The Other Me

“Hey, wake up.” A hand shakes my shoulder in the darkness of my bedroom.

“Unnn… go away…sleeping.” I mumble pulling the duvet up over my head.

“Wake up, Annie.. it’s me … um, you… um me… Annie.”

At the sound of what she just said, I slowly pull the duvet down enough to see a dark figure standing by the bed.

My hand reaches out to the bedside lamp, switches it on and then…

“Oh my god!” I scramble up against my bedhead yanking the covers up with me, squashing the pillows out of shape.

“Keep your voice down.” She says.

I can’t stop looking at her. She’s me… I’m her… it’s a me…

Crap, “Who are you?”

“That’s going to be hard to explain.” She replies grabbing my pink dressing gown and putting it on.

It fits perfectly.

“Where are you from?”

“That’s another answer I can’t give you properly”

“What?”

“I’m from your mirror.”

“You’re fucked up. I’m calling the police!” I grab my mobile, slide the code on the screen and start dialing in triple 0.  At the second zero, I look up as she sits down on the glory box at the end of my bed. It’s then I realise: exactly what are they going to do? Who are they going to arrest? Both of us are going to end up in loony bin being examined by the men in white coats. I cancel the call and put the phone down, “So, what the hell?”

She looks at me, “You should have called the police.”

My gut turns cool, “You’re a criminal.”

Smiling, she nods, “In my world, yes. But you’re not.”

“No.”

“Exactly how do you do that?”

“What?”

“Be the goody-two-shoes without breaking a sweat?” she asked, “Because Princess, we’re two of a kind. We have the same mind, the same thoughts and feelings and wants, needs and sometimes… just sometimes, we really want to kill that reject out there.” She looked down at her bitten fingernails, inspecting them, “Only thing is that I actually go through with those feelings… whereas you don’t.”

“I have a conscience.” I said, “You don’t care.”

She looked over at me, “I have a conscience, and I do care, but really who is stopping you?”

“Nobody, but really I want to do something with my life that means something.” I said.

She snorted, “So living in a dung-heap like this is doing something with your life?”

“It depends what you do with the dung-heap.”

“Gutless wonder.”

“I’m wondering how you got to be here… I mean, how you got to be in my world? Isn’t there a paradox thing we’re breaking – or something?” I asked.

“Oh… pussy-cat is smarter than I give her credit for.”

“Fuck you.”

She put her hand to her mouth, mocking me, “Ooohh, did little Annie Kiss-Ass say a naughty word?” she starts to laugh as I look away out the window into the darkness of the night, “You want to hit me, but your goody-goody conscience won’t let you.”

“It’s not that… I don’t want to.” I reply, “Simply because you’re not worth the broken hand. And you haven’t answered my question.”

“Yeah there’s a paradox that’s being broken … and I broke it.”

“That means it’s an intergalactic crime you’ve committed, as well as a parallel universal crime.” I tell her.

“Way to go!  You’ve been reading your Douglas Adams!” she put her hand up for a high five. But when I didn’t reach out and reciprocate, she drops her hand onto her lap, “How long have you had the police on the line?”

I smile, “The whole time.”

“How long have I got?”

“You haven’t.”

“I ought to…”

“What? Kill me? You do that, you die to, bitch. Now, take off that dressing gown nice and slow."

“What’s so special about it?”

“It’s mine.” I say as the police from her world emerge from the mirror with their uniforms on backwards, wording backwards and they order her to remove the clothing she had pick up.

The Sergeant turn to me, “She didn’t touch you did she?”

“No… she shook me awake, but only touched the duvet to do that.” I say.

“Good. We still have to make sure we are taking the right one.” He indicates for my hand. As my right hand is shown, he spots my medical bracelet, “No test needed boys, we have the right one. The criminal wouldn’t put herself through renal shutdown to avoid us.”

Struggling with the other cop, she snaps, “Don’t be so sure!”

“Believe me, you wouldn’t do it… it’s painful and you wouldn’t be worth the trouble saving.” He says.  He looks at me, “And keeping you safe is the main job here. She cannot be here again.”

“How did she get here in the first place?” I ask.

“She escaped from her cell and used the guard’s key to travel through the mirrored porthole.” He said, “If Annie there had another in a parallel universe, she would be transported directly to them; and you are hers.”

“Yin and yang.”

“Yes… but instead of male and female… it’s good and bad.”

“She’ll be in higher security, won’t she?”

He nodded, “Just to keep you and other parallel universes safe.” He waited until she was escorted through the mirror, then turned to me, “I still have to do that test.”

I put my hand out where he ran a laser over the palm, read the screen and nodded, “Okay, we have the violent one. You’re safe.”

“Thank you.”

He pointed to my Aunt Ethel’s dressing gown, “Just keep that pink invisibility cloak in the wardrobe next time. We were flat out tracking her.”