“Watch out!” Nick shouted. “She’s working with your other self!”
Wayne was jolted out of his swooning.
“Go away!” he demanded and waved the hunting knife in front of him.
Alter Tammy’s eyes flashed red from rage and she stepped back a few paces to avoid the flailing knife.
Wayne stood up and stabbed the knife in her direction. He missed.
With what almost sounded like a snarl, alter Tammy ran into the grayness.
Wayne was shaking; he shook like a leaf in a storm. He had wanted to stab Tammy. Alter Tammy. That girl, who looked just like his Tammy . . . He knew he had to kill her, but his attack had been half-hearted and weak, because she looked like his Tammy. Cold hatred had taken hold of him while the wrong Tammy ran away, but by then the chance was gone.
This place could turn anyone into a cold-blooded killer just not quite quickly enough.
Then he saw him.
His alter ego. Alter Wayne stepped into his five meter field of vision. The other Wayne was looking at him, assessing the situation. Apparently deciding whether he should try and take on his earthly self, who had a hunting knife in his hand.
Alter Wayne came a cautious step closer. Behind him Nick, without the scarf, came into sight with the sword held high over his head.
Alter Wayne looked around, because he must have read Wayne’s mind.
But milliseconds too late!
The sword swished through the air.
Wayne grabbed at nearby Nick’s hand, knowing it was the wrong Nick. The real Nick was the one without the scarf. The scarf around alter Nick’s neck was the wrong way round. The colored material was on the inside and the white lining was on the outside.
Seconds later Wayne was surrounded by total darkness. His hand jerked free from alter Nick and he started to float. The rope around his waist pulled tight. Something was coming with him and he guessed what it was. He could smell it. Real Nick wished Chris could have a decent burial. Real Nick really had a good heart. Not the heart of a cold-blooded killer . . .
It felt as if the rope was gnawing through his clothes. It was squeezing the air out of him. Whatever was on the other end of the rope didn’t want to come with him.
He couldn’t suck air, couldn’t bare the pain. Wayne couldn’t hold out any longer. The dead weight around his waist was too much to carry. It felt as if he was dying.
The knife was still in his hand . . .
Wayne put the sharp knife against the rope and cut once.
The rope jerked.
Then he was floating freely.
Flop!
He sat on his chair and stared at the black computer screen in front of him.
He jumped up from the chair, putting the knife on his desk.
“Mum! Dad!” he yelled and ran from his room.
He heard shouts from the sitting room. In the corridor he collided with his dad.
“Wayne! You’re back!” his dad exclaimed and grabbed him in his arms. Then his dad stiffened and pushed him a little bit away. “Is it really you, or your other self?”
Wayne burst out laughing. “It’s me, Dad. I was away for some time, but I’m back. It’s really me that’s back. Is Tammy back, too?” he asked anxiously and looked into his dad’s frowning face.
“She is. Tammy and her mother are in the sitting room. Tammy came and told us about your heroism. Brave, but also very stupid, don’t you think? You could’ve been ‘stored’, like Tammy said.”
Wayne smiled. Tammy had given his parents a good account of the adventure.
“Let’s go and see Tammy . . . and mum.”
Wayne ran into the sitting room, dragging his dad behind him.
“Wayne!” Tammy cried out and came running towards him. She slammed her arms around him and hugged him. “You made it!”
“Nick helped to send me back,” Wayne said and held Tammy close. He was so happy that they had made it back. “Real Nick stayed behind,” he added, his voice soft and sad.
Tammy pushed him from her and stared at him.
“Wayne, my boy! Come here,” his mother cried and came to hug him in Tammy’s place. There were tears of joy in her eyes. “You had me crazy with worry. How could you disappear like that?”
“I had to rescue Tammy, Mum. It was my fault she disappeared.”
Wayne looked past his mother to Tammy. “Had you really wished you were as beautiful as Rosette?”
His mother looked from Wayne to Tammy, whose face had reddened ever so slightly. “What are you talking about?” his mum asked.
“Don’t worry, Mum. That’s a story for another day,” Wayne answered diplomatically, his face beaming at Tammy.
His mum let him go and Tammy came to stand in front of him again.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Your alter Tammy wanted to seduce me in her teeny weenie bikini,” Wayne said with a mischievous look in his eyes.
“Alter Tammy? Wasn’t she stored again?”
“No, she and alter Nick will now walk in the Alter Ego Dimension until you and Nick die. The Snap game apparently makes it impossible for them to be stored again,” Wayne told her.
“And Hiroshi?” Tammy asked. She looked worried.
“He went home before me. We used your shoelace plan for him. Nick shot his alter ego.”
“You said real Nick had stayed behind. What did you mean?”
“He asked me to leave my rucksack and provisions there. He didn’t want to come back and do a jail term. He and alter Nick became friends, because alter Nick doesn’t want to go to jail, either.”
“Became friends?” Tammy asked in disbelieve.
“Yes. Alter Nick helped so that I could get away. They tied Chris’s body to the other end of this rope and sent him with me.” Wayne looked at the rope that was still trailing after him. He tried to untie the knot, but it wouldn’t come loose, because it was too tight. “But I had to cut the rope. The body didn’t want to come with me. I guess it headed off to Australia.”
“Like Ulrich and me. Somewhere on the way back here, we couldn’t hold hands any longer. We slipped from one another. He’s back in Germany. He sent me an email. I wrote to Etsu, but Hiroshi wasn’t back by then,” Tammy told him. “What do you think Nick is planning to do now?”
“Gee, I don’t know. Perhaps he’ll stay there until the food and water are exhausted. At least he’s got alter Nick and the other Tammy for company.”
“Goodness, do you think one of the Nicks and the other me will have a relationship?” Tammy asked smiling.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe Nick will eventually decide to return to earth. Maybe it was part of his plan to make friends with his other self so that it would be easier to trick him and escape. Nick has two bullets left. How are we ever going to know?”
“I’ve got Nick’s email-address. I’ll write to him sometime and see if he answers,” Tammy said.
“Nick gave me Chris’s widow’s cell phone number and her address. Perhaps we can ask her if Chris made it back there. She may know in a day or two if Chris was found in the storeroom,” Wayne said.
Tammy turned around and Wayne supposed she wanted to go and sit next to her mother again. Wayne quickly took her hand.
“I’m sorry I laughed at you the other day.” His face was serious. “I’ll never do it again. Will you go with me to the grade twelve dance? I know it’s still six months away, but I would like to know?”
Tammy laughed softly and nodded.
“Of course,” she said happily. “Yes, of course.”
Wayne let go of her hand and watched her move to sit beside her mother.
His mother came to stand next to him and put her arm around him. She talked to him in a low tone.
Tammy watched them. Wayne was different. He wasn’t the boaster from a few days ago anymore. But she knew he was the real Wayne. Not the alter ego. He had grown up. She was more grown-up now, too. In the Alter Ego Dimension she learned what life
really means.
And she knew Wayne would never laugh at anybody with a pimple again.
Three weeks later Wayne received a letter from the deceased Chris Fairmont’s widow. Her husband had been abducted three weeks ago apparently by kidnappers or robbers. The robbers were still on the run, but what puzzled the police was the fact that the robbers returned Chris’s dead body to the storeroom where he worked, two days after he’d been killed. They had taken only his pants, socks and shoes. Chris’s cremation ceremony was held two weeks ago.
Wayne was touched by the letter. The Australian police didn’t know that the killer was Nick. They thought the culprits were kidnappers or robbers. Nick could have come back to earth. Or was he already back? He hadn’t responded to any emails he and Tammy had sent. They couldn’t risk asking Mrs. Fairmont about Nick. Wayne had already risked enough sending her a letter in his father’s name, suggesting that he was an old friend of Chris who hadn’t heard from him in a while.
Hiroshi had also been in contact to let them know everything was fine, except for all the interviews with Interpol to try and block the Snap game from showing up on the Internet again. He had sent word to Ulrich that his grandfather’s sword was still hanging on the wall—intact.
Wayne slipped Mrs. Fairmont’s letter into one of the pockets of his pants and took the keys to his motorbike. He whistled cheerfully while he was thinking about his date with Tammy. He was going to meet her for a milkshake in the nearby shopping mall and then he was going to show her the letter. Tammy had said that Ulrich was only an Alter Ego Dimension-romance and he was very glad about that. He realized now that he must handle Tammy with respect, because he didn’t want to drive her into the arms of another “Ulrich” ever again.
He whistled Police’s: “Every Breath You Take”.
Tammy sat at an outside table in the restaurant while she was waited for Wayne. When she saw him her heart pounded excitedly. She knew she should feel happy, because she and Wayne were the most talked-about couple in school. Ulrich was now a Facebook friend.
The only downside was Ben. Each time she saw him, she was reminded of the Alter Ego Dimension and something she hadn’t told anybody yet.
On one of the walls in the Alter Ego Dimension was a picture of her mother and herself as a little girl. She knew that that same photo was on the wall in her father’s study, right across from his desk where his computer was. Those images told her that the man she knew as her dad wasn’t her real father. The good man her mother had married was trapped, imprisoned in another dimension.
She wished she knew how to go back to the Alter Ego Dimension to set her real father free. She needed a little rest first and a little time to get herself ready to try and play the Snap game again.
Then she would return.
T H E E N D
About the Author
Ann Hite Kemp is the author of 19 novels and lives in Pretoria, South Africa, with her husband Pieter Kemp, a prominent South African cycling champion, and their two children, Zak and Gisela. If you would like to chat with the author and other readers, visitwww.facebook.com/snapandthealteregodimension.
SNAP! and the Alter Ego Dimension Page 17