Love and Magick, A Short Story Double Feature Read Free

life-like
dummy. A kind of Madame Tussaud's wax replica. But before long, I
saw the thing was in motion. "Oh my God, it's sleeping."
    Slowly, very slowly, I drew my hand back.
Suddenly, the world seemed a very alien place. Prodigy or no,
Feldspar was right, I wasn’t prepared for this.
    “No,” I said. “I don't like this.” I left
the room and closed the door.
    ***
    I sat in Rosie’s room, phone in hand,
fingers poised on the buttons for how long I don’t know. I
contemplated dialing 911, then Rosie, then my family, then 911
again. After what seemed like hours I put the phone down. The sun
had set long ago and the last vestiges of pink had faded to black.
She—me, my doppelganger—was in my room. Did I dare check again? I
didn’t see the use. If I were hallucinating then I would see it. If
I weren’t hallucinating and she was really there, then I would see
it. Either way, I would see it. And I did not want to see it.
    As a little girl I had played a game of See
What’s In The Closet. Nothing but the mundane had ever been in the
closet, aside from my make believe. Now, it seemed the game played
me and here I was looking back at myself.
    So what's so scary?
    A funny thing happened: I decided to go back
in there. I turned on all the lights in the house. The last thing I
needed was to be spooked by the fuzzy outlines of clothes and
furniture. Then, in some adrenaline-fueled movie scene moment, I
pushed open the door and stood my ground.
    Of course the one light I hadn’t turned on
was the one in here. But the moon, my God, it filled this room like
no other night.
    “Enough,” I told myself and clapped my
hands. “Get up,” I shouted. Then I cleared my throat and said in a
stern voice, “Wake up!”
    The sleeper lay still, in the gentle rise
and fall of slumber. I repeated my command three more times, louder
each time. It would have woken any healthy person, I knew. But,
perhaps this wasn’t a healthy person.
    I crept closer much to the chagrin of my
better judgment. Then I outright screamed at the sleeper. “Get the
fuck up!”
    My nerves had gotten to me, I was really
keyed up.
    Not a single flinch. I shook my head. How
was this possible?
    Whatever. I was in this situation and I
would play it out, all the way, to see where it led. I had to. I
was simply not willing to turn back.
    I reached for the blankets and yanked them.
Still no movement. I stripped them all the way past her shoulders
exposing her breasts, her hips and her feet, uncovering the woman
who lay there, asleep.
    I gasped.
    Not just her face, but her body, every part
of her was a perfect replication, down to the beige birthmark on
the right thigh, like a coffee stain, still visible in the
moonlight. But with one exception: she had two legs.
    There is an entirely eerie precedent set in
your life when you see yourself like this. I can’t explain it; one
just has to experience it. There is also something very beautiful
about it. I realized at that moment how beautiful I was, or had
been, which one I wasn’t certain. Looking at her, lying on my bed,
made me appreciate her deeply, and I guess in that light, I was
appreciating myself.
    I stared for awhile, at first from novelty
and then, the longer I looked the more I felt it.
    Love.
    It hit me. I felt it so deep, as if my heart
would burst, as if I couldn’t hold that much love inside me.
    As I examined her I found not only two whole
legs, but also no abrasions or scars. Not even the tiny holes in
her ears from piercing. The Highway Incident had left me with a
host of unsightly scars that, even after reconstructive surgery,
remained. Not my face, thank the Goddess; my face was spared that
unholy night, but my abdomen and just under my left breast had
sustained several unsightly abrasions. This body double had none of
these. She was truly a whole me.
    And for a moment as brief as a cat’s meow, I
fancied it was I who lay in that bed, asleep.
    No, wait. I shook it off.
    “I’m in my own…I’m in