The thought that had bothered her all day came unbidden into her mind; what was the other thinking in sending Brian to her? They were each trying to find their own, special someone in these other worlds, not send them running off into the next world to find another person. The other knew that if this new Brian managed to take this world’s Lisa back with him, this world’s Brian would undoubtedly find a way to follow; it was the nature of the psychic connections between the different versions of themselves to be inexorably drawn after the person they loved. It was just such a thing as this that had started the chain reaction that resulted in that abominable version of Brian leaving his world to search for his own Lisa and kill any of them that he found, as well as any other version of himself that got in his way.
This was not her native world, and she would leave very soon, providing the entity that she had designated as ‘bad-Brian’ didn’t catch up with her. She hadn’t even known of the threat to her life until the other version of ‘her’ had told her of it on her way through to the next world. Marishka had lost count of how many worlds she had traversed in her flight since then, but had noticed that each succeeding world had rendered up a version of ‘Lisa’ that had grown more insipidly sweet.
Kicking off her shoes, she padded on into the bathroom and began washing off the heavy makeup she had worn. When she was finished, she removed the black contacts from her eyes, revealing her own dark-grey irises. Gazing into the mirror, she wished that she could wash the dark rinse from her hair; the color didn’t really suit her and every time she looked into a mirror, it seemed that she was looking at someone else.
With the heavy makeup gone, there were no painstakingly drawn lines around her eyes and mouth, and the face that looked back at her was no older than twenty-three. As she regarded her image, she suddenly decided that she would move on to the next world within a week or so; the ‘Lisa’ native to that world was dead and there was only the other nomadic version of herself to contend with there. That is, if that world’s Brian wasn’t successful in taking this world’s ‘Lisa’ with him when he returned.
"Oh, well", she thought, "I’ll move on to the next world after that one within a week and then those other two can fight over who gets to stay there."
Removing a small bottle from the medicine cabinet, she opened the cap and swallowed the pill that would allow her to retain her own memories and prevent her being acclimated to this world and forced to accept the Universe’s adjustments. Then it occurred to her that if the visiting ‘Brian’ managed to take this world’s ‘Lisa’ with him, she would have this world to herself. But the thought of spending her life with that boor the other had brought into the shop dissuaded her from that course of action. He was a throwback to the Brian she had known in her own world and while the farther she had gotten from her own world, the better the versions of Brian had become, this world’s version seemed somewhat of an anomaly. She would just have to keep on searching.
Turning, she walked into the bedroom and slipped out of her bra and panty-hose before slipping into bed and turning out the light. As she settled her head into the pillow, she thought of her own world and wished that her Brian had been different; if he had been she might have wished that he was still alive.
* * *
Closing his eyes, he took a step forward and heard the winds of the abyss howling around him. Instead of opening his eyes, he took another step and another as the winds grew into a hurricane of sound and motion. Leaning forward against the force of the wind, he felt a fine spray against his face and struggled to advance his foot just one more step; never before had he been able to cross over through four worlds at one time, and the physical expenditure was almost more than he could manage. The bitch of a Universe didn’t want him to move so quickly from one world to another and he knew that his Lisa would move constantly from one world to another until she found one with a version of him that matched her vapid dreams. He’d long ago learned that to return to a world he had left, all that was necessary was to step backward instead of forward after staring into the sunset.
Once, he had thought to stay in one of the worlds he had passed into and after killing that world’s version of himself, had learned that its version of Lisa was too meek and mild for him. Her mildness had aroused such a killing rage in him that he had smashed her head again and again into the pavement in front of her house before moving on to the next world. But each world had rendered up progressively more characterless versions of her and he had killed every one of them he had encountered; nothing would do for him but the version his own world had produced, and even she had been too weak for him. Why he had never reversed course in order to find a wilder version of Lisa in one of the feral worlds beyond his own, he didn’t know; it would never have occurred to him to think of it.
As he opened his eyes, he looked around and saw the backyard of his home and grinned in appreciation; it was sufficiently overgrown that it was possible this world’s version of him might be strong enough to offer him a challenge. There was nothing to do but find out.
Striding toward the back door, he jerked it open, wrenching the hook that secured the screen door from its anchor as he stepped through. His father stood in the kitchen, having just turned from the fridge with another cold beer in his hand and glared at him.
"I thought you went fishing."
That presented him with a problem; if his doppelganger wasn’t here, he couldn’t judge if he was strong or not. He had learned that the stronger the Brian, the weaker the Lisa and vice-versa. Or, at least that was the pattern that generally held true in most worlds. There had been one where both were strong and another where both were weak.
The old man was speaking again, wiping a stray bit of beer off his hand and onto his dirty t-shirt.
"Well? You gonna answer me? Or, are you gonna to stand there with your face hanging out?"
Reaching toward the old man quickly, he took the bottle opener from his hand and just as suddenly slashed it across the old man’s throat, his practiced motion catching the carotid and jugular, ripping them open. He stepped back as he did so to avoid the fountaining blood and caught the bottle of beer before it hit the floor. Tipping it up, he put his head back for a long swallow.
In most worlds, if the old man was still alive and as degraded as this one; his mother generally worked. Walking through the house, he searched for, but didn’t find her and deduced that she was working in this world, too. He grinned savagely as he imagined the mess she would come home to.
He stopped in the living room and picked up the telephone, dialing Lisa’s number by memory; in only one world had she used a different number. Smiling, he remembered how much fun he had cutting that one up; she had been the strongest of them all, except for his own Lisa. He had enjoyed himself in that world as he killed her family one after another before starting on her. Sometimes, he wondered if all these transitions from one world to the next had unhinged him just a little; until Lisa had left him, he had never killed anybody.
A voice answered on the other end after the fourth ring and he asked, "Is Lisa home?"
Her mother’s voice said, "No, Brian, she just left. She didn’t say where she was going."
The cold tone in her voice told him that Lisa’s family didn’t like this world’s Brian any better than he had been liked by his Lisa’s family in his world. Good.
He said, "Okay. I’ll find her. I might stop by later to see all of you."
He imagined icicles forming in the phone line as she said, "Don’t bother. We’ll be out."
The click on the line almost brought him to a boil and he slammed the phone back into its cradle, moving it half across the end table it sat on. Glaring, his gaze roamed the shabby room for a moment until he returned to the kitchen for another beer. As he opened it, he heard the sound of a car door slamming outside and moved back to the living room to look out into the driveway. A pickup sat there with a couple of fishing poles sticking out the back of the bed and he hurried back to the kitchen.
He rummaged in one of the drawers there and found a butcher knife just where he expected it to be. Holding it down by his leg, out of sight to anyone entering through the back door, he moved to stand beside the fridge, stepping over the old man’s outflung arm and pooling blood to do so.
No sooner had he bent down to conceal himself than the screen door slammed and a shadow fell on the body of this Brian’s father. A voice that he somewhat recognized as his, exclaimed, "What the Hell!"
As his doppelganger rushed forward, dropping the stringer of fish he carried, Brian stepped out from behind the fridge, the knife sweeping around and up to bisect the other’s throat. This world’s version of him grasped his throat, spluttering as he sought to prevent the blood from spurting out and, in seconds, subsided on the floor, his eyes goggling at the vision above him. Disbelief and shock mingled on his face as Brian bent down to drive the knife into his double’s chest.
"You weren’t even worth the effort!"
Straightening up, he stood over his double for a few seconds, just as he had over he didn’t know how many others until his breathing quieted and he took stock of his appearance. The blood had spurted over his hand and one leg of his jeans. Turning, he walked casually toward the bedrooms and turned unerringly into his double’s room. This one wasn’t as sloppy as his normally was and he found everything he would need for a complete change of clothing without any trouble. Disrobing, he walked unhurriedly to the bathroom and took a shower. When he was finished, he left the towel on the floor and returned to the bedroom where he dressed quickly, deciding on a pair of whip-cord jeans as being sufficiently light to let him keep cool in the summer’s heat. A seemingly new pair of athletic shoes and an old AC/DC t-shirt completed his ensemble. He caught a glimpse of himself in the dresser mirror and stopped to appraise his appearance, grinning mirthlessly for a second or two. There were still two more people to kill in this world and then he could move on to the next one. He didn’t really know why he was killing his doubles, or Lisa’s doubles for that matter. If he had stopped to think about it, it might have occurred to him that he was outraged that there could exist others of him and that their lives could be better than his had been.
On his way through the kitchen, he stopped to run a hand into his double’s front jeans pocket to retrieve the keys to the pickup and found a set of keys to another vehicle attached to them. He grunted as he saw that they belonged to an Olds and removed a beer from the fridge, popping its top off on the edge of the cabinet. He decided that before he killed this world’s Lisa, he would go see the psychic or gypsy or whatever she was pretending to be in this world. Not every world had one, but they were always doubles of his Lisa who had left their worlds to escape him. Brian still hadn’t figured out how any of them knew to leave their worlds before he arrived, but maybe he would ask this one before he killed her.
He stopped in the front yard of the house and examined the Olds where it sat under the old tree; it was an almost exact double of the one he had bought just a short while before he began his rampage. Remembering the first night he took Lisa out in it, he was reminded of how much fun it had been making love to her in the huge backseat and his hand went unconsciously to his crotch. Maybe he would spend more time with the gypsy than it took to ask her a few questions and kill her.
* * *
Happier than he had been since before Lisa died, Brian hung up the phone in the motel room and addressed himself to buffing the toes of his shoes with the towel from the bathroom. Lisa was going to pick him up outside in a half-hour and he wanted to look his best. Brian wished that he had been able to get his shirt and pants pressed, but he had hung them up in the bathroom while he showered this morning and the wrinkles had fallen out nicely in the steam. He briefly wondered how his suit jacket had fared after a night and day lying under the trees in the pasture, and decided that it didn’t matter; nothing mattered but getting Lisa back where she belonged in his world. If he had thought about it, maybe it would have struck him that her place was in this world, but his single-minded purpose in getting her back there wouldn’t allow for that thought.
After dressing, he slipped his shoes back on and the phone rang. Supposing it was Lisa calling him back with some trivial matter, he picked up the receiver. A breathless voice that he vaguely recognized as the psychic’s stuttered something and then slowed down and repeated it.
"The other Brian has been killed! Was it you?"
Shaking his head, stunned that such a thing had happened, he forgot for a second that the woman on the other end of the call couldn’t see his response, said, "No. When did it happen?"
"Last night sometime. His father was killed, too. The news on the radio said that his mother has been sedated and in the hospital. She found them last night when she got home from work."
Her voice was almost pleading as she said, "Please tell me it was you. If it wasn’t, that means that he’s here and he’ll be tracking me down!"
Firmly, he said, "No. It wasn’t me. Who are you talking about? Who is this ‘he’ that you’re afraid of?"
Her voice almost wailed over the phone, "Ohh, God! It’s the other Brian! The bad one! He’s been moving through the worlds killing his doubles, all the Lisa doubles and any of the Nomads he finds!"
Puzzled and exasperated at her words, he asked, "Who are the ‘Nomads’? What are you talking about?"
Suddenly angry, she said, "Oh, shut up! You don’t know anything! If you hadn’t showed up, I would have been gone by now!"
Her voice changed to stunned disbelief as she added, "That’s why she sent you; she knew I would stay around to see how it turned out and he would take his time with me. He always does."
Before he could ask her again to explain things to him, the line clicked dead and he was left with the buzzing dial tone. Hanging up the phone, he quickly tied his shoelaces and hurried out the door and to the elevator. If someone with his face was out there killing people, his and Lisa’s doubles especially, then he needed to make sure that he and Lisa got out to the pasture so they would be in place at the proper time. He couldn’t afford for anything to go wrong.
Waiting for the elevator, he lost patience and ran for the stairwell. Once inside, he grasped the rail and threw himself over it to land on the next flight, jarring an ankle in the process as it turned under his weight during the impact. Without taking time to worry about it, he performed the action twice more before his ankle protested too much for him to continue. Hobbling the rest of the way down, he cursed at the nagging pain in the joint; this way was almost as painful as the fast way down, but he couldn’t take a chance on damaging it any further.
Once out of the stairwell, he smoothed his hair, raking it back into place with his fingers and limped across the lobby. He couldn’t take the time to check out properly and hated the thought of leaving with an unpaid hotel stay, but it couldn’t be helped. He hovered at the doorway, watching for Lisa’s car to pull up and was surprised to see the little sports car turn quickly into the drive and stop under the awning over the doors. Her face held a frightened look as he hurried through the doors and around to the driver’s side. He saw that she was dressed in a light sundress and felt his heart thump in his chest at sight of her. She unbuckled her shoulder belt and slid across as he slipped inside and put the transmission in gear without waiting to buckle his own belt.
"Brian! He’s dead! I heard it on the news and hurried over as soon as I could. Tell me it wasn’t you!"
Shaking his head, he said, "The psychic called me. I don’t know how she knew where I was, but she knew about it, too! She also knew that this other Brian has been moving from world to world killing us! If I’d known that, we would have been out at the pasture last night and stayed there all day!"
She slid back across the seat to wrap her arms around him, burying her face in his chest as she cried. His right hand rubbed the middle of her back as he used the other hand to steer. After a minute, he got control of himself and slowed down; it would do no one a
ny good for them to be stopped for speeding. All they had to do was lie low till sundown and then everything would be alright.
* * *
Brian eased the door open slowly and carefully to prevent the bell attached to it from ringing; she always rented this storefront with its rooms in the back converted to an apartment. No matter what world she was in, it always went the same way; arrive from the next world, convert some of her gold coins to the local currency, rent the space, start a business as a gypsy, psychic, spiritual healer or some other hokey profession. And every time he arrived in the world they had taken refuge in, they either died or hurried on to the next world.
Once he had the door open sufficiently to get his arm through it, he reached up to muffle the bell and swung the door the rest of the way open. He twisted the bell from its bracket and laid it carefully on the table next to the door as he looked around the room. It was decorated like a doctor’s office; utilitarian furniture and old magazines fanned across the tables scattered here and there, prints from unknown artists hung on the walls and a ceiling fan hummed almost silently above it all. Through the partially opened door across the room issued a nearly hysterical voice that he recognized as belonging to one of the nomadic Lisa-doubles. Smiling grimly, he silently closed the door, locking it and reached to the window to slide his hand through the drapes and turn the Closed/Open sign to show that the business was closed. He walked on quiet feet to the half-open door across the room, listening as she concluded her conversation and slammed the telephone receiver into its cradle.
Putting an eye to the space between the door and its jamb, he saw her hurry across the room, kicking off her high-heeled shoes and letting the skirt of her business suit fall to the floor. The jacket, frilly blouse and slip were tossed just any-old-where and he saw that she still had the habit of wearing panty-hose without panties and an unflattering bra that, instead of supporting and accentuating her assets, worked to hold them down and flatten them. He supposed she wore the thing to appear more business-like, but had to say that he liked her better without the encumbrance. She moved on into the next room and he silently followed, stopping at that door to watch her.
It Happens Every Day Page 5