overlayed on top of each other, yet somehow. I could make perfect sense of it. Not only that, but it was almost like I had a three-dimensional view of the room around me. Sort of like how the human brain stitches together the two views from each eye to make a complete 3d image. My brain stitched together the images from my six eyes in combination with the sense for where my bodies were in relation to each other to make a three-dimensional recreation of the room around me. Picking the body that was standing outside the pool, I raised my arm… and waved. And at the same time, I watched as I raised my arm and waived it. It was almost like looking in a mirror. But somehow different in a way that was hard to describe. In a mirror, there’s always a part of your brain that understands that the face you’re seeing isn’t really you. It’s merely a reflection. The real you is the person standing before the mirror. But this it’s like looking into the mirror and knowing that the person staring back at you is just as much you as the person standing in front of it. The knowledge that if I turned one body away, the other would not be a slave to the whims of the first but, I would remain staring at myself from behind… except it wasn’t really behind, because I would also be standing in front of myself facing the other direction. Neither point of view taking precedence over the other as My pint of view, by which all else is defined. I didn’t have a left and a right. I had three lefts, and three rights, two of which were unobjectionably different directions from the others.

If I were to describe this situation before I became like this, I would think it nearly incomprehensible, like some sort of drug trip. But it just felt so… unnaturally, natural. I walked into the bathroom with all three bodies. Showering was… interesting. It wasn’t as warm as before; the singular spray head only capable of dousing one body at a time, but it was far more efficient. There were no more hard-to-reach places, I could easily wash my backs by simply using my bodies to wash each other. Although there was now three times the surface area left to clean. I should look into getting some gym style showers installed. My allowance probably isn’t enough for that, but I could commission the construction just as well as anyone else. That way, I could have the three showerheads I needed. Actually, the more I thought about it, the more excited I became. There were so many things I could do now. Every time I needed to scratch my back, I no longer needed to use a back scratcher, I could just scratch it myself. I could watch three movies at once. I could read books three times as fast. I could leave one body to practice with a sword while the others got to play games. I could have one body interact with my aunt while the others maintained my mental state by watching kitten videos.

I stood before my aunt; all six eyes fixed on the floor. We had just finished a round of testing, which had raised more questions than it answered. For example, I was apparently capable of transferring information faster than light. There was no measurable delay between one body hearing something, and that same information being available to another body in a different location. The connection between my three bodies seemed to have altered the way my brain worked, a normal human can only focus on one object or task at a time. But apparently, I could now focus on multiple. This would be expected, except I could do it all through one body. Or all three bodies at once. Apparently, I could now focus on a maximum of nine different tasks at once without decreasing the quality of any. It was at the point where a tenth was added, that things began to fall through the cracks. The interesting thing about that was that I was now really good at solving Rubik’s cubes. There was also my ability to map out a three-dimensional space, which sort of worked in the same way 3d mapping technology worked. Although the really weird one was my ability to tell where exactly my bodies were. No matter the distance. For example, all my bodies were administered a sedative, and once I had fallen asleep, one was carefully moved out into the forest around the manor without waking. Afterwards I was woken, since if one body was awake all would be awake, and that body had to find her way back all on her own. It was actually quite easy; I just moved my body in the direction of my other two. This posed several more questions we didn’t have answers to. Even so, I’d been at this a while and would like to be free although I finally only had one more test before I could go back to my room.

My aunt led off one of my bodies to another room, and it in a chair. I waited, as she prepared something from a table behind me. I was curious to find out what this test was about. She never told me what the tests were, unless I absolutely needed to know. My other two bodies were playing table tennis against each other. It was a weird sort of game. Sort of like playing table tennis against a wall, but you were the wall and could bounce the ball wherever you wanted. It seemed… odd. Like playing chess against oneself. I knew what I was planning since I was the one planning it. So, I couldn’t trip myself up. Furthermore, I couldn’t really win, for one body to win, I sort of had to root for that one. If I wanted a body to win, I simply needed to make it win. It made the game seem sort of hollow. Sort of like the time when I made two of my bodies….

The ping-pong ball clacked to the floor forgotten… as I screamed. A blood curdling scream born from a feeling of wrongness so profound, it shook me to my very core, it felt as if my soul had been ripped apart. A piece of it harshly taken and forced to break off. A part of myself firmly separated from me. My screams started off like a footrace… with a loud bang, echoing through the manor. My thr… no not three… two bodies fell to the floor as they wail in chorus with my mind and soul. I writhed, the voices reaching a hitherto unseen tumult, as my mind was ripped apart. It was like having an eye taken out. My vision was… smaller, my mind was smaller, my soul was smaller, I was less myself, than I was just a few moments ago, because a piece of me had been taken. I screamed as the voices. But despite it all, even though I was lesser, I could still focus, even as my mind burned, I still had the presence to understand what had happened, I could still multitask sufficiently, compartmentalize my thought processes, and gain understanding of the situation. I had been shot. One bullet, in the back of my skull. And one of my bodes, had been killed. It was obvious that she would do it, now that I thought about it. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that. But it was an obvious question to ask. If someone occupies three bodies, what happens if one is killed? There were really only two answers. Either one would die, and the others would live, or all three would die. The fact that she had done that, knowing what might happen, just to sate her curiosity…. And at that moment, I stopped screaming, stopped moving, stopped breathing. As everything reached an accord, the full weight of my mind devoted to a core idea, all the voices in my head singing the same chorus in unison, as I sang along with them. I needed… retribution. I needed penance. I needed my pound of flesh. I needed revenge. I needed vengeance. I needed remuneration, compensation, payback. Every word in the thesaurus, all representative of the one simple thing that I needed; that I would take. I would have blood.

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You never really know what it’s like to dig a hole six feet deep until you have to, not to mention, to make it wide and long enough to comfortably fit a human body, even that of a teenager, even a short one like me. The task made worse by navigating the web of roots spread under the orange tree without damaging them too much. The only saving grace was that I had two bodies to dig with, instead of just one. I had one dig, while the other was sprawled out on the grass, recovering for its turn digging. My third body lay dead in a cheap coffin made of plywood. My aunt had wanted to have the maids bury me, but I felt it was my responsibility. It was my body after all; I would be the one to lay it to rest. It’s a little odd when you think about it. Usually when someone dies, they are never the one to bury their body. Usually, it’s their family or friends. But me? I had no friends, and the only family I had left was myself. On and on I went, under the evening light, my two remaining bodies taking turns upturning the earth. The voices in my head singing a quiet melody in glossolalia. Sending off my third body to whatever afterlife Mortella saw fit. Taking whatever part of me was in her, off into the unknown, never for me to see again. Tears flowed down my eyes. On paper it might sound comparable to losing a limb, just a part of you that you use to interact with the world severed, but… this was something else. I knew, deep in my soul, that there was a part of me, inside that body. A part of me, that I would not be getting back. A part of me, that had been taken, all for the edification of some self-centered woman, with no regard for the consequences of her actions. Maybe now, I would be able to show her the error in that line of thought, maybe now, I would be able to make consequences that she could not simply ignore.

I sat in the grass, both bodies side by side as my third lay in the soil beneath the tree. I looked at my own unmarked grave. The world was so… surreal, wrong, and empty. Even so I sat there, in the dead of night, cold wind blowing through my hair as I watched the soil. Even the voices were silent as warm tears flowed from my eyes. I didn’t know what to feel, what to think, it was just… quiet. I took a deep breath one pair of lungs expanding before I blew the air through my lips. I stood as the voices in my head suddenly started singing again, a gorgeous vengeful choir echoing into every corner of my mind. And as I walked back towards the manor, my voice joined them. as everything went numb.

My body flowed smoothly through the wall to join up with its twin. The absence of my third, weighing heavily over me even now. My mind felt… slower. My thoughts flowing together with more viscosity than before. The hallway was dark, the power long having been cut, the voices singing in unison with my voice as I glided through the halls. The only signs of my passage, the blood dripping from me. Twin butcher knives clutched in two of my si… four hands. The manor was deathly quiet, not a soul stirred as I made my way through the halls and to the kitchen. Everyone was dead, my cousin, the maids, the cooks, everyone. Their blood mixing on the blades in my hands. A small part of me whispered that it was wrong, that only my aunt was to blame for what had happened to me, but that part was drowned out by the singing. The vicious choir echoing death through my synapses, drowning out all else but the satisfaction. There was only one person left, I’d saved my aunt for the very last. I wanted her to understand what precisely she had done, what sort of nightmare she had released. The choir’s voice swelled with the thought of it. Her body hacked apart, just as dead as mine. She deserved it, that witch.

I entered the kitchen, passing directly through the wall. My aunt was there. I expected her to be cowering in a corner, proving once and for all what a pathetic creature she was, unwilling to face the consequences of her actions. But no, she was sitting on the edge of the counter. I realized suddenly that this was the first time I had met her gaze in years. In fact, it had been so long that I didn’t even recognize the face in front of me. My aunt looked a lot like me, same short brown hair, same general facial structure, just older and with striking emerald eyes. She didn’t look upset, or afraid, or even angry, just bored. She took a bite from a sandwich in her hands. “Are you done?” she asked me, I scowled at her. “No, not quite yet” I said. One body glided forward cautiously, while the other kept watch. She had to be planning something. There was no other way she could be this calm. She looked uninterestedly at the approaching body. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she said. This gave me, slight pause. “Not unless you have a plan.” “Plan?” I asked. She took another bite from her sandwich, chewing slowly, I stopped before her just before she swallowed. “Yeah, a plan. You just killed about 40 people, you have no money, no survival skills, and nowhere to go. So, what’s your plan? Or do you think that getting away with mass murder is easy? Little-miss fingerprints-on-the-murder-weapons,” she asked. The song… stopped. The voices went silent and all of a sudden, my actions began beating down on me like a typhoon. I slammed it into a box in my mind, locking it away. I needed to focus. I scowled at her. I was about to speak when she cut me off. “So, what is it? How are you going to get out of here?” I… I didn’t have an answer. I could try to evade the law, but I wasn’t dumb enough to think that I could escape them forever and as much as I hated her. She was right, I had nowhere to go. “Now, here’s what’s going to happen, you’re going to wash your hands, take a bath, and we’re going to go on a bit of an impromptu vacation. While you’re getting all that evidence off you, I’ll collect up all the bodies, coat them in a healthy amount of thermite, and lace the building with gasoline.” “You’re going to burn the manor down?” I asked. My aunt snickered. “Of course, and as far as the world will know we are going to burn in here alongside everyone else. I already have an alternate identity for you and me,” she said. Dropping off the counter and tossing the rest of her sandwich into her mouth. She began to walk past me to the door but, before she left, she placed a hand on one of my shoulders. “Oh, and next time you decide to throw another little… tantrum. Ask about how you might be able to regain that third body, from the person who gave it to you in the first place.” With that she left the room. The door closing behind me with the sound of a bomb going off.

I let my bodies go limp, and float through the air listlessly. It almost felt like gravity had tripled. I didn’t know how to feel. On one hand, I hadn’t been able to do it. My aunt had managed to talk herself out of her grave. The worst part being, she was completely right. I didn’t have a plan, I didn’t have anywhere to go, and I didn’t even know what I was going to do once the killing was done. It was just so… frustrating, I felt like a puppet that had danced on her string with a twitch of her finger. But on the other hand. I may be able to get my other body back. That alone made me feel almost giddy. Like someone who had been struck blind learning they might be able to see again. Even so, I needed to learn more. I needed to get away from my aunt. The voices hummed discordantly at that. Not agreeing with me or disagreeing. I took several deep breaths, letting my bodies sync up. I could feel my two hearts begin beating as one. I needed to learn how she was able to give me these powers, I needed to get my own friends so that I had someone else I could turn to if I needed help, I needed to have my own life, so I could finally get out of hers. With that conviction, I floated through the doors, looking for the showers, I carried the cleavers with me, figuring it would be easier to just wash them with my bodies.

After I got cleaned up and dressed. Two separate outfits, although I was interested in the idea of dressing my bodies exactly the same. It might be interesting, or maybe I could always dress them differently. Anytime I saw twins in movies and games and whatnot, they always dressed the exact same, but maybe I should be different. Anyways, after I was dressed, I floated into the entry hall, my aunt was sitting in an armchair, the room stinking of gasoline, and a pile of dead bodies half-buried in a reddish powder. That feeling began pushing on the edges of the box I’d shoved it in. I turned my attention away from the pile, looking at my aunt. “Toss the cleavers on the pile,” she said. I obeyed as I floated down the stars, the thrown knives impacting the still-warm body of my cousin. Did she really deserve this? Sure, she was kind of obnoxious and rude, but she hadn’t really done anything to deserve getting killed. Maybe if I’d tried harder, maybe If we had talked more, or maybe if we had found a common interest, we could have been close, but now…. I slammed another box around the box in my mind. It had been breaking apart at the seams. I had the presence of mind to understand that this wasn’t healthy, that this would only bite me in the butt down the line, but even so….

Me and my aunt left the house, by the time we made it down the driveway, there was already a large column of smoke rising into the sky, and by the time we made it down to the city proper, we could already hear the sirens. We boarded an arc the same night, paid in cash, and by the following morning we were gone. According to my aunt, we were going to live with her little sister, my other aunt. I had never met her; I just knew she lived in a sky city called Hope’s Cradle. Even so, we were traveling under false identities. My first name was still Charlie, but my last name had changed. My aunt now went by the name Ashley, with the same last name I now had. It was at that moment, when I heard that name, that I realized I didn’t actually know my aunt’s real name. In fact, she had had all this ready surprisingly quickly, it had only been yesterday evening when my third body had been shot. But she was ready to drop everything, with enough cash to move to a different city, with fake identities in hand, along with enough gasoline to torch the massive manor, and enough thermite to reduce all the bodies to an unrecognizable pile of ash. I looked at my aunt in the seat across from me. She looked bored.