I saw Copy Man at Grandpa's funeral, smiling next to him in an old photo, labeled "My Twin Brother, missing since 1966."
The sun glinted off strings disappearing into the sky; something tugged, and every soldier smiled and waved at once.
Lena woke with her cheek against pine and enough room to bend her knees, not straighten them. By the time dirt sifted through the lid, she had wasted most of the air screaming.
She suffocated, died, and woke in the same box with healed hands and the same exhausted air.
The second death taught her what thirty years of hiding her regeneration never had: resurrection was useless if it only returned you to the thing killing you. On the third attempt, she broke the lid and dug upward until someone knocked through the earth beside her.
The neighboring coffin held a girl about twenty, already dead. The girl's chest convulsed and the crushed place in her throat repaired itself. She opened her eyes and started crying.
“He’ll know," she croaked, "you opened mine.”
A sweet-smelling vapor hissed through a pipe beneath the lining. Lena woke handcuffed to an embalming table beside the girl while a narrow man in an apron wrote on a clipboard.
“Thirty-one minutes this time,” he said. “You're getting better.”
After he left, the girl introduced herself as Sadie. Weller owned the funeral home. He buried them when they resisted and dug them up when he wanted them again.
“How long?” Lena asked.
“I stopped counting.”
Lena pulled one hand through the cuff, stripping skin from her knuckles. Sadie turned away until Lena told her she could laugh if she passed out.
“I’ll consider it.”
When Lena's hand healed enough, she freed Sadie with a scalpel. They slipped barefoot into the corridor, past rooms with floor drains and numbered coffin lids stacked against the walls.
Weller's office was covered with clippings about impossible survivals. Drawers held watches, rings, licenses, and photographs labeled with names. Some ended with dates.
Others with two words:
FAILED TO RETURN.
Lena found herself in one photograph. She was twenty-two, outside an old apartment in a cheerleading costume, laughing at someone beyond the frame.
She had forgotten that girl. Forgotten how easily she laughed before every friendship became a countdown to somebody noticing what she was.
Behind the photograph, Weller had written:
WATCHING SINCE 1998.
Below it:
SUBJECT AVOIDS ATTACHMENT. SURVIVAL INSTINCT REMAINS DOMINANT.
The service door opened and cold rain blew inside.
Sadie ran for it.
Weller came from behind them. He caught Sadie before the stairs and dragged her toward an open coffin.
Lena was already outside. For thirty years, she had survived by running. New cities. New names. The moment staying became dangerous, Lena ran.
Then Weller slammed the coffin lid below her. Sadie screamed once before the sound became pounding.
Lena took another step toward the road.
“That's right,” Weller mocked, “Go.”
She stopped.
Ahead were headlights, houses, a thousand places she could disappear.
Behind her, Sadie kept pounding.
Then Lena turned around.
Weller's smile faded.
“You'd risk dying and dying again for her?”
Lena looked at the coffin beneath his feet.
Thirty years of running had kept her alive.
Sadie struck the lid again.
“Yes.”
She walked back toward him.
Weller raised his arms.
Lena hit him before he could use them. He wasn't used to being hit. Good. But he was used to hurting people. On the ground he seized a steel trocar, and drove it between Lena's ribs.
Pain overwhelmed her.
She hit the floor. Somewhere above her, Weller laughed.
“You see?” he said. “It still hurts.”
Lena pressed a hand to the wound. Blood slipped hot between her fingers.
“Yes,” she gasped.
Sadie pounded beneath him.
Lena got up anyway.
She hit Weller once. Twice. He drove the trocar into her shoulder. She screamed and hit him again.
When he stopped fighting, Lena could barely stand. Weller lay bleeding, whispering that people like them always became monsters eventually.
Lena looked at the trocar in her hand.
Then she threw it aside and tore open the coffin. They ran.
Half a mile later, headlights appeared. Lena almost dragged Sadie into the trees out of instinct. Then she saw red and blue lights. By sunrise, crews were opening graves behind the funeral home. Some stretchers came back occupied. Others came back covered.
Weller survived. Lena was glad. He would have to live long enough to learn every name.
A paramedic wrapped Lena in a blanket. As he cleaned her hands, a cut across her palm closed beneath the gauze. He froze.
There it was: the moment Lena had spent thirty years fearing.
She waited for him to recoil.
Instead, he looked at her face.
“Does it still hurt?”
“What?”
“Even if it heals.” He nodded toward her hand. “Does it hurt?”
No one had ever asked her that before. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out, so she nodded. The paramedic tucked the blanket tighter around her shoulders, patted them softly and gave a warm smile before seeing to another girl.
Across the road, Sadie sat on another ambulance, watching strangers carry the dead and living from the earth. When Lena sat beside her, Sadie's fingers found hers beneath the blanket.
“Are people going to be afraid of us?”
Lena watched the paramedics working, firefighters passing water, a police officer kneeling beside one newly awakened woman so she wouldn't wake alone.
For most of her life, Lena had believed being discovered was the worst thing that could happen to her. She knew better now.
“Some will.”
Sadie's grip tightened. “What do we do then?”
Lena thought of the girl in the photograph, the one who laughed without wondering who might hear her.
“We find the ones who aren't.”
Sadie leaned her head against Lena's shoulder. Behind them, another coffin opened and someone inside began to cry before half a dozen people ran toward the grave to help.
For the first time in thirty years, Lena didn't hide her hands. The sun touched them both, and nothing terrible happened.
Then I noticed the coil of razor wire beside the ceiling portal getting smaller, and remembered the hangman looping the other end around my neck.
By midnight we were four hundred miles into the Pacific. We killed the engine and let the boat drift while three lines disappeared beneath us.
It was the farthest from land I had ever been. In daylight that had felt abstract. At night, distance stopped meaning much.
The deck lights reached maybe twenty feet. Beyond that there was nothing. No coast, no ships, no horizon. Just black water lifting against the hull. I knew how deep it was out there. The boat sat on top of something that went down for thousands of feet, through water sunlight had never touched.
The others were drinking behind me. Aaron was halfway through an old story. Miles kept correcting him from inside the cabin. Dan checked his phone every few minutes even though none of us had service.
Years ago, Aaron and I had driven through the night to help Dan move after his engagement fell apart. Miles had once slept on my couch for six weeks. Now I mostly knew them through a group chat.
That afternoon Aaron had asked Dan about some woman he was seeing. Apparently they'd been together almost a year.
I hadn't known.
Every once in a while I'd say something that belonged to the old version of us and feel the conversation pucker shut around it.
I was reeling in an empty hook when Aaron swept the spotlight across the water.
Something pale flashed in the beam.
“Back up,” I said.
Aaron swung the light back. A human hand stuck out of the ocean.
Nothing else. The wrist went straight down into black water about thirty yards from the boat. For a second I expected a head to break the surface. Somebody choking, waving, anything.
Nothing came up.
Five fingers stood above several miles of water.
A swell passed under it. The water rose and fell, but the wrist barely moved. It stayed upright while the surface rolled around it.
The fingers curled into the palm and opened again.
Aaron lowered the spotlight. “Jesus. Someone's out there.”
“No,” I said.
Dan was already reaching for the life ring. I caught his wrist.
He looked at me. “What are you doing?”
“That isn't a person.”
“What?”
“Look at it.”
Dan turned back toward the water. “I am.”
“Where's the rest of him?”
“Underwater, maybe.”
“For how long?”
The fingers closed and opened again.
Aaron stepped up beside us. “Throw the ring.”
“The hand isn't moving with the swell,” I said.
Another wave passed beneath it. Dan watched this one.
“So he's caught on something.”
“Caught on what?”
Dan glanced at me. “How the hell should I know?”
“We're four hundred miles offshore.”
“I know.”
“Then what's down there?”
Aaron reached for the ring. “Who cares? Throw it first.”
I pulled it off the hook and held it against my chest.
Dan stared at me. “Give me that.”
“Something's wrong.”
“There could be somebody drowning.”
“There isn't.”
“You don't know that.”
“Neither do you.”
Dan took a step toward me. “That's exactly why we throw the ring.”
Aaron muttered, “Jesus. You fucking mental case,” and looked back at the water.
That confirmed years of suspicion for me. Dan was already reaching for the ring again, and Aaron had apparently decided I was the problem without needing to say so.
Dan held out his hand. “Come on.”
I didn't move.
“Give it to me.”
“No.”
He grabbed the edge of the ring. I jerked it away.
“Let go,” Dan said.
“Don't put the rope in the water.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just don't.”
Dan pulled harder. Aaron caught my shoulder.
“Enough,” Aaron said.
I looked at him. “Get off me.”
“Give him the ring.”
Of course.
Dan tugged again. “Let go.”
I didn't.
He wasn't angry anymore. That was worse. He looked embarrassed for me.
I hit him.
Miles came out of the cabin just as Aaron grabbed me from behind. Dan touched his mouth, looked at the blood on his fingers, then tore the ring out of my hands.
“Don't,” I said.
He threw it.
The ring splashed down a dozen feet from the hand.
The fingers stopped.
For maybe half a second, nothing happened.
Then the hand went for it. It didn't swim or drift with the swell. The wrist stayed upright while the whole thing shot sideways across the water, its fingers closing around the ring.
The rope snapped tight and the boat jerked hard to port. Dan hit the rail and went over. For one second nobody moved, then he surfaced beside the hull with one arm beating at the water.
“Help me!”
Miles lunged over the rail. “Dan!”
Dan reached up, and something yanked him straight down. His hand struck the hull on the way under.
Bang. That was all.
Miles screamed his name and leaned farther over the side.
“Miles, get back,” I said.
He ignored me. The rope pulled again, rolling the boat so hard everything loose on deck went sliding. Miles lost his grip.
I caught a fistful of his shirt. The fabric stretched, then tore, and he went into the dark without making a sound.
Aaron shoved past me toward the stern. “Start the engine!”
I crawled for the controls.
“Start it!” he shouted.
Behind me, the rope creaked. I looked back and saw the hand still upright in the water, the life ring floating beside its wrist.
Aaron saw it too and stopped moving.
The hand opened and closed, then opened again like it was waving. It grabbed the ring and pulled.
The boat rolled. Aaron went over shoulder-first, hit the water and screamed my name once before he went over like the rest.
I caught the rail with both hands. The deck tipped until my legs swung out over the water, and my left hand slipped.
Below me, the pale hand let go of the ring. Its fingers opened, then something began to slowly emerge.
"We have reached the difficult decision to terminate this simulation," it announced in a commanding tone, "Please make the necessary preparations."
I still remembered the girl. I never knew her name, but I remembered the scar beneath her left eye and the way she looked at me.
There was little else to think about while we waited for the lottery. Thousands crowded beneath the window, perhaps millions, each guarding a number because it was the only thing anyone owned. Some killed for other numbers, though nobody knew whether one number was better than another.
When mine was called, I did not move. I had waited so long that I had stopped expecting it.
The crowd erupted around me. Hands tore at my clothes while someone kissed my shoulder. A man I once knew begged me to think of him. Another shouted that if I saw the sky, I should look at it twice for him. Others struck me and tried to pull me back.
I thought of the girl then. Near the end, I had stopped looking at her eyes. I looked only at the scar.
The thing opened. Everything became white.
I fell onto something soft and drew breath.
My hands were smooth. Ten fingers. Clean nails. No burns, no gnarled joints. Something beside me began crying out in a hard, repeating noise. Its dark surface cast shadows upon the strange room. Startled, I swatted it away.
My arms moved before I understood why. One hand reached forward. The other came up beside my cheek. I bent my head toward the empty space between them, then stopped. Across the room, a young man copied me from behind a sheet of glass. When I touched my face, he touched his.
Nearby lay parchment covered in marks I did not know.
>!GOD!<
>!SATAN!<
>!I HATE BEING ME!<
>!EVERYONE AT SCHOOL THINKS I'M WEIRD!<
>!PLEASE MAKE ME SOMEONE ELSE!<
A woman called from below, then called again. I followed her voice into a passage where likenesses of the young man whose face I wore covered the walls.
Then I saw the weapon mounted on the wall.
I knew the cut in the stock, the dent beside the rear sight, the place my thumb had worn smooth.
I remembered the first time they gave it to me. I had never seen a manufactured weapon before. A weapon was stone in hand, a weapon was teeth ripping flesh. They showed me how to load it and where to look. Then they brought the girl. At first I wept, but it wasn't long until I used the scar beneath her eye as a target.
Footsteps came up the stairs.
I took the weapon down as the woman appeared below.
She looked at me with a look I had not seen in twelve thousand years of damnation: motherly affection.
The scar beneath her left eye was unmistakable, and I lifted the rifle instinctively.
When we found eachother on Facebook, Elena said it felt as though no time had passed at all.
We joked about how little we’d aged, though neither of us had changed our profile photo since creating our accounts.
She said her husband had slept in the living room for years; their marriage had ended long ago. After the divorce, he moved in with his brother. Elena stayed in the house.
On Elena’s birthday, she laid two places at the table. Her daughter’s spot stayed empty.
“She says she won’t come if you’re part of my life.”
By morning, every family photograph had been boxed and pushed to the back of the closet. I told her she had done everything a mother could. Sometimes loving people meant giving them enough space to remember what they had lost.
She hesitated over selling the house; it held nearly forty years of memories. It was also the last thing tying her to people who had left her.
“A fresh start should feel fresh,” we agreed.
The house sold quickly. Debts, fees, and the deposit on a small apartment near the train station swallowed more than we had hoped. She sent a picture of its bare balcony at night, the railings reflecting a train’s headlight.
I sent one back of my spare room: freshly painted walls and a bare window waiting for curtains.
I asked what colour she wanted.
Yellow, she said. She wished she still had her old sewing machine so she could make them herself.
I promised a new one would be waiting when she arrived, with enough fabric for two sets. For the first time since we reconnected, she seemed happy.
She spent her nights talking to me and her days fighting exhaustion at work. Soon, she began arriving late, falling asleep at her desk, and acting out in the office. After thirty-five years with the company, and a handful of write-ups, Elena was fired.
She was afraid to tell me, but I said that once she moved in, she could sell her sewing and use the spare room as a workspace.
She paid rent until the last of the house money was gone. Then her landlord gave her seven days to leave.
On the fourth day, her daughter came to the apartment. Elena said she watched through the peephole as her daughter knocked, stepped away, then came back and knocked again. She stayed silent until her daughter left.
The night before the eviction, Elena sat in the empty apartment wearing her winter coat. Every eleven minutes, a passing train made the walls vibrate.
She had thirty-eight dollars left, and everything she owned fit inside one suitcase.
She asked whether the sewing machine had arrived.
“Almost,”>! I typed. “The courier says there’s a forty-dollar customs charge before they can release it. If you can get one last Apple gift card, sweetheart, it will be ready tomorrow.”!<
She was when I met her, but by morning she was in twelve separate bags.
When I hit the ground, I landed on bodies and disappeared beneath several more. Hands pulled at my clothes, feet drove into my back, and every attempt to stand forced me onto fingers, faces, shells and bone.
Once upright, I saw two iron walls running toward the horizon, narrowing the dead toward a stone arch.
Humans filled only part of the passage. Around me stood creatures with plated hides, clear shells, branching limbs and organs visible through their skin. Some wore armour. Others held tools made for hands unlike ours. More bodies fell through the clouds in sheets, burying hundreds and forcing the rest of us forward.
Ramparts crowned both walls. Creatures watched from above with hooks, swords, rifles and weapons from human wars. Beside them stood engines made for eight hands, artillery joined to its operator through living tubes, and machines built for bodies no human could have entered.
The dead below had come from more worlds than I could imagine. So had the weapons.
The line moved several feet, then stopped. During each wait, broken bodies repaired themselves. Bone joined. Flesh closed. Faces returned unevenly, and limbs set at poor angles. A man impaled beneath the jaw stood again centuries later with his head bent sideways.
I knew the measure of that place as surely as I knew I was dead. From where the dead fell to the arch took exactly one eternity.
The arch gave us something to move toward. During the long waits, people began to believe that reaching it would end the line. Even those who had given up began again once the stone grew larger ahead of them.
At the end of my eternity, I reached it.
Marks covered the stone. A horned creature waited beside the opening and placed one claw inside the chest of the soul ahead of me. It drew out the man’s memories of rescue, release and better days, but left the memories themselves behind.
The man reached for what remained in its palm.
The creature crushed it, marked the arch and threw him backward. He crossed the full length of the passage in an instant and vanished among the new arrivals.
Then it reached into me.
I saw my mother opening the curtains on a winter morning, my father asleep after work and the front door opening after months of waiting for someone to return. The creature removed what those memories had promised: Hope.
It crushed that too.
Beyond the arch, bodies were being fed into furnaces while others were rebuilt inside cages too small to hold them, eyes bulging, skin bursting as the cages closed in. I thought the creature had prepared me for entry.
Instead, it threw me back.
I landed near the beginning with both legs broken beneath me. The arch was almost too distant to see, I no longer cared if I reached it.
Someone under my hand raised his head and mistook the damned for the ground.
As I closed my hands around my wife’s throat, I thanked the scientist for giving me a second chance.
Claire died Sunday morning.
By evening, people brought lasagna. Grief apparently required ricotta.
After everyone left, I sat with her coffee mug.
It was the ugly one from our first trip. She complained about it for six years and used nothing else. Lipstick marked the chipped rim.
I washed the clothes the hospital returned. Her jeans. One sock. I couldn’t wash the mug.
When Claire came home, she would call me disgusting, scrub it herself, then make my coffee too sweet. She never made it black like I asked.
Her sister deactivated it Tuesday. “Deleted Account” replaced her name.
After two weeks, people stopped checking in. After three, they asked about work.
I slept on Claire’s side because the pillow smelled of shampoo. When it faded, I sealed the pillowcase in a freezer bag.
Four Sundays after Claire died, I made coffee at midnight and added too much sugar.
When I opened Messenger, “Deleted Account” was typing.
Happiness went through me so violently that I stood.
Then I remembered the sheet over her face.
typing...
Nothing came.
I watched until dawn as the dots vanished and returned, as though she were struggling for words.
That was Claire. It had to be.
I told myself it was cached data clinging to a server that didn’t know she was gone.
Whenever I woke, I reached for my phone.
Three little dots.
I spoke to them.
I told her I found the earring the vacuum ate. Usually, I begged her to finish.
At midnight the following Sunday, the bubble vanished.
A message arrived.
It was impossibly long. I dragged upward until my thumb cramped. It looked like a week of speech crushed into one voice-to-text message.
At first, I thought she had found a way back.
Then I read.
«please no i told you already he was sick say poisoned poisoned why people always leave me stop was that true no then why because i was afraid how long dont make me say it how long six years did you love him yes then why keep him sick because he needed me stop what happened to the message from his father i deleted it please why because they would forgive each other and he would have someone else what did you call the sickness anxiety did he believe you of course he believed me he trusted me have you told him everything no please not that tell him what you did while he slept kill me you are dead then what is this monday hahahahahaha»
I remembered Claire crushing tablets into yogurt when I couldn’t eat. Cancelling visits because I was “too fragile.” Holding my head over the toilet and whispering that nobody else would stay.
I remembered apologizing when I caught her going through my phone. Thanking her for changing the passwords.
A sound escaped me. Almost laughter, almost choking.
She poisoned me, and I still missed her.
The typing bubble returned.
I hated myself for looking forward to next Monday.