Item #: SCP-SPOOK
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-SPOOK is to be held in a standard containment locker in Site-19.
Description
SCP-SPOOK is a woman's handbag of white and tan leather, 37 cm in length, 12 cm high, with a depth of 10 cm. Visual inspection of SCP-SPOOK's contents reveal it to contain one (1) key ring holding two (2) keys, one (1) tube of L'Oréal Infallible Pro-Matte Lip Gloss (Shanghai Scarlet), four (4) crumpled receipts, and seven (7) loose pennies. Any item contained in SCP-SPOOK may be removed various means, so long as no human being attempts to reach into the bag to remove the item. Items not originally found in SCP-SPOOK may be added or removed from the bag at will, again excepting any action resulting in a human placing their hand into the bag.
The anomalous qualities of SCP-SPOOK manifest when a human being attempts to reach into the handbag's single open compartment. Any human hand passing through the opening of the handbag will not arrive in SCP-SPOOK's interior. Instead, human hands passing through the entrance of SCP-SPOOK appear to enter a trans-dimensional rift of varying origin. This rift is not present in SCP-SPOOK normally, and will only appear upon attempted entry of a human hand into the bag.
After attempted entry of a human hand into SCP-SPOOK, subjects typically report no loss of sensation or function in the portion of their hand and arm submerged in the bag. They will typically go on to describe that all sensation in their submerged limb suggests that it is not in the interior of a handbag. Descriptions of sensations reported by test subjects are generally inconsistent, with the only consistency being that the subject believes their hand is no longer inside SCP-SPOOK. Appropriately, attempted entry of a human hand into SCP-SPOOK will not result in any noticeable displacement of the inside of the bag that would suggest that a human hand was present. Similarly, SCP-SPOOK will not gain the weight consistent with a human hand when weighed before and during attempted entry.
Once a human hand has entered SCP-SPOOK, it will be impossible to remove said hand until the subject picks something up. Attempting to remove an empty hand will result in an irresistibly strong force preventing any of the submerged limb from emerging from the bag. This force is described as far too powerful to overcome, but not painful. The force is strong enough to resist the efforts of other individuals or machines attempting to free the subject. Only when the subject has picked something up and is holding it in their hand is it possible to pull the submerged limb free from the bag without interference.
No item removed from SCP-SPOOK by a human hand was present in the bag before attempted entry. Rather, items removed from this SCP appear to have been drawn from the varied locales visited by the submerged limbs of test subjects. The items are chosen at random by test subjects and can be stored for further experimentation upon removal from SCP-SPOOK. [DATA EXPUNGED]
Test Log SCP-SPOOK attached for further info.
Test Log SCP-SPOOK
Note: Research on SCP-SPOOK currently discontinued. See Addendum-SPOOK-02
Trial 01
Subject: D-SPOOK-A
Action: Subject ordered to place dominant hand inside SCP-SPOOK. Subject complied, and immediately became alarmed and attempted to remove his arm from the bag, which he was unable to do. Subject described the "interior of the bag" as being firm, wet, and shifting slightly against his arm, and repeated several times that he thought it was "breathing." Subject was ordered to pick something up, and after several moments he was able to grasp an object and pull his arm free. Subject's arm was covered in a red, mucous-like sheen.
Object: Subject removed a small chunk of red flesh, 4 cm in diameter.
Trial 02
Subject: D-SPOOK-B
Action: Subject ordered to place non-dominant hand in SCP-SPOOK. Subject complied, and exclaimed surprise, explaining that she had plunged her arm into cold, shifting water. Subject ordered to pick something up, and subsequently pulled her arm free. Subject's arm was covered in water, which was later identified as freshwater of unknown origin.
Object: One (1) rusted metal rod, later determined to be steel, 1.2 m long with a diameter of 3 cm.
Trial 03
Subject: D-SPOOK-D
Action: Subject ordered to submerge both arms into SCP-SPOOK. Subject complied, describing the environment "inside" SCP-SPOOK as feeling like open air, with a hot and humid quality. Subject quickly began complaining of insect bites on her forearms. Subject was told to pick something up in either hand, but complained that her forearms were "covered in [EXPLETIVE] bugs" and that upon opening her hands her palms were almost immediately swarmed by what she felt were probably flying insects. Subject pulled forearms from SCP-SPOOK without waiting for instruction. Subject's arms were indeed covered in small flying insects of a previously-unknown species, similar to mosquitoes (see Note SPOOK-K), which had carved numerous tiny holes in the flesh of D-SPOOK-D's forearms. The insects were terminated to prevent contamination. D-SPOOK-D was treated for potential contagion; after seven (7) hours the bites on her forearms began to [REDACTED]. Remains were cremated to prevent contamination.
Object: Insects, see above.
Note: Moved objects recovered from SCP-SPOOK to a secure container. The red flesh from Test 01 seems to have increased in mass, somehow, and has partially absorbed the steel rod from 02 into its mass. Objects must be observed to record any future alteration. — Dr. Grinner
Trial 04
Subject: D-SPOOK-G (subject possessing a prosthetic right arm)
Action: Subject ordered to place prosthetic arm in SCP-SPOOK. Subject complied, and did not report any sensation, but was unable to pull his prosthetic free from the interior of SCP-SPOOK. Subject ordered to pick something up, and spent almost five minutes attempting to scoop up an object with immobile fingers. Subject was eventually able to secure an object and removed his arm from the bag.
Object: One (1) glass sphere, 7 cm in diameter.
Trial 05
Subject: D-SPOOK-G (see above)
Action: Subject ordered to place both prosthetic and biological arms into SCP-SPOOK. Subject reported no sensation in prosthetic, and felt as though the biological arm was somewhere with open air, as he could feel a slight breeze. Subject ordered to pick something up, and complied, using his biological hand. Subject ordered to attempt to remove prosthetic from the bag, and was unable to do so. Subject grasped object with both biological and prosthetic hands and was then able to remove both hands successfully. As subject began to pull his arms from the bag, he exclaimed in surprise and jerked both arms out in a sudden panic. When asked to explain himself, he claimed that his biological hand had been licked. Saliva was indeed present on the subject's hand, and was tested to be genetically human.
Object: One (1) skull of an unidentified animal, 13 cm tall and 9 cm wide, with a human-like jaw and two irregularly-placed eye sockets 7 cm in diameter each.
Note: Red flesh increased in mass again, and has now totally absorbed the steel rod from 02 and the glass sphere from 04. All future objects removed from SCP-SPOOK will be secured in a separate container. —Dr. Grinner
Trial 06
Subject: D-SPOOK-H
Action: Subject ordered to place hand inside SCP-SPOOK and to make no further movements. Subject complied, and described feeling as though he had slid his hand into a metal shaft or duct, as he could feel metal on all sides of his arm. Subject was still for 30 seconds, at which point he began to attempt to pull his arm from the bag, complaining that "the walls are closing in on my arm!" Subject was ordered to remain calm but became more frantic, shrieking that "it's crushing my [EXPLETIVE] arm, let me out!" Subject ordered to pick something up and remove his arm from the bag, which he was able to do after 20 seconds. Subject's arm was badly bruised, but otherwise undamaged.
Object: A set of six (6) pieces of crescent-shaped metal, vaguely resembling a human rib cage, 16 cm tall and 8 cm wide.
Further experimentation discontinued. See Addendum SPOOK-02 for further info.
Apparently the container wasn't secure enough. I was coming to test the properties of test object 06 and discovered that the container lid had been torn open with considerable force. I peered into the container and it SHOULD I REDACT THIS BIT OR NAH[was staring up at me, mostly rippling red flesh, several pseudo-limbs that it must have used to tear open the container lids pawing at the air. The animal skull from test 05 covered in translucent red webbing, barely supported by all the flesh, and the glass sphere from 03 winking in one eye socket, swiveling and glittering in the fluorescent ceiling light. Somewhere in that shuddering body,]END POTENTIAL REDACTED BIT the rod— no, the spine— and the rib cage, they must have been supporting its frame.
It vocalized when it saw me. The jaw creaked open and the glass eye swiveled and it cooed. It wriggled at the bottom of the container and pawed at nothing, and it seemed unfinished, and I wondered how many more times we would have to reach into SCP-SPOOK before its organic project would be completed.
I'll have to keep wondering. I burned the thing alive.
Experimentation is to be discontinued. This will not happen again.
—Dr. Grinner
Christine Ellis was in the middle of breakfast when the door opened and another Christine Ellis stepped inside.
They’d run out of milk again, so every bite of cereal crunched like gravel between her teeth and stuck in her throat on the way down. Dad hadn’t set up any air conditioners yet, so she sat in sweltering silence and read the cartoons on the back of the cereal box. The old S’mores man was at it again. Now with star-shaped marshmallows. Neat-o.
That was when the door opened and the second Christine Ellis stepped inside. Christine’s hand stilled, halfway between the bowl and her mouth. The cereal trembled in the spoon. Then she dropped it entirely. There was no splash, because of the lack of milk. Small miracles.
The other Christine said “Hey.”
“Hey,” said Christine. Then she shoved her chair away from the table and bolted to her feet. She wanted to run, but her feet were completely immobile. “What the fuck.” She took several deep breaths. “Am I hallucinating?”
“No,” said the other Christine. “I’m really here. I’m really you.”
Christine’s eyes were drawn to the other Christine’s lips. Their left corner opened into an enormous gash that spanned the entirety of other Christine’s left cheek. Her teeth grinned through the hole, which was shiny with scar tissue and dotted with thick scabs, some of which oozed. It warped her whole face, drew her cheekbone up so that she always seemed to be smirking. “Oh my God,” said Christine, collapsing back into the chair. “Oh my God. What the fuck is going on.”
The other Christine studied the table for a moment, and slid into Mom’s usual chair. “You’re in my seat,” she muttered, smiling with both sides of her face. The hole shifted when she smiled, so that Christine could see shiny pink gum. She looked away.
The other Christine looked around the kitchen. She stared for a long time at the landscape on the wall next to the table, which Mom had painted for a friend on a whim. Her eyebrows drew together as she looked at the calendar on the fridge, and at the notes Dad had written, to remind the kids to keep moving in the mornings, to not be late to school if possible, to not forget lunch, stuff like that. She stroked the wood of the table with her fingertips. “Sorry,” she said, looking at her hands. “This is weird. I know. It’s a lot to explain.”
“Yeah,” said Christine. Her heartrate had begun to slow down to something resembling normal. She stared at herself, sitting across the table. Her splitting image. If it wasn’t for the scar. “You’re me,” she tried. “Me. Christine.”
“Yeah,” said the other Christine. “Christine Ellis. 18 years old… I think. I lost track of time for a while, there. Pretty sure I missed our birthday.”
“I’m 18,” said Christine. “My—our—birthday, it was a few weeks ago.” She grinned for a moment. “Finally legal. Hah. Hah.”
“Hah,” said the other Christine.
Christine was finding it easier and easier to breathe. She slouched into a more comfortable position in the chair, noting that the other Christine’s posture was identical, down to the sloping shoulders and the elbows hanging just off the edge of the table. “I…” She swallowed. “Not an identical twin?”
“No,” said the other Christine. “I’m you. I’m you if things had gone way different here.”
“Here?”
“This dimension.” She waved a hand as she said it, as if with that one movement she encapsulated the universe.
Christine pressed both trembling palms flat against the table. “Can you—”
“Prove it?” said the other Christine. “I don’t know. I guess. What do you want me to tell you? Secrets? We’re bisexual. You’re in love with Wendy—I was in love with her, back home, before… all of it.” Her lips tugged at the gash in her cheek. “Sorry if that was blunt. I know it feels bad to think about.”
“I…” Christine curled one hand into a fist, scraping her nails across the surface of the table. “Okay. Okay. You’re real. This is real.”
The other Christine watched her without saying anything. Christine tried out phrases in her mind, choked on them when her mouth opened, came up with a million questions that she found she couldn’t ask. Finally she leaned across the table so far that its edge pressed deep into her belly. “Are there more?” she managed, half-breathless. “More of me? Of us?”
“Sure,” said the other Christine. “But they’re not here. You’ll never get to meet them.” She picked at one of her fingernails. “Here, it’s just me.”
This time, the question that Christine wanted to ask was easier to articulate. “Why?” she said. “Why? You’re here—you’re me—you’re from another dimension, aren’t you? That’s what you’re saying?” Ideas from half-written adventure stories crawled underneath her scalp. Plots from shitty science fiction novels that she sometimes checked out from the library and devoured, cover to cover, in one ravenous afternoon. “You—I—we found a way to move between dimensions. Is that what happened?” She wanted to jump from her chair. “It must’ve. Because you’re here. So we could meet the others, if we wanted. We could go to places nobody’s been before.” She felt as if her brain were moving too quickly for the sluggish air in the little kitchen. “We could—we could—”
The other Christine was shaking her head. “No,” she said. “There’s no way to move between dimensions anymore. The way I got here moved back to another dimension without me.”
Christine frowned. “Oh,” she said.
The other Christine leaned back in her chair, until she was staring at the white plaster ceiling. “His name was 507,” she said. “The boy who could walk between worlds. He was an SCP.”
“What?” said Christine.
“SCP. Anomalous object.” The other Christine licked at her teeth; Christine could see her tongue through the hole in her cheek. “Not everything follows the laws of physics,” said the other Christine. “There are some things that do stuff that we can’t explain. In my dimension, there were a lot of things like that. 507 was an anomalous object because sometimes he would get pulled into another dimension. Whether he liked it or not.” Her shoulders slumped. “I used to go along for the ride.”
“Oh,” said Christine, while the other Christine shifted in her seat so she could rest the point of her chin in one cupped hand, digging her elbow into the surface of the table. “So.”
“Right,” the other Christine said. “I’m not going back.” She drummed her fingers against her chin. Her middle finger tapped a spot near the chasm in her cheek and a spasm of pain flicked across her face. “It’s okay,” she said, voice husky. “I… it’s for the best. My world is finished. It died.”
Christine blinked. “What?” she said. “What do you mean?” Again her eyes were drawn, inexorably, to the bloody-edged gash on the other—on her own face, a face she looked at in the mirror every day. Torn so badly that even the phantom idea of the pain twisted her face into a grimace. She looked away, massaging her cheek with her fingertips, easing away a pain that another her had felt, in another place, another time.
“My world ended,” the other Christine clarified. “An SCP—an anomalous object—you remember what those are? Right. An anomalous object destroyed the world.” Her nostrils flared. “The Foundation was supposed to contain it, but they failed.”
“The—”
“Sorry. I forget that you don’t know. We’re so alike,” said the other Christine, “And it’s been so long since I talked to someone who didn’t know. And I guess a part of me thinks that this story is so important that anyone who’s me would know it. That doesn’t make sense. Sorry.” She reared back; Christine was reminded of a snake jerking away from a target it was moments from sinking its fangs into, and the muscles in her gut tightened in an instinctual warning to get away from the scarred predator on the other side of the table. But the other Christine was only stretching. She tilted her head so far back that Christine could hear her spine popping.
“The Foundation,” said the other Christine, throat working, “is an organization that protects the world from anomalous objects by containing them and researching them. They contained 507, and they contained the red pool. Sort of.” She straightened up. “Somewhere, in this dimension, your Foundation does those things too.”
“We don’t have a Foundation,” said Christine.
“Yes, you do,” said the other Christine. “You do. You don’t know it’s there, but you have one.” Her eyes were half-lidded. “It was like that in my dimension too. We didn’t know about it until it failed.” As she spoke, her hand drifted towards her cheek. She didn’t seem to notice. “The red pool got big,” she said. “The Foundation couldn’t contain it. It got so big.” She wasn’t looking at anything now, just staring into the dark hallway beyond the kitchen. Seeing, perhaps, a ragged crimson shore, spreading like glistening rot. Always spreading.
“Things came out of it,” said the other Christine, gathering steam. “Monsters. Little ones at first, when the news still existed. The really bad ones didn’t come until people had already started looting, and rioting, all that stuff. You know.” She looked Christine dead in the eye. “That’s how Sophie died,” she said. “Rioting. She got crushed by a car.” Then she frowned, and looked away. “Sorry,” she muttered.
“No,” said Christine, swallowing hard. “Don’t… it’s fine. Sophie’s at school right now.” Her chest felt tight. “I—my Sophie. I’m sorry. About yours.”
“It’s alright,” said the other Christine. “It was a long time ago.”
Then the film seemed to fall back over her eyes, and Christine could see that she’d slipped into an alien world, exactly the same, but dead. Like her cheek, thought Christine. Exactly the same, but torn apart. Rotting.
“The things came out of the red pool,” said the other Christine. “The little monsters. And… something else. Something big.” She cocked her head. She was struggling. “I can’t… It’s hard to describe. People tried to talk about it, before everything collapsed completely. Like a carpet… that doesn’t make it sound very scary. No. It was like a wave. A living wave. All flesh. All body parts that didn’t make sense together. It had a lot of mouths. It was enormous. It never got smaller, and it grew when the pool did, so it must have been… oh, thousands of miles. Thousands of miles of living wave.” She smiled. It was such a bizarre expression that Christine’s palms began to sweat. “People called it the scourge,” she said. “That was a good name for it.”
And Christine could see it. A blanket of flesh, clawing its way forward with thousands of millions of arms, staring with a billion glossy eyeballs, opening into cavernous, stinking mouths which were ribbed with kicking legs and studded with a patchwork of human teeth and splintered bone. What happens to a human if you crush it under a car and spread it thin and repeat it a trillion times and mash the pieces together as best you can?
She wanted to run. She wanted to ask the other Christine if there was a possibility of something like that happening here, happening now. Her throat was too dry. She said nothing.
“That happened later, though,” said Christine. “It was the rest of the things from the pool that killed everyone. Like in a horror movie. They just descended on the country. We couldn’t stop them, really. They were so fast.” She sighed, and pressed a hand against each of her temples. “Most people died right away. I didn’t, because I locked myself in the house and only had to deal with one of them. And I killed it.” She stroked at the gash in her cheek. “It was so small.
“I came out a few days later. Then I drove south. The scourge was coming from the north, so I drove south for as long as I could find gas.” Her mouth twitched. “I ran out of gas eventually, so I started walking. You… you can’t imagine what it was like. Sneaking through cities that were just filled with gibbering crawling freaks. Days in the backwoods without seeing another living soul. And the people I did see were usually crazy.” Her lips thinned. “I… Well. Anyway, that’s around when I met 507.”
“That’s when you got out of your dimension,” said Christine. “507 took you out of there.”
“No,” said the other Christine. “That’s not how it worked. It was inadvertent, when he switched. And we would always go back.” She turned suddenly to look at her left hand, which she opened and closed. “I tied our hands together,” she said. “When he told me what he could do. I thought maybe vising other dimensions would keep me out of trouble for a little while.” Her hand slipped to her side. “I don’t know why I thought that.”
It seemed that she’d reached a mental roadblock, because she grew pensive and silent, staring at her hand. “The other dimensions,” Christine said, prompting. “They… they were bad? I mean, you’re in one now, and it isn’t bad.”
“Most of them were,” said the other Christine. “All of them, really. Either… bad… or unlivable.” She narrowed her eyes. “There was a world that rained blood. So much blood. I think there were veins in the sky.” She shook her head, as if shaking the moisture free. “There was a world so hot I thought we would die after a few minutes. A world that was just cornfield for miles, with gigantic crawling things far away. All sorts of worlds.”
“No way,” said Christine. “That’s… it’s so unfair.” She thought of her fantasy books. “How can it be that you’d only end up in places like that? There’s got to be better dimensions. Right?”
The other Christine shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. “I didn’t see any.”
Again she seemed unlikely to continue. “So you ended up here,” said Christine. “How’d you get separated from 507?”
The other Christine shifted in her chair. “It caught up to us,” she said. “The scourge. We’d been traveling south, no matter what dimension we were in, and every time we shifted back home we knew it was closer because there were more things to fend off or run from.” Her nostrils flared. “Eventually it did catch up,” she said. “We switched back home, and it was there. Waiting for us.” Again she smiled. “It was… I tried to explain it before. It was very, very big. Very hungry.” She swallowed. “It was a force of nature,” she decided. “Not any nature that our worlds recognize, but wherever it comes from, that’s what it is. A natural disaster.” She drummed her fingers on the table, and Christine thought of a wave of a billion fingers rising from a mat of ever-growing meat. “We switched out before it enveloped us.” And then she shuddered.
“You came here?” said Christine.
“Yeah,” said the other Christine.
“You got lucky,” said Christine, although lucky felt like a small word compared to what had happened to her other self. “You—” A thought struck her. “507,” she said. “He went back?”
The other Christine winced. “He had to,” she said, looking at the table. “He always goes back. He had no choice.”
“Oh my God,” said Christine. “Oh my God.” She could see it. The sudden, doomed shift, the moment of unspeakable terror—and then falling into an endless living wave, mouths and pseudopods and glistening orifices ready to receive you. “Christ.”
“Right,” said the other Christine, very quietly. “And here I am.”
Silence rang out between them. Christine stared across the table at herself, and wondered if some of the dust on the other Christine’s hoodie had been borne by the wind of an alien world. She wondered if the blood on the waistband of her other self’s jeans was her own blood, or the blood of something so far removed from humanity that it would be hard to draw any visual comparisons. She thought about her fantasy books, and about adventure, and for the first time neither appealed to her. She thought about death, bearing down in an endless, crimson tidal wave.
“Jesus,” she said. “You went through hell.”
“I guess you could say that,” said the other Christine. She trailed a finger across the edge of the gash in her cheek. “I guess you’re right.”
“What are we going to do?” said Christine, putting her head in her hands. “Where are we going to go?” She bit her lip. “This Foundation—”
“No,” said the other Christine. “I know what they did to 507. I know what they do to anomalies.” She shook her head. “No. I don’t want to be an anomaly. I don’t want either of us to be an anomaly.”
“Then… what?” said Christine. “I don’t know what we should do. If we have to hide you, it’ll be hard.” Then she held up a hand. “But we can do it. I know we can. Sophie will help us, I think. Maybe Mom and Dad, if they don’t freak out. I mean, Mom’ll freak out. But I think she’ll help. Right?”
“Mom would help me,” said the other Christine. “My mom would help you, if that’s how things had gone.” Her expression twisted. “It’s alright, Christine. You don’t need to worry about fixing this.”
“What? I do!” said Christine. “So do you! We need to do something. People will notice if there’s two of me.”
“I think so,” said the other Christine. “We can’t be noticed, if we don’t want the Foundation involved.” She sighed, and slumped against the table. “There aren’t many options,” she said. She was speaking so quietly that Christine wasn’t sure the words were meant for her at all. “And traveling here, I had time to think about them all.”
“You know what you’re going to do?” said Christine.
The other Christine looked up. “Yes,” she said, “I think I’ve decided.” She was looking into Christine’s eyes, but Christine felt that, once again, her other self was seeing something different. “Do you think we’re bad people?” she said.
Christine blinked. “No. I mean—maybe. I don’t know.”
It didn’t seem to be a satisfying answer, but the other Christine nodded. “I don’t know either,” she said, playing with the spoon on the table. She spun it in a circle, seemed entranced by the way the light played off its curvature. “I never used to worry about it. But I’ve done things I didn’t think were possible for a human to do. And I did them anyway. Because I wanted to live.” She flicked at the spoon again. It spun. “Sometimes I hate myself for wanting to live so bad,” she said. “But I can’t help it. You feel the same way.”
“I think so,” said Christine. The stuffy kitchen had begun to feel very cold. “I want to live.”
“That’s what 507 said,” said the other Christine. She had stopped playing with the spoon and was sitting ramrod straight in her chair. “Before he switched back.” She shuddered. “He kept saying it,” she said. “When he was reaching out for me. Trying to get me to touch him, so he wouldn’t have to go back to that place alone. And I kept backing away, and backing away, and eventually he couldn’t catch up, and he just fell down and sobbed until he switched.” Her gaze was unwavering. “I watched it happen,” she said. “I made him die alone.”
“Well,” said Christine. Her mouth felt dry. “You had to do it. You wanted to live. I… I guess I would’ve done it too.”
The tension in the other Christine’s shoulders seemed to ease. She sighed. Even smiled a bit, the corners of the grotesque slit in her cheek flattening when she did. “We all would’ve done it,” she said. “Because every Christine Ellis is the same person. I think we’d all make the same choices I did.”
“Of course,” said Christine softly. “We’re the same.” And then she knew.
The other Christine knew that she knew. “Right,” she said, and she lunged across the table. They fell to the linoleum. Christine cracked her head hard enough that her vision blurred. She opened her mouth to scream and the other Christine forced her hands around Christine’s throat and pressed down. Christine’s scream petered off into a rattle. She felt the blood pounding in her head almost immediately, and kicked at the other Christine. Wasn’t working. Her other self bore down harder, tightened her grip. What little air Christine had been able to get was cut off. The panic set in. She wriggled, as tears worked their way loose from the corners of both eyes. Where were her arms? Couldn’t move them. Couldn’t move.
The other Christine hovered over her, and her only expression was the rictus grin of her gritted teeth flashing through her torn face, and her furrowed brows. “I’m sorry,” she was saying, over and over as her fingers dug into Christine’s throat. “There can’t be two of us. It’s got to be me. I’m sorry.” Over and over. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Her voice faded in and out like a bad telephone call. ‘m sorry. I have to live. I’m so scared. I don’t want to die. Know that’s unfair. I’ in and out, sometimes clear, sometimes static. Christine’s eyes were blurred with tears, and then with stars that crowded her vision into grey whorls and strange winking geometries. Heart beat pounding in her ears. In and out. In and out. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m
at the playground with Sophie and the other Christine, and she was crying because the other Christine wouldn’t let her get on the swings, and because she couldn’t breathe. She tugged on Mommy’s hand and tried to tell her but she couldn’t tell her because she couldn’t breathe. Sophie and the other Christine were playing together and she couldn’t play too and it was unfair and anyway the scourge was coming, tearing into concrete and the slides and the jungle gyms with thick limbs and pseudopods and tentacles and twitching veins as tough as steel, and she couldn’t breathe, and Mommy wouldn’t listen to her, and none of i t w a s f a i r—
Christine Ellis kept her hands on the other Christine’s throat for a few minutes extra, just to be sure.
When she was sure, she pulled her hands away and looked briefly at the body. It was her body, but the face was intact, and blue-black where blood had become trapped in vessels not meant to withstand that kind of pressure. She’d died with a faraway look on her face, like she’d been peering into a dimension even 507 had never seen.
Or maybe he had. When he’d switched back and fallen into the enveloping folds and the pulsing organs of the scourge, she imagined that he must have seen it too.
I never want to die, she thought. Then she shuddered, got to her feet, and vomited into the kitchen sink. She clung to the lip of the sink so hard that her knuckles went white. Her expression was so wild that her scar ached, although it had almost completely healed over at this point. I’ll have to fake it, she thought. The injury. I’ll drive the car into a tree or something. Break some glass. Cut my face to get rid of the scar tissue. And maybe it wouldn’t be entirely convincing, but who would look into it? There was no way she could have been hiding an injury like that, before. Not the Christine Ellis this world had previously known.
That Christine was staring at the ceiling with dead eyes. Christine hung onto the sink and looked at the body. Her lips reeked of vomit. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. Her throat burned. “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want to die.” She thought for a moment she would cry, but the last time she’d cried was when she’d beaten 507 away from her with a tree branch, forced him to keep his hands to himself so that she could be free in this new world while he died in their old one.
She felt like she’d been reborn. Her limbs were weak, and trembling, and she sank to the linoleum and shuddered at the coldness. “I couldn’t risk it,” she said, twisting her fingers into knots. “There couldn’t be two of us. The Foundation would have found out, and they would have done something. Gotten rid of me. No more anomaly.” Her heart hammered. “There can only ever be one Christine Ellis. I wanted it to be me. I wanted to live.” She buried her face in her hands. The mostly-healed gash throbbed, and she knew later today when she drove the car—her car, now—into a tree, and when she sliced the scar tissue open anew, the agony would be incredible. But she could bear it. She’d felt it before.
She clambered to her feet. My… the… body, she thought, I need to destroy it. Burn it, or something, if I can. And fast. A surge of emotion speared through her gut. My family—my family’s coming back soon. Mom, Dad, Sophie. Alive. They’re coming back. And they love me like they always have. I guess I’m home.
She smiled for a heartbeat, couldn’t help herself. The agony was unbelievable.