Stranger and Stranger

by Rob Reger

  EvilMe and I are one!

  —Physically, anyway.

  I went ahead and wore the spy diaper. Not because I planned to lose control or anything. But just as a symbol of Venus Fang Fang’s support.

  Cutting an incision down the length of my own body was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. But it was nicely balanced out by the pleasure of cutting an incision down the length of EvilOne’s body. Then came the stitching. LOTS of stitching. And not just flesh, but dresses, tights, and shoes as well! Do you have any idea how stiff shoe leather is?????

  Then I dabbed all the sutures with liquid black rock, just to speed things along, and sat down to concentrate on joining our personalities.

  But I couldn’t feel her in there with me. She was certainly being shy, I thought. Or trying to hide. Didn’t want to let go of being Raw Evil, maybe.

  So I went in search of her a little. Called out to her with my mind. Drifted around our two joined bodies, wondering where she could be.

  And eventually…

  ME: EvilOne?

  EVILONE: Oh. Is that what you call me now?

  ME: There you are. C’mon, let’s join forces, what do you say?

  EO: I don’t like you. Go away.

  And she disappeared.

  Um, and that’s kind of where it stands right now. Have come out of deep meditative trance and left the birdcage. At least I have control of both bodies. Not that I’m not clumsy.

  Am lurching around the house trying to get better at using EvilOne’s side of the body and/or integrate the two of us. Would like to find her journal, which I have never even seen. Might be helpful. You never know.

  Later

  I fixed our cable reception and have been monitoring the news for evidence that the Manifesto of Normal is working. Did not have to monitor for long before I saw a newsflash on the “incident” at the nuthouse last night, with touching footage of a tearful Dr. Greenblatt describing the “little girl in black” who saved the town with her Happy Ray. Authorities spent most of yesterday giving loonies their shot of normalcy, and everyone has been so pleased with the results that even non-loonies are now clamoring for a dose.

  Yeah. You know how, sometimes, the more Normal you try to make things, the Stranger they become?

  In other news, yo-yo and black licorice sales are up.

  Later

  Things are not as awesome as you might think they would be right now, considering I have two conjoined bodies. EvilOne has been weakly trying to take control of her body again. Just now she was picking at the stitches with her left hand and smacking me in the face with her right hand, which was nothing but rude. I had to stop scrounging under Mom’s mattress for the journal and enact an obligatory Jekyll/Hyde-style scene, you know, where the left half of the body is battling the right half? And, to make it more difficult, I was periodically breaking off into hysterical laughing fits because it was all so very scary/stupid/comic, and then I’d feel very glad I wore the spy diaper, and that would set me off into a worse laughing fit, and pretty soon there was a line of drool hanging off my lip and I could barely get a breath.

  EvilOne wasn’t responding well to the laughing, but then she kind of backed off a little. That was about an hour ago. I can feel that she’s still hostile, though. Will have to think up something fast. Have to return to sewer hidey-hole now to tell Mom it’s safe to come home. Have been back and forth to sewer hidey-hole so many times in the past few days, I’m practically wearing a path in the street. Plus, it’s not going to be easy getting to my secret entrance with no one seeing my bizarre new body. Wish I had made a secret passageway leading from my bedroom straight into the sewer. Oh well, maybe in our next house.

  Later

  Turns out, Mom didn’t react quite as positively to my conjoined selves as I’d expected.

  When she stopped screaming, I gently explained to her how I’d performed the surgery, and how I was working to get the two halves of my personality reunited, and that everything would be just fine once I accomplished that.

  Mom disagreed. Loudly, with hysterical crying.

  MOM: You think everything will be FINE? The police are after me! And…LOOK at you!

  ME: But Patti, the town’s back to normal! I fixed everything!

  M: That’s not how the criminal justice system works, E. SOMEONE will have to go down for that prank of yours!

  EvilOne chose that moment to try to choke me. It took me a couple minutes to get back in control. Actually, I had to get Raven’s help.

  When it was over, Mom said a bad word.

  Mom said more bad words, then a few more, then mixed them up in creative linguistic combinations for new, startling effects.

  Then she looked at me and apologized for her potty mouth. I was just starting to say how very entertaining it was for me to hear her curse (and much better than hysterical crying) when we all heard footsteps coming from around the corner. Mystery hissed, Raven got ready to attack, Mom grabbed a paintbrush loaded with white paint, and then…

  Binary Larry ran into view.

  I yelled at Raven to grab him.

  ME: You ratfink! You told on us!

  BINARY LARRY: Aieeeeee! Freak! Monster! Gahhhhhhhhh!

  ME: Hush up or I’ll tell Raven to squeeze. How could you tell on us? HOW COULD YOU?

  BL: Aihhh…gehhhhh…didn’t tell on you…

  ME: I KNOW you did!

  BL: Nuh, I told on HER! [Pointing to my other half.]

  ME: So…you knew?

  BL: Yeah, I knew! And I was just GOING to your HOUSE to look for EVIDENCE!!

  ME: Well then, what are you doing down here?

  BL: [Uncomfortable silence.] Er…

  ME: [Sharp intake of breath.] Let me guess. Secret passageway from your bedroom?

  BL: Kinda…

  ME: I was wondering how you got out.

  BL: Er…

  ME: OK. Fine. You will be forgiven entirely if you can get back to my house and find the EvilOne’s journal. I’m sure it’s FULL of evidence. But I really doubt you’ll find it.

  BL: Chaaaa, I bet your mom knows.

  MOM: What, Ev—Jem—the other Emily’s journal? Yeah, she keeps it in the cereal cupboard, behind the Boo Berry.

  ME: [Stunned, embarrassed silence.]

  BL: [Stunned, embarrassed silence.] Boo Berry, huh?

  That box must be pretty stale by now.

  ME: [Trying to maintain dignity.] [Whispering.] Just…go.

  And he left on sneakers of wind. Um, on legs of fire. Oh bagdarfs! He ran away really fast.

  Later

  Mom and I have had one of those mother-daughter chats where the mom tries her best to paint a grim picture of the daughter’s future and the daughter sits in icy silence, thinking about what a dum-dum her mom is and whether boys would like her more if she changed her hair/clothes/skin/teeth/eyes/name. Except that in our case, I was actually thinking that Mom had some good points about how it could cramp my style down the road to be conjoined twins, and that I might want to think up a plan that involved separating our bodies. Have told her I will consider it.

  Later

  A particularly strong attack by EvilOne has made me pretty eager to consider it.

  Later

  Still waiting for Binary Larry. Still chatting with Mom to pass the time.

  ME: Hey, Patti. I’m starting to catch some memories from EvilOne, like what “nothing but a thin broth” means. But I still don’t know why we move so often.

  MOM: [Dryly.] Really? You have NO IDEA?

  ME: It has something to do with the dark code, doesn’t it? We’re on the run from the FBI, aren’t we?

  M: [Sighing.] If only it were that simple. What do you want, a top-13 list? You think we’ve never done ANYTHING to require us to leave town, unexpectedly, in the middle of the night, with no forwarding address?

  ME:………K, point taken. But hey, speaking of this dark code, what is THAT, anyway?

  M: Uh…I think it’s pretty much every code
you’ve ever written.

  Later

  Binary Larry is back! Ahhahhahha! He has the journal! It is so incriminating! There is something deeply evil on every page. Here is my favorite Evil sentence so far: “June 21. I really need to find a way to surgically extract PatheticMe’s guitar skills before I kill her.” Furthermore, I now know what she was planning to do with those sixty-seven copies of the Manifesto of Strange: “July 1. Tonight is the big skate rally, and kids will be here from all over. I’ve made copies of the Manifesto and will instruct them how to set it up in their own town halls at home. Soon they ALL will answer to November December!”

  Am shuddering in horror! I definitely need to separate myself from EvilOne now, so she can go down for some of the many crimes she admits to in these pages. Let me just say that she is responsible for most of the burglaries and nearly all of the vandalism that has happened since the Manifesto. And the ones she didn’t personally carry out, she programmed Raven to do! She is going to do some serious time for this!

  Have just caught myself with my finger up my nose again. Am recalling that I need EvilOne’s qualities. Oh, and what if I DO succeed in taking all her qualities and separating my body from hers? With no personality to animate it, will her body die? And if it does, then A) can we still get her dead body to take the blame for all her crimes, and, more important, B) will I be a murderer?

  Do not want to be a murderer, even to get rid of EvilOne.

  Am in what you might call a little existential pickle right now.

  Later

  Mom has (FINALLY) agreed to leave the secret sewer and come home with me. She is nervously gripping EvilOne’s journal and looking around for police officers. Raven is somehow managing to tote Mystery’s cat carrier AND keep a steel grip on EvilOne, who is struggling under the Victorian tapestry we wrapped her in. And I’m holding Great-Aunt Millie’s shoe box, silently conferring with her on the next stage of the plan.

  Later—back at the house

  Have inhaled Great-Aunt Millie! That’s right, I held her up to one nostril and sniffed her right in! Now she is hanging out inside me, looking for EvilOne, so she can perform the spiritual equivalent of the surgery I did earlier today! Am patting self on back for thinking this one up!

  Have made many preparations, and finished by filling a kiddie pool with the remaining liquid black rock. Am running so low on black rock, I had to tip out the reservoirs in the duplication device and wring out my cast. Whatever it takes! Am about to lie down in it. Am going to try for deep trance state. It’s time EvilOne and I had a real heart-to-heart. Ha. Ha. Ha.

  Later

  Yeah, so, here’s how THAT went down:

  I floated there in the black rock for a while, getting into a nice meditative zoned-out state of mind, and visualized myself, my halved personality, hanging out here in this half of my body. Just hanging out, but paying attention: listening, watching, focusing my awareness on my other half.

  Finally started wondering where Great-Aunt Millie could be and whether she was still here.

  The answer came from miles and centuries away:

  GREAT-AUNT MILLIE: Yessssssdearrrr I’mmmmsstillllll here.

  ME: Great, you can talk again?

  GAM: It’sssssseasierrrrr beinnnng insssssssssside.

  ME: Can you find her?

  GAM: Sheeeeeee’sssssshidinnnnng.

  ME: Any suggestions?

  GAM: Trrrrrrry gettinnnnnngbiggerrrrrrrrr.

  So I visualized getting bigger. Like my self was growing to expand into every little corner of my joined bodies. Filling nooks and crannies with my spirit. And finally cornering EvilOne…in my left little toe.

  Before I knew it, Great-Aunt Millie had zoomed up to her, thrown her over her knee, and was giving her a mighty paddling.

  GAM: That’sssssssforrr thebarrrrrrrrelllll of brrrrrrokennnnnnnglassss!

  EVILONE: Aieeeeeee! OtherMe, save me!

  And I did! I grabbed her away from her righteous, violent, dead great-aunt’s spirit, and put my arms around her, and told her everything was gonna be all right.

  ME: We belong together, EvilOne!

  EVILONE: You just want your skateboarding skills back!

  ME: No, no, it’s not like that, I swear…I mean, you’re ME! And I’m YOU! And you might be evil in its rawest form, but gobbing loquats, I NEED YOU!!!!

  EO: Do you realize what we’re doing?

  ME: Um…hugging? And learning?

  EO: That’s right.

  ME: But there’s something else going on here, EvilOne. You see, the whole time I’ve been hugging you with my SPIRITUAL arms, I’ve also been using my PHYSICAL arms to tear out the stitches that were holding our bodies together, and now it’s time for us to be TRULY ONE AGAIN!

  EO: Noooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

  And as the essence of EvilOne flowed from her body into mine, I ripped our bodies apart bit by bit, holding her spirit tightly all the while. Oh the pain pain pain, but there was no time to think of that. I was getting stronger and more powerful, more MYSELF, and the other body was being drained of life, black stuff, Strangeness, Evil, skateboarding skills, and whatever else was animating it, until it looked all pale and limp, like an old corn husk or dried-up snakeskin.

  I was about to snip the last few stitches and separate us forever when Great-Aunt Millie spoke up.

  GREAT-AUNT MILLIE: Waaaait jussssssssta minnnnnnute, mydeeeeeeeear.

  ME: Yeah?

  GAM: Sheeeeee stilllll hazzzzzzzz yooooour lazinesssssss, deeeeeeceit, annnnd pettyyyythieeeeeverrrrry. Shalllllllll weeeleeave themmmmm wiiiith herrrrrrr?

  ME: Nah, I need that stuff.

  GAM: Whatabout nozzzzzzepickinnnng andcryyyyying spelllllllllls?

  ME: [Suffering the old existential pickle.] Uhhhhh…I better keep everything, just to be safe.

  Shellac! Am hoping I made the right decision. I considered being choosy about which qualities I took back, I really did, but remembered what Mom said about no killing in the house. I actually take that seriously, you know. And if EvilOne had ANY of my human qualities left, it WOULD be killing. I really didn’t want Mom or Venus Fang Fang to think I murdered EvilOne.

  Later

  Excellent! Mom agrees with me that what’s left of EvilOne is no more than a VERY large, unusually detailed, eerily lifelike hangnail sort of thing, and can be cut off with no guilt whatsoever!

  Used the toenail clippers to snip her away from me. And let me tell you, it felt GRRRRRRRRREAT!

  Later

  Back in my bedroom. MY! Not OUR. Had a very emotional reunion with my cats. I did not cry. I DID NOT CRY! HAHAHHAHHAHHAHHAHAH!

  July 5

  moms still paranoid about police, 1; senseis enlisted to help save the day, 1

  Woke up at nightfall when Mom knocked on my door. She is still fussing over the possibility that the police are coming after her. Not knowing what else to say, I suggested we talk to Venus Fang Fang about it tomorrow. After all, it was HER son who put the police on our trail…maybe she’ll feel obligated to help out.

  Gotta go, I have a wicked new park to skate!!!

  Later

  Have skated the very pudding out of every rail and ramp. Local teens made way for me, with odd looks aplenty. I guess I should be embarrassed, considering the last time they saw me, I was weeping/clutching a stuffed animal/picking my nose…but it just felt so good to be skating, and I really couldn’t care less about anything else.

  Here’s the weird part, though: Skating that park was all new to me, AND at the same time it was all completely familiar.

  Later

  Back at home! Good times! Have spent most of the night playing guitar at top volume, revamping all the basement booby traps, and (most important) petting cats. It is soooooo good to be myself again. Will never mess about with self-duplication again!

  Later

  OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

  It’s three in the morning and I just got off the phone with Binary Larry. Here’s what he had to say
:

  BINARY LARRY: Dude, I didn’t see you in the sewers tonight.

  ME: Nah, my mural’s all done, and I got other stuff going on…

  BL: Yeah, well, as long as you got some pictures, I guess…I just thought you’d want to, like, give it a farewell touch-up or something.

  ME: What do you mean, farewell? I’m not going anywhere.

  BL: Well, you KNOW, that whole thing? With the mayor?

  ME: WHAT THING???? SPILL IT RIGHT NOW, YOU!!!!!

  BL: Dude! Don’t you watch the news? They’re gonna flood our secret sewer with poop!

  Yes. Yes. Earlier tonight, apparently, the mayor announced that it was high time the town revisited the original purpose of the ill-fated ribbon-cutting ceremony, which I never bothered to discover. Oh flabbering gutbarks! It was supposed to be the inauguration of the brand-new sewer system! They are indeed going to flood my lovely, lovely sewer mural with filth!

  I realize there is really nothing to be done about it but am going to sleep on it and see if I come up with some kind of plan. Sad end to a great night.

  July 6

  incredible nightmares, 1; grand Ravenesque fiascos, 0 (I hope???)

  Wow.

  Have just had THEEE MOST AMAAAAZING nightmare!

  Poor Silifordville! Poor poor poor poor Silifordville!

  —Uh, I think the town is actually OK, but this dream was just so flathering REAL—

  OK. Here’s what my very own golem did in my nightmare: