Someone Like Me

by M. R. Carey

  “Why did you attack me?” Fran asked him. “What did I look like to you?”

  Picota passed a hand across his face. He had to duck down a little to do it because of the tightness of the cuffs. “I’m doing all right,” he muttered under his breath. It seemed like this was for his own benefit rather than hers, and it seemed like it didn’t do the job because he said it again. “I’m doing okay. Okay. Okay.”

  “What did I look like to you, Mr. Picota?” Fran asked again.

  Picota dropped his hands back onto the table. He drew a deep breath, his narrow chest inflating visibly. The tips of his fingers curled. “Monster,” he said. All that breath left him again as he said it, as though it was something heavy that he had to lift up out of himself and dump down on the table between them. “You said it. You said the word, and you were right. I thought you were a monster.”

  “Why?” Fran demanded.

  “Because there were so many of you.”

  “You can see there’s only one of me.”

  Picota seemed close to tears. He shook his head slowly. Fran didn’t think he was disagreeing. It seemed more like he was dismayed at the difficulty of the task she’d set for him. How did you describe your own madness, your own visions that you’d now disavowed? “That’s what everyone thinks, and most people are right. I thought about it since then.” His voice went lower and speeded up at the same time. “I should have thought if it goes one way or two ways. Like, what do I look like in the mirror, or if I’m standing in front of the mirror but with my eyes closed. Does the other me close its eyes too? You can’t ever know for sure. So what I see in you—does that go for you when you look at me? Am I the Bruno in the mirror, or all those Brunos in all those mirrors, or am I just me? It’s obvious, really, but I never thought. If things are changing one way then maybe they’re changing the other way too. Am I?”

  The question came out of nowhere. Fran took a moment to realize it was addressed at her. “Are you what?” she asked him.

  “Changing.” He stared at her with a sudden, surprising urgency. “Am I changing?”

  “No. You’re not.”

  Picota breathed out heavily again. He looked relieved. Then he did something that freaked Fran out a little. He leaned down sideways and looked under the table. There was nothing there but Jinx. For a long moment they were almost nose-to-nose.

  Finally Picota straightened up again. “Where do you live?” he asked Fran.

  The white nurse, Niklaus, jumped in quickly. “You don’t need to know that, Bruno. You shouldn’t ask that.”

  “It’s okay,” Fran said. “I still live in Larimer, Mr. Picota. Just off Lincoln Avenue.”

  “Lincoln,” Picota repeated, nodding his head. “So you were very close to it. That makes sense.”

  Fran felt a shiver go through her. “What do you mean?” she demanded. “Close to what?”

  The lids of Picota’s eyes came halfway down as if he was looking at something that was too bright. “The place,” he said.

  “What place?”

  “The place where things get squishy. It’s got a name but I don’t like to say it. I wish I’d never gone there, because when you come out again …”

  His voice trailed off. He was staring right at Fran from under those lowered lids, but she didn’t think he saw her. He was staring inward, not out.

  “When you come out again?”

  “You know,” Picota murmured. “You were there too, but I was there for longer. Much, much longer. Years. Doing okay, Bruno. I thought it was magic and it had to be really bad. Deviltries, like my mom said. Like she said the ghost witches do. Like you were the ghost of … of a …” His hands tried to shape something in the air, the chain clanking as it sawed back and forth in its bracket. “But it’s not. It’s only that place, and what it does to you. If you stay too long you get squishy too. It touches you, I guess. It sticks to you if you’re a certain kind of person. Like you. Like me. If you look like there are two of you, it doesn’t mean you’re bad.”

  “What does it mean, then?” Fran gave the two male nurses a panicked glance, aware of how crazy all this must sound. “What do you think it means?” she amended.

  “I think,” Picota said, copying her emphasis exactly, “it means you could have happened different. Or you did already.”

  Fran didn’t understand at first. Then she did, and her brain felt as though it was momentarily too big for her head, pressing against the inside of her skull with dangerous pressure. “Different,” she said. The word came out strained and high. Different, as in changes. As in the things she saw when she had an episode.

  “Little bit,” Picota said. “Or a lot. Maybe I had oatmeal instead of corn flakes. Maybe I wore yesterday’s socks one more day because they didn’t smell so bad. Maybe I lost a quarter out of my allowance and couldn’t buy a soda on free choice day.”

  He looked her square in the eyes.

  “Maybe I killed you. Sometimes I remember it that way.”

  A shiver went through Fran, starting at the top of her head and traveling down through her body, making her shake so hard she couldn’t hide it. When it got to her stomach it melted. She thought she might be about to pee herself and hoped—please, please, please!—that she could hold it in.

  “You didn’t kill me, Mr. Picota,” she said as calmly as she could manage. “That’s obvious. I’m not a ghost. But I … I know it’s hard, sometimes, to remember things right.” She swallowed, licked her dry lips, gave the two nurses another frightened glance and finally just went for it. “Suppose someone looked different, the way you said. If there were two of them. But then you saw them again a little while later, and they … they just went back to looking normal, like … like regular people. What would you think about that? What might have happened to them?”

  She kept her eyes fixed just on Picota now: she didn’t want to look at the nurses in case they stepped in to shut her down. She knew she must sound as crazy, as damaged, as Picota did, and they’d been told to pull the plug on this if their patient got distressed. Was she distressing him? It didn’t matter either way because she couldn’t stop. Either she was going to get to the truth now or she never would.

  Picota closed his eyes completely and kept them closed for a long time. When he opened them again he did it very slowly, as if he was coming out from cover. As if he was hoping she might not still be there. “Doing okay,” he whispered.

  “What would you think, Mr. Picota?”

  Picota shook his head.

  “Tell me,” Fran demanded. And she forced herself to add “Please.”

  Another head-shake. Picota didn’t want to say it.

  Niklaus finally took that as his cue to intervene.

  “Miss,” he said flatly, “I think we may need to wrap this up now. Bruno, lay your hands on the table, either side of the ring.”

  “Tell me,” Fran said. Yelled, almost, because they were going to take him away and she needed an answer.

  “I saw it,” Picota said. “Okay. Okay. You don’t have to tell me. I saw it soon as you came in.”

  Niklaus looked at Lionel and gave him a WTF? shrug. Lionel nodded in reply. The two nurses stepped forward and took Picota’s arms.

  “What?” Fran demanded, bewildered. “What did you see? What do you mean?”

  Lionel brought Picota’s wrists right up together and Niklaus snapped a regular, hinged pair of handcuffs onto him right behind the pair he was already wearing. Then he unlocked the original, chained pair. In a matter of seconds Picota was no longer shackled to the table, but his freedom of movement was actually less than it was before. His hands were pressed together as though he was praying.

  Picota was still talking through all of this manhandling. “One moves in, the other moves out. Isn’t that what happened to you?”

  “Nothing happened to me!” Fran said. “I wasn’t asking about me!” Something he’d said earlier—said twice—suddenly registered. “Wait, what did you mean when you said I got better?
Got better from what?”

  The nurses lifted Picota gently out of his seat and set him on his feet. He went limp in their hands, absolutely passive and unresisting—but he was still looking at Fran. “From there being two of you,” he said. “There’s just you now. But I think the other one is under the chair there, pretending to be a dog.”

  Lady Jinx gave a blood-curdling yell. She shot out sideways from under the chair and rose onto her hind paws—in full armor and with Oatkipper raised to strike.

  “Let’s go,” Lionel said. He stepped in and put a reassuring arm on Picota’s shoulder. “Say goodbye, Bruno.”

  Picota was staring at Jinx, his eyes as wide as they could go. He laughed in incredulous delight. “She’s got a knife!” he said. “She’s lovely!”

  Jinx lunged at him, the sword passing through Lionel’s back and Picota’s chest. The little fox swung Oatkipper around again and again. The blade went through and through Picota from every angle.

  Die, villain! she yipped. Die, false knight!

  “What do you call her?” Picota asked. “Does she have a name?”

  Die die die die die die die die die!

  “Just wait here a moment, miss,” Lionel said to Fran. “I’ll be right back to let you out.”

  The two big men hustled Picota out of the room. He was watching Jinx the whole time, not just unafraid of her attempts to slaughter him but thrilled. “Good doggie,” he said. “Come on. Come on, little doggie.” As he passed out of sight, he was trying to whistle, the sound issuing in truncated, discontinuous notes from between his dry lips, like it broke into pieces inside his mouth.

  Jinx chased him all the way to the door of the room, swiping at him the whole time, but she paused on the threshold, tottering there as though she was in danger of losing her balance.

  She turned to stare at Fran, her dark eyes as wide as pools and her muzzle gaping wide. Fran stared back, terrified. The violence hadn’t been any less disturbing for being futile. Jinx had meant to kill Picota. And Jinx was …

  Jinx was …

  Picota’s words had canceled gravity, not in the real world but inside Fran’s mind. All the thoughts in there had risen up at once and now they were floating around, bumping into each other. And the shock of those collisions went through her whole body.

  Don’t say anything! Lady Jinx commanded her.

  The snake Ouroboros, that eats its own tail.

  He was lying. He’s a dirty liar!

  The cartoon she loved. The character she loved. The name of the sword, even, not as Lady Jinx in the show said it but as Fran herself had said it when she was a lisping six-year-old girl.

  Stop it! Jinx advanced on Fran. She was still holding Oatkipper in a two-handed grip, but then she threw it down and spread her claws—which somehow was a lot worse. The magic sword disappeared as it hit the floor. Jinx’s bared teeth snapped and snarled. Don’t talk anymore!

  Fran wasn’t talking in the first place, but she couldn’t stop the thoughts as they crashed back down, one by one, in their new configuration. I wouldn’t have let him cut you, Jinx had said. And Fran had answered: I didn’t know you then. You came afterward.

  Immediately afterward.

  Jinx threw back her head and howled. There was no real sound, of course, but inside Fran’s head it reverberated from wall to wall and met itself coming back.

  Bruno Picota had said: maybe I killed you. Sometimes I remember it that way. And sometimes Fran did too.

  Another howl from Lady Jinx, even louder.

  “Jinx!” Fran gasped. “Jinx, listen to me, please. Do you remember when you took your oath?”

  Jinx glared up at her. Her hackles were standing up and her lips were drawn back on a rictus grin of terror and misery.

  What has that got to do with anything?

  “A knight gets her name when she takes her oath. That’s true for everyone who sits at the Woodland Table. Isn’t it? Sir Querin was Andrew the page. Lady Essen was Lorissa the innkeeper’s daughter. Right? And Sir Stronghand was Boris the woodcutter.”

  So? Jinx snarled.

  “So that must have been true for you too. You knelt before the queen and you took your oath, and she gave you your name and your sword. Remember?”

  Yes!

  “And that was a great day. The best day for any knight.”

  Yes!

  “What was your oath, Lady J?”

  To keep you safe! To stay with you forever and not let anything hurt you!

  “Okay. And before that, before you became the Lady Jinx, who were you? What was your name?”

  Jinx jumped as if someone had shot current through her. She backed away from Fran, growling between her teeth.

  “Don’t be scared, Jinx! Please!” Fran put out a hand, gentling her. Jinx slashed at the hand with her unsheathed claws. She did no damage at all, but tears welled up in Fran’s eyes all the same.

  Jinx was on all fours, trying to run, but her paws didn’t seem to find any traction. She and Fran were glued together. They always had been, from the moment when Jinx first arrived.

  “Was your name …? Was it the same as mine?”

  Stop it! Jinx was writhing horribly, her little body twisting as she tried repeatedly to bolt but made no headway. Pieces of armor fell from her like rain. She was just an animal again. An animal caught in an invisible trap, unable to get free or even to understand what was hurting her.

  She whined, long and drawn out, on a shrill and rising pitch.

  Fran sank to her knees, trying to get as close as she could to whisper reassuring words. To stop the pain and bring her back. But Jinx was fading quickly. She had found a way to get free after all, but not in any of the usual three dimensions.

  “Jinx, stay with me!” Fran cried out. “I won’t hurt you! I promise! Jinx!”

  But Jinx had been hurt past saving a long time before, in the same moment that Fran had.

  In this world … Bruno Picota’s knife touched her side, but then he stopped. For some reason, he stopped right there.

  But somewhere else, the knife had kept right on going.

  And another six-year-old, feeling that terrible pain, her feet windmilling in the air as the life-blood left her, had run in the only direction she could. Which was sideways.

  Surrendered her shape, and her name, just to stay close to the life she’d known.

  The life she’d lost.

  “Jinx—” Fran sobbed. “I’m sorry! Don’t go!”

  She was talking to herself. With a final effortful heave, kicking at the air like a hanged man, Jinx was out of there.

  Her vanishing allowed Fran to see Dr. Trestle standing in the doorway. He was looking at her with a face that had no expression in it at all.

  “I hope you got something out of that, Ms. Watts,” he said. “From Bruno’s point of view, it seems to have been an utter disaster. Let me see you out.”

  Beth thought she had handled Mr. Vance the Mormon detective pretty well all things considered. She judged her success by the sudden, resounding silence coming from Jamie Langdon. Yeah, she thought smugly. Lost your appetite for finding your lost sheep now you know what color his wool is.

  The thought removed some of her tension. It did nothing to improve her relationship with Zac and Molly, though, but that felt like a lost cause. Once Beth’s mind had settled on the proofs of their alienness, the effect was exponential and out of her control. She couldn’t make herself see them as her own anymore. They were Liz’s. Her own kids were dead and worlds away: she would never even be able to leave flowers on their graves. These liars who wore their faces were just insults to their memory, and the less she saw of them the better.

  But she was making headway with that. Withdrawing more and more each day from domestic chores and responsibilities, she had coaxed Zac without ever asking him outright to take up the slack. He was giving Molly her breakfast and taking her into school every day now, and picking her up at the end of the day. All Beth had had to do was to sign the form for an
hour of homework club, which gave him time to get over from his own school to Molly’s. He was cooking dinner, washing up, doing the laundry and generally finding his inner mom, which was all good as far as Beth was concerned. It left her free to pursue her pleasures.

  She did this with a kind of urgency that hadn’t been there before. Hedonism held thought at bay, so she spent and drank and screwed and played hooky from the Cineplex, and generally left tomorrow to take care of itself.

  Until it finally arrived, one day early, in the form of a phone call from officer Bernadette Brophy. The call came through in the middle of the afternoon on a day when Beth should have been on-shift but wasn’t. She had called in sick instead and driven the car across the Monongahela to the South Side Flats, intending to get a tarot reading at the Gypsy Café and maybe fall into the way of a casual hook-up. But the Gypsy was all closed up and had been for years, which made her feel both old and seriously pissed off. A sheet of corrugated iron was nailed up over the frontage and there was a cutesy note bidding farewell to former patrons that had been there long enough to bleach. Was the Gypsy still serving back in her own world? She was never going to know.

  So in the middle of the afternoon, Beth was sitting in a bar called Fat Head’s, nursing a strawberry daiquiri. The tarot reading was moot, but she hadn’t given up on the other half of that game plan: there were several men in the place who looked like possibles.

  Then the phone rang, and her day hit the rocks. “This is Beebee,” Brophy said, sounding as always bright and brisk and full of pop’n’fresh cheeriness. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m good,” Beth said. “I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch, but I’ve pulled a lot of extra shifts. With no maintenance coming in from Marc …”

  “Sure,” Beebee said. “I’m happy to help, you know. You just have to ask.”

  “I will,” Beth lied. “Thanks, Beebee.”

  “You’re welcome. Actually, though, Marc is why I called. We’ve kind of got a lead on him.”