CW: graphic violence, murder, dismemberment, self-harm, death.
Story background: I’m probably not the only person dealing with intrusive thoughts about everything I’ve ever said or done, or not said or not done, that I wish I could change. Sometimes I’ve wished I could shout at the past versions of myself, but in this story, I wondered what would happen if someone took things several steps further than shouting.
If Brenna hadn’t forgotten her wallet, it might’ve been months before she caught herself in her apartment.
The other version of her dated back a few months, from just after the breakup: pale and pathetic, still wearing one of Ivy’s fucking hoodies. When the door banged open again, she froze in front of the open fridge, clutching a half-eaten container of leftover falafel. “What the fuck?”
The falafel fell to the ground.
Brenna hated her on sight: instinctively, desperately, completely. She’d worked so hard to be—not this. She lurched into motion, and her other self jumped, too: It wasn’t, of course, the first time for either of them.
The old version went for the wooden cutting board, cowering behind it like a shield. New-and-improved Brenna snatched a dirty knife from the sink. Yes: Her good chef’s knife, the one with the steel core. She lunged, trying to thrust the knife up under the board. But her old self anticipated the move, shoving the cutting board between herself and Brenna. She screamed when the knife struck wood and shuddered in Brenna’s hand.
Brenna put space between them, adjusting her grip on the knife.
Her other self watched her warily. “We don’t have to do this,” her other self said. In her thick, hoarse voice, Brenna could hear the river of tears she had cried, the rime of dairy from the ice cream she’d tried to freeze her problems away with. “Look. Look. I understand you, better than anyone else—”
The second time, Brenna drove up and over the board, ripping into her own scrawny neck. No scream this time. Her other self staggered, silent words bursting in bloody bubbles on her lips, until she slowly, inevitably, toppled. Brenna caught the cutting board before it hit the floor.
She kept a roll of sturdy black garbage bags under the sink. After a quick text to her friends—not feeling great, won’t make it tonight—she set to work carving herself up into smaller, more manageable pieces. Head first, to get rid of the vapid shock on her own lifeless face. The knife caught, complaining, in a knot of connective tissue. Ruined for future cooking. How was she going to get rid of herself? She’d sold her car when she’d moved to the city.
The good news about killing your old selves was that no one ever reported you missing.
She’d finished bagging herself up and turned on the shower, as steamy as the elderly water heater would allow, when someone knocked at the door.
She stripped off her sweater, which was scarlet to the elbows, and left it on the bathroom floor behind the toilet. When she stood on her toes to check the peephole, Ivy stood huddled on the landing outside her door. “Brenna?” she whispered. “Are you there? I can hear you.”
Brenna opened the door only as far as the safety chain would allow. “What the fuck are you doing here? How do you even know my address?”
“I got your letter. And your texts. And emails.” Fucking Old Brenna. But New Brenna noticed the hitch she’d never heard before in Ivy’s voice, cracks in her lips that her purple lipstick couldn’t hide. “I know things were . . . fucked up, with us, sometimes. But I missed you, too.”
“No, you didn’t,” said Brenna viciously, and Ivy’s bewildered hurt erupted into a spray of blood and broken teeth.
Brenna flinched but couldn’t look away as Ivy, inexorable, methodical, armed with a metal bike lock, destroyed Ivy. When it was over, she straightened. “So,” she said. Not sad, not broken, like the other version of herself. Just tired. Tired of Brenna? Tired of this? “This is awkward.”
Her gaze drifted to the spatter of dried blood on Brenna’s jeans. “Ah. That explains some things. I assume you have trash bags? My truck is here, on a meter.”
“ . . . Yeah.” Brenna unlatched the door, standing aside. “Come on in.”
The tension between them slackened as they cleaned up their respective messes, took turns in the shower, found Ivy a clean sweater to borrow. Hard to be tense, as you fall back into too-familiar routines: cut, cram, clean. Or as you’re one-two-three’ing the old hacked-up parts of each other into a truck bed. Obscene, and hysterical, but not tense. It had been a long time since Brenna had looked at Ivy’s coffee-stained smile, the one that showed all her teeth, without wondering when the bite would follow.
“Thanks,” Ivy said, after she’d slammed the truck bed shut. “I’ll dump them at the lake on my way back.” The usual place. A memory slammed into Brenna, a thermos of coffee and the old, stained aluminum boat sleeping under its tarp. “Good to see you again. Glad you’re doing okay after—everything.”
“You too,” said Brenna, only halfway lying. She stayed on the curb, watching, until the truck turned at the next street corner. Only then did she remember that she’d forgotten to say anything about returning the loaned sweatshirt. Too late now, probably. Maybe. Except . . . she still had Ivy’s number, not in her phone (unless Old Brenna had been worse about hiding her tracks than she expected), but wired permanently into her memories, only the last two digits different from her own. It ran through her head as she let herself back into the apartment—where had she left her phone? She turned toward the charger on the counter, but saw only the flash of the bloodstained butcher’s knife.
