by Tara Brown
Duplicities
The stunning conclusion to Imaginations
Tara Brown writing as AE Watson
Copyright © 2014 Tara Brown
All rights reserved
ISBN-13: 978-1927866207
ISBN-10: 1927866200
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. No alteration of content is permitted. This book is a work of fiction, any similarities are coincidental. All characters in this fictional story are based entirely on the crazed mind of the author and are not based on any human. Any similarities are by chance and not intentional.
Cover Art by KC Designs
Edited by Andrea Burns
Other Books by Tara Brown writing as
TL Brown, AE Watson, Erin Leigh, and Sophie Starr
The Devil’s Roses
Cursed
Bane
Hyde
Witch
Death
Blackwater
Midnight Coven
Redeemers
The Born Trilogy
Born
Born to Fight
Reborn
The Light Series
The Light of the World
The Four Horsemen
Imaginations
Imaginations
Duplicities
The Blood Trail Chronicles
Vengeance
Vanquished
The Single Lady Spy Series
The End of Me
The End of Games
The End of You – A Novella
Blood and Bone
Blood and Bone
Sin and Swoon
Soul and Blade
My Side
The Long Way Home
The Lonely
LOST BOY
First Kiss
Sunder
In the Fading Light
For Love or Money
White Girl Problems
The Seventh Day
The Club
Sinderella
If you love getting lost along the way, this book for you.
There are no numbered chapters in this book. It is done on purpose as there is no official timeline in this book.
For my daughter, Amillia. I love you more than I can measure.
Duplicities are within us all.
The trick is seeing the lies from the truth, even the truth you hide from yourself.
Last night, or maybe the one before, I can’t remember
I woke, nudging against something. Everything felt wrong. Not that we knew right from wrong, or did we? Did I?
The smell and the light were not consistent with—well . . . what I was apparently used to. For some reason my exhausted body didn't know its own house or bed. I took a deep breath and reminded myself to trust in the reset. It was for the good of the last of us, the last of our kind. The reset protected us. Whatever was wrong with my surroundings would be explained. I knew that. We had built this city and preserved the best of humanity with the reset. I knew the changes would be explained in my dailies.
A smell caught my nose. I wasn't certain of it but my body relaxed when the smell hit me. It was something I adored. Apples, maybe apples and cinnamon. Cider. I loved the smell of cider.
I leaned toward the smell, opening one eye to discover the source of the scent.
It belonged to a man. A man who was lying next to me. Realizing he was real and I wasn’t dreaming, instantly sent a shiver up my spine.
He was definitely a man I didn't know, and yet, for some unknown reason I shared my bed with him.
But not my bed—a bed my body didn't know? The bed was as unfamiliar as he was.
My brain ached as I searched for answers, memories I had learned from years of practice and memorization. I knew that was the main part of the reset, preserving the important things with constant repetition.
But there in the dark void was emptiness.
Things I should recall were gone. My name, it was . . . no. No, I was certain of my name, it was . . .
Gone.
I repeated the word gone, thinking for some reason my name rhymed with gone.
My skin lifted with a shiver as I realized something terrible had to have happened. I lifted my hands to rub my eyes but in the beige light I paused, confused by the rough state of my fingers and the dirt that lay just below the short nails. Weren’t they always longer? Didn't I have longer nails and cleaner hands? The scars on my hands and arms were unfamiliar.
An eerie feeling crept up my spine, tingling and tickling. I didn't know what to think. It was as if my brain were frozen.
A desperate need to panic was snuffed out by the calm voice inside of me that said it must have been the reset. I must have reset wrong.
I knew what I should know, but somehow that personal information was missing. Starting with my name and ending with the strange feeling I had when I looked around the room.
It was a simple room, with light filtering just slightly from the cracks in the walls and the edges of the windows. It made the room hazy with dust that rode the light. I couldn't say why but the whole experience felt off—like I expected different surroundings. Or because the room wasn't home to me.
The smell of apples overwhelmed me; instead of making me relax it started to create tension everywhere. I slipped from the bed, searching the boarded floor for slippers or sandals, but nothing sat there ready for me. I knew they should be there. It was then in that moment when I expected everything and found nothing that I realized what must have happened. I must have been paired. I glanced back at the guy in the bed, wishing I had just a few answers.
Where was I? The smell of apples made me think orchards. I had been paired with this man and designated to the orchards? That was the answer to the mystery surrounding him but the missing memories were still something else.
Where were my basic memories? The reset should never have taken the things I learned at school.
How long had I been here?
When nothing landed in the dark places of my mind, I stopped trying to push myself. Someone’s words flitted about my mind, whispering that a relaxed mind revealed more. Memories were easier to obtain if the mind was at ease. My parents must have taught me that.
I nodded, knowing I had no choice but to try to learn my whereabouts. I needed to find out what had become of my mysterious life. It was how we were. We believed that leaving behind yesterday was the best. But having all my yesterdays taken away felt awful.
My feet felt strange on the cold floorboards, like I had never walked on cold floorboards before. But I didn’t know if I had or not so I couldn't worry about it. I couldn't technically worry about anything. I needed to accept my place in society. The faster I accepted, the faster I would form my new memories.
Instead of thinking on it more, I crept along the floor to the door, a small wooden one with cracks along the edges where light slithered in.
The man behind me breathed softly, steadily. I glanced back at him, not recognizing his dark-brown hair or pinched face from where his arm sat across the bridge of his nose. He seemed old, older than I could place myself being. I lifted my hands feeling the smoothness of my skin and sighing. At least I hadn’t lost an entire lifetime and was nearing the end of it all. I was still young.
My fingers lifted, almost on their own, to the cool metal knob, turning it slowly, try
ing to not make a noise. When I cracked the door open and took in the room before me, my entire life flashed in my eyes but it didn't fit the image I saw. Everything felt off.
A small room, humble and bare, sat before me. The kitchen was simple, with a barrel of apples nearly overflowing next to the sink. I swallowed hard, desperately trying to relax so the memories could flood my mind and erase the discomfort.
The small table had only two chairs at it, one for me and one for the man. It crossed my mind for a moment that he could be my father but that didn't sit right; he didn't look old enough. Not to mention, we shared a bed. The cottage-style house was tiny, something I recognized but not as my own.
I stumbled over a lifted board, nearly falling but catching myself on the ragged wooden chair. Everything was made of the same type of wood, a dark and gnarly looking board. The floor, the chairs, the counters and cupboards, and the table all matched.
Applewood.
The words sat there, resting on my tongue.
I knew it was applewood but I didn't know how I knew that.
I didn't know how I knew anything or how I was missing everything, but it had to be a bad thing. It had to be wrong to not recall an age or a parent or a friend. But there it was, a blank slate. I knew the rules of society. I knew we lived in The Last City of Men. I knew our history. I had to have learned it somewhere. That meant I had a past. I had been to school. That was where we learned those things, was it not?
The small windows in the cottage were stained, revealing dirty and broken light from the outdoors. I tiptoed to the front door, opening it just a crack and sighing when I saw myself surrounded by the orchards, small houses, and forests of fruit trees.
It was wrong. I didn't know why, but it was.
Had my designation day come? Had I been selected for orchards and moved here? Was the man in the bed, my bed apparently, my husband? Had that been selected for me? Being paired to a man in the orchards didn't seem to fit me.
I looked down at my scarred and callused hands and sighed when I didn't see a ring on my finger. That was the only thing that felt right. Everything else felt wrong. Marriage and children didn't feel right, like going against the path I would have wanted.
The recorder?
Wouldn't I too have a recorder? It was part of the transition when a person left home or paired or had a child.
My head turned so I could glance again back inside, searching the room for something that might not be made of wood. The recorder was my only hope, beyond waking the man. But I wouldn't be able to trust his words as well as the recorded message I would leave myself. The recorder was an instrument meant to help people remember being married or having kids. It stopped the panic of waking on the new day and seeing a stranger in your bed.
Scanning the room didn't reveal the recorder, not that I knew what to look for. I couldn't place it in my mind but I knew it existed. The same way I knew how to walk or chew or that I was a girl. It was ingrained in me so deeply that even the reset couldn't erase it. I closed the door and walked lightly across the room, resting a hand on the small wooden door before opening it. My eyes adjusted to the darkness as I searched every nook and cranny I could see.
A flash of silver caught my eye.
My handheld sat on the crate-style bedside table, again something I didn't recognize. When I closed my eyes and imagined my bedside table, I could swear I saw that a white hand-carved table should have taken the wooden one’s place. Images danced in my head: a white table and a bed with notches hidden away from prying eyes, a blanket with flowers hand sewn on it, and a small white desk that matched the rest of the furniture. In my mind it was bright and sunny and the walls were white, not wooden. There were no gaps in the boards where light peeked in. It was plain and yet fancy in comparison to the place where I had just woken up.
In my mind that house was solid and there were people there I knew. I felt that. I couldn't recall them but they existed all the same. I knew that. I understood it in the same way I understood I had to breathe, or smile when someone waved at me.
I slipped across the room, completely silent and sneaky, taking the small handheld and leaving again the way I had come in. When I closed the bedroom door, I leaned my back against it and pressed the on button, starting the handheld up.
Instantly, a beautiful face came upon the screen. With shaking fingers and an apprehensive twinge in my belly, I pressed play on the screen.
The picture of the face was a recording. As soon as I pressed play the beautiful blonde girl’s face on the screen spoke with an oddly cheery disposition, “Hi Gwyn! I’m you and you’re me. We’ve been having some memory problems lately. The reset has been resetting us too far back. We’ve been seeing Doctor Turner for this. He’s trying to help us. We go to his office every Tuesday. So you need to ride the tram to the city, and when you leave the tram station downtown, you must go and find Building Number 746. The guard at the front of the office will tell you which office is Doctor Turner’s. Your appointment is at ten thirty so don't be late. Your designation is orchard worker, your name is Gwyn Collins and your husband is Murphy. Good luck today.” The recording ended instantly. I lowered the handheld and glanced at myself in the reflection of the blank screen. I was the pretty blonde girl with a scar along my cheek. I dragged a finger along the screen, touching where the scar was on her frozen face and then lifted the finger to my own face. It was thin and ridged and I didn't know where it had come from. But it didn't matter, I was Gwyn Collins.
Collins?
Husband?
Orchard worker?
Hadn’t I wanted something different?
Not that we were supposed to desire things. Imaginations created desires and both were dangerous. Did I want my wandering and weak mind to be responsible for the decline of our entire society because I let myself imagine? No.
I pressed play on the handheld and watched the recording again. Something about the look in my blue eyes caught my stare.
Nothing I said in the video made sense in my head. It felt wrong.
Something I shouldn't allow myself to see or feel, wrong. Society told me what was best for me and I needed to listen to it. I needed to be the person I was and forget the rest. My name was Gwyn and my pairing was to a man named Murphy. I was an orchard worker. I needed to accept that, regardless of my imaginations.
Glancing around, I found shoes that appeared to be my size. When I slipped them on, my heel instantly experienced pressure. Maybe the shoe is brand new. Maybe I am new here and my life has just started.
I dragged on a coat from the coat hangers next to the door and slipped it on. I didn't pay attention to the pajamas or the state of my hair. I opened the door to the small house and stepped out into the orchards. Other houses blended into the forest of fruit. Some trees had no fruit on them but then others were full. I recognized the pear and apple trees that were filled with ripe fruit. The cool caress of the breeze and the ripe apples told me it was late fall. I knew that.
I clearly was done my schooling, a thought that saddened me. There was a whole life back there in my mind that I couldn't find anymore. I couldn't see the memories I had of the life I had lived, the person I had become.
Instead, I was somehow wiped clean, a blank slate but an adult? I didn't feel like one. My skin felt soft and tight, not like an aged woman.
The ground was crisp and crunchy as I weaved my way through the leaves and trees, pulling a bright-red apple from one of the trees and shining it on my quilted coat.
“Gwyn?”
The voice was nothing to me but the name meant something. I turned back to see the dark-haired man—no boy—who had been in my bed. He was not old at all. He was young like my face in the recording. He rubbed his eyes, offering me a lazy grin. “Where are you going?” His dark-brown hair was a mess and he wore only pants, revealing a taut and muscled body. I liked that. The thought floated by my brain before I had the chance to push it away and remind myself he was a stranger.
Insti
nctively I lifted my hand, holding the piece of delicious fruit. “I wanted an apple.”
His dark-brown eyes squinted as he smiled and nodded. “I figured, you and apples every morning. It’s a weird habit.”
I didn't follow his words. I didn't recall yesterday. Do I wake every day and do the same thing?
“It’s Tuesday today, you have to go into the city.” He walked to me, taking my free hand and gripping it. The love in his eyes scared me breathless. “You want me to come with you? I can probably skip out on work. Frank won’t even notice I bet.”
I shook my head slowly, uncertain of everything but guiding myself somehow on instincts that were there, gut feelings. Someone had told me of them, enough times that I remembered the expression gut feelings. They were something frowned upon in The Last City of Men.
But I didn't care. I cared that I was scared. That I was somehow paired with a man I didn't know. A man I didn't know the name of, except in the recording I had made for myself. The one I didn't feel right about. Again, my gut feeling was not a positive one.
He bent down, lowering his soft lips to mine. I didn't flinch, I didn't move away. I let him kiss me, against all of my better judgments. It nearly washed away all the fears I had. It was intense to be kissed by someone. I imagined I had desired a kiss for a very long time, especially from a delicious boy like this. And he was mine—how odd! A person was my person. My husband. My pairing. Odd indeed.
A hundred questions sifted through my mind, questions I wanted to ask him, but I didn't want to sound as if I had imaginations. Regardless of the fact that's all I had. I really was the weakest of us all in the city.
The entire idea of a new day was to live free of the imaginations that spawned fear and other terrible emotions. It was what had once ruined us all.
He lifted his face, running a large hand through his thick hair. “If you want to ask me questions, it’s fine. I know your memory has been holey.”