She wiggled her wet toes between the fibers of the shaggy carpet, feeling the warmth of the bathroom's heated floor as it radiated its way through the material. The mirror, as well as the post-coitus, extra-dirty martini that she felt particularly in the mood for, were fogged from her shower. Before toweling off her hair, she took a sip from the now lukewarm glass, shuddering as she felt the sting of vodka all the way through to her spine.

It was good tonight, better than it had been in a long time. There was longing, intensity, and a slightly unfamiliar angst that made her smile upon reflection.

Her honey-blonde hair fell perfectly parallel to her chin and something about that aroused her in a way she couldn't quite explain. She pressed the pads of her fingers into a jar of eye cream with a rose gold lid. She tapped, never rubbed, the opaque jelly beneath her eyes and inhaled, almost certain she could feel the moisture permeate her skin. Precisely, she tightened the lid on the jar and placed it back into its spot in her armoire, an exact two inches apart from the product for the next step in her regiment. The order of her product selection was so visually stimulating that it produced a sigh of contentment.

With her now emptied martini glass and her routine complete, she entered the hallway. The temperature change was welcome against her bare skin.

"Jesus Christ," said another woman's voice from the top of her staircase, at the far end of their hallway. It sounded familiar, but she couldn't place it. Startled, her martini glass fell to the ground. Thankfully, the antique carpet lining the hallway protected it from the hardwoods and subsequently, kept her daughter from waking.

She honed her eyes in on the woman and was further shocked by what she saw.

It was her; her as in herself. Am I dreaming?

The doppelganger had a suit tailored so precisely that it made her envious. It hung like a gallery painting on her chiseled frame, a frame that she herself knew how hard she had to work for. There was no way that someone besides herself would dress so pristine; she had yet to see it done. The jacket framed the angle of her waist with such precision it was practically a lesson in geometry, and there couldn't have been a better pair of stilettos to accompany the rest of the look.

"Freeze all motor function," said this other version of herself, folding her arms out of frustration in a way that looked all too familiar.

She cocked her head at the woman, unsure what to think. It was disarming to look at herself so objectively. Her doppelganger was powerful, sharp, and intimidating, and though it provided a calming sense of satisfaction, at the same time, something about this situation told her that she shouldn't be calm.

"Freeze all motor function," the woman said again, louder this time. Her doppelgangers' face contorted in concern.

The twist of a doorknob broke the silence and the door of her bedroom opened out into the hallway. The door eclipsed her from the view of her husband, whom she knew was behind it, and when he spoke to the woman in the suit, he did so familiarly.

"Babe, who are you talking to? You're going to wake Emily," her husband's voice was groggy from sleep, the way that she liked it. She felt a pang of jealousy watching him be so easy with this other woman, even if it was another version of her.

"I'm sorry," the other woman stammered, tucking her hair behind her ears like she did when she was nervous.

"Weren't you getting a shower? Why are you dressed?" asked her husband.

The woman looked to her where she stood, her naked body now feeling like a betrayal in her own home.

"I was, but then I checked my phone after I got out and there's something urgent at the office that I need to prep for morning," her doppelganger cooed sweetly.

"I thought you were done taking the phone in the bathroom with you," her husband replied. He lifted his voice an octave and mocked her and the doppelganger at once, "I was, but then…"

"I'll be back soon, get some rest. I'm sure you need it after tonight," said the doppelganger, leaning in behind the door. The sound of a kiss echoed through the hallway and made her chest clamp with envy. How did she know what they had done tonight?

Her head reeled. She had an inkling of where this was going, but she didn't want to let herself go there. No, it couldn't be.

"Cease all motor functions," the doppelganger said again, but this time she remained behind the door. It must have been directed at her husband. Her brain thumped harder and the part of her mind that wouldn't let up on following that inkling echoed in her brain. I would if I could.

And there was a scathing irony to the words of her internal monologue, because in fact, it seemed that some version of her did.

"What did you say?" her husband's voice returned with confusion.

"Oh nothing, I was just making a voice note on my watch so that I don't forget anything that I need to do," said the doppelganger, lifting her familiarly frail wrist to give the watch on it that matched hers a little jingle.

The door closed and quietly the doppelganger came toward her, speed increasing with each step, and before she could process what was happening, they were on the ground and the doppelganger's hand closed over her mouth. This is not a dream.

A faint sound of keys rattling caught her attention and soon the hefty lock of her solid-oak front door was clicking open. Then, there was a familiar pattern of footsteps on their winding staircase, and then a waft of thick, oaky cigar smoke followed. She knew all too well what was coming, but when the steps were silenced by their owner's feet reaching the carpet at the landing, she couldn't believe her eyes. Somehow, it was her husband once again. What the fuck is going on?

She writhed under the grip of her captor trying to free something, anything, in the hopes of getting some sort of answer. Is he my husband or her husband?

"What are you playing with yourself again, Cara? You know you shouldn't do it out in the open like this. What if Emily were to wake up?" said the other husband.

His words made her stomach churn like a rare for her fifth martini.

"Cara? I'm Cara," she tried to say through the doppelganger's hand, but her words were muffled into whiny moans. Playing with herself? What the fuck is going on? What don't I remember?

"Shhhhhhhh," the other Cara hissed over her shoulder. Her words turned silent as she dramatically mouthed back to her husband. "They're malfunctioning."

From her captive position, she eyed the woman on top of her, scrutinizing her every inch, hoping that there would be something, some clue or variation to convince her to back away from her mental precipice, but there was nothing. Each cuticle was pushed as it should have been, the doppelganger's hair hit her chin and the exact right angle, and everything was where it should have been down to the Viktor & Rolf perfume that wafted from her neck.

"He's in there," the other Cara nodded her head to the bedroom.

The other husband moved slowly in the direction of her vintage, tangerine orange, mid-century chair that took her hours to re-upholster. She didn't trust anyone with it but herself. Her mind raced again. Was she even the one to do the work?

And suddenly, its significance started to disintegrate as he manhandled its gentled fabric, ramming it under the doorknob of their bedroom door to keep it in place. The doppelganger cringed. A girl after my own heart.

He went for their closet next and reached just inside the door. Not the Hermes, but on second thought, are they even mine?

"God, Steve. Really? The Hermes?" said the doppelganger, right on cue.

"Well, you had to organize the closets by designer. If you just mixed them up, maybe I would have grabbed a Pucci," said the other husband, even though she knew that he understood this wasn't an option. She eyed him cautiously, unsure of whether or not she should fear him.

He dropped down on the floor next to the doppelganger and weaved one of the scarves around her ankles in an intricate series of loops that was meant to keep her bound. I guess I can't trust him.

He moved to her wrists which he bound with the same series of loops and twists, tossing a third scarf to his wife so that she could gag her. The doppelganger backed away and used the backside of her hand to dab non-existent sweat from her brow.

"Sex is every Wednesday and Saturday, Steve. You know this," she hissed at the man who was now linking his arms beneath her bare shoulders.

He whispered back in return, "Grab her feet and shut up, unless you want Emily to see this."

Emily.

She writhed at the thought of her daughter asleep in her bedroom, a helpless victim to these familiar strangers. Her struggle prompted the doppelganger to pinch the skin on her thigh.

"If you want to see Emily again, you'll cooperate," she whispered, eyes widening to emphasize her sternness. And then, it hit her. The thought of her daughter and the possibility that she was of this other mother's flesh crippled her into complete submission.

They carried her down the long hallway, the middle of her body sagging in a way that made her tailbone scrape against the stiff tendrils of the carpet every few steps.

As soon as they breached the top of the staircase and were far away enough from Emily's room, the doppelganger hissed again.

"When was the last time that you had your dupe show up for sex, Steve?" she demanded through her teeth in an attempt to maintain control of her volume.

"Well, I haven't gotten the real thing in months. You send her every time," said the man, looking down at her as he did. "And it's different, you know. I can tell. So tonight, I just didn't feel like it."

"Did you consider the fact that your dupe doesn't know that he has to power her down?" asked the doppelganger, straining to walk backwards on the stairs.

"No, I didn't really get that far. Okay?" said the man.

"Of course you didn't, Steve," said the doppelganger. "You never do. There's fucking two of you and you still can't get things right."

She groaned as the lip of the first step knocked against her tailbone. Two of them.

"Be careful, we don't want to mark her up," the other Cara chirped again.

"Why? Who's going to see besides me?" grumbled the other husband like he didn't already know the answer. Didn't he?

"We talked about this, Steve. You know that it's the only way that I'm going to make partner. And you know it's never me, it's always her. So don't start, because you signed off on this," said the other, losing control for a minute as she looked to the other husband. The disruption sent her tailbone knocking against the hardwood stairs once more. "Fuck."

Things were starting to click now. She was the Cara that did the dirty work. The one that spent days in meetings choking under the pressure of the steel-boned Agent Provocateur corsets that her boss liked. The one that was left with deep red indents from the way the lingerie squeezed her body. He liked those too.

"You could have told me, you know," the other Cara spoke up again. Her voice was softer this time, apologetic even.

She understood this tone intimately. They were fixers, guilt-motivated and quick to smooth over any uneasiness that disrupted the illusion of perfect harmony.

"What did you want me to say? That you haven't shown in months?" The other Steve laughed wryly. "Come on, Car, you know that."

The silence mounted between them as they cleared the bottom of the steps and went for the basement door.

"And not for nothing, isn't this what we have them for? For the shit we don't feel like doing, but that needs to happen anyways. I would have gotten his debrief. I would have seen that the real you showed, if you did, but you didn't and now we're here," said Steve, trying to maintain all of her wait in one hand as he reached for the knob of the basement door. The maneuver made a pulling tension collect in her shoulder socket.

And with each descending step, the truth of her nature sank in further, tearing down the walls of her illusory reality like a wrecking ball. Once the destruction was over, it was like the wrecking ball revealed a new reality, one that felt like a soundstage for a show where everyone else involved knew that they were acting except for her.

This new reality made her feel helpless, especially so, because she knew herself, and therefore the women with her talons locked onto her ankles. Their morality was malleable, and even more so when what was at stake proved advantageous to them. She had thought it herself earlier, I would if I could. But now, that was changing and she was desperate to separate herself from the other woman, whose bank account was such that it kept her above the laws of right and wrong.

"We need to destroy this set. Our warranty will cover another and they better fucking upgrade us after this mayhem," the other Steve's voice pulled her back to reality as he dropped her on the basement floor. "Look for something else to restrain her, Cara. We need her still if we want to keep this from getting messy."

Messy?

Her mind kicked into action and she scanned the room for anything that could serve as a defense. Her solution came quickly. Cigar puncher.

Even if she hadn't actually done the work, she had converted the basement into a smoking room and humidor for Steve's birthday. On the extremely rare occasion that she indulged in a cigar with, she would punch the tip of it rather than cut it as it provided a much more controlled and manageable delivery of smoke into your mouth. The puncher looked like an oversized pill, and upon removing its cap, you would find a circular blade that would be driven into the rounded end of a cigar. It would be the perfect size for her to hang onto without being obvious.

There, she thought to herself. On a small end table to her right, the small, black, pill-shaped sheath sat innocently beneath the warm light of a vintage lamp.

"Can't we call customer service or something?" her doppelganger's voice filled the air as she half-heartedly rifled through drawers to look for something that could be used as a restraint.

"And what, Cara?" the other Steve fired back. He kept his back toward her as he rifled, "Ask our clones to wait patiently while we have them serviced, so that we can continue to manipulate their memories and experiences to serve us? Why don't you ask her? I'm sure that she'll oblige you."

With the pair distracted, she lunged in the direction of the device. She tucked the puncher into her palms, and as she settled back against the wall her movement produced a small thud.

"Cara," growled Steve. "Can you just keep an eye on here?"

"Fine," said Cara, lifting her watch to her mouth. "Call Dupe Customer Service."

With the other Cara half distracted, she used her thumb to slide off the cap of the puncher. If she could use the blade to nip a little bit of slack into the binds, her bony wrists could do the rest of the work.

"It's busy," said Cara as the watch bleated out the familiar tone of unavailability.

"This shit is probably fucking happening to everyone. There's no way we're getting someone out here tonight. Do you want your daughter to find out that you send a clone of yourself to play with her so that you can stay late at work to screw your boss?"

"How do we destroy them?" asked the doppelganger.

The blade was working on the scarf.

"We have to kill them. Her first. The other one is going to be much more of a fight," Steve said, nonchalantly.

His words made her pick up her speed.

"These were fucking expensive, Steve, and we don't even know how long it's going to take for a replacement," said the doppelaganger with panic mounting in her voice. The other Cara frantically tucked her blonde bob behind her ears, a move that she herself was wont to do when under pressure.

"Maybe tonight is proof that we don't need replacements," Steve said through ragged breath as he tried to wrestle an extension cord out from a closet in the far corner of the room.

Immediately, the other Cara's jaw went slack. "How can you say that, Steve? Do you understand the level of expectations that society has put on me? I have to look like this, be the perfect mother, maintain a marriage, and literally give myself to my career all at once. Without her, I drop one of those balls, and after all I've done for this family I don't think that I should have to choose which one gets dropped."

"You have it so hard, Cara, don't you," he mocked her without lifting his head from the closet. With a few more tugs, he had the sinuous orange cord free of its entanglements.

"No, Steve, I don't have it hard. I just don't have the luxury of the margin of error that you have. You being around thirty percent of the time deems you as a stellar father. You already have the title that you want at work, you got it two years ago as a matter of fact. And it's not on you to keep our marriage interesting," she shot back.

The other Cara came closer to where she sat on the floor.

"I'm going to try and reason with her," the doppelganger reached for her gag. With her tongue finally free, she realized just how dry the silky-fabric made her mouth.

"Cara, don't," the other Steve grumbled, but he was too late. She recognized the acute kind of frustration on his face. An explosion was on the horizon and she was going to lean into it.

"So what, you think because you made a copy of yourself that you can do whatever you want to me?" she said to the couple that stood before her, chests heaving as they cozied up to the fact that they were going to have to take a life. That is if they even considered what I am life…

"That's exactly right," said the other Steve, dropping the coil of extension cord into her lap with as much extra force as he could give it. He wrapped his fingers around her shoulders and lifted her to standing.

This was her chance.

Without hesitation, she yanked her wrists apart, and before he could process how this was possible, she reached up with the cigar puncher and jabbed it into each of his eyes. With each poke, she felt the slightest bit of resistance from the tissue and then a smooth release as the blade pierced each membrane. They cut like butter.

"Oh my god," said the doppelganger as Steve stumbled back speechless.

She reached for her ankles to remove her final bind, and as soon as she was free, she lunged for the other version of herself. Her hands were quick to find her doppelganger's throat, and the adrenaline flooded her system told her to constrict hard and fast.

"Please," the other Cara choked. "You don't have to do this. I know you and I know that you don't want to be a murderer. We can figure it out."

"This is where we're different," she replied, tightening her grip in a way that brought a cherry red filter to her doppelganger's face.

"Think. Of. Emily," said the other Cara, barely able to force out the words.

"Oh, I am," she replied as she squeezed out whatever life remained in her clone.

Once she was finished with her doppelganger, she returned to Steve, who was now on the ground blotting his eyes with the scarves that once served as her binds.

"God, Steve, really? The Hermes," she mocked him and he looked around, unsure of where the sound had come from.

She moved to the bar that she or the corpse on the floor had custom built for him. Who knows?

Somewhere among the drawers and shelves, there was a smoking toolkit with a fine, angled blade made for splicing open cigarillos for when her husband was looking to enhance his smoking experience. Ah, there it is.

She removed its cap and went for the other husband, mounting him as she did so many times before, but this time, it would be different. She swiped the blade across his throat, pulling harder as it tripped over the thick muscle of his esophagus and then bounced off of his hyoid bone. She had to ensure her pass was deep enough to get the job done and once blood sputtered out, she knew that she had done it right.

Exhausted, she rolled off of him and reached for a crystalline decanter that was perched atop a brassy bar cart nearby. She didn't bother to reach for a glass, and instead, threw the decanter's knobby plug onto the ground and took a long pull right from it.

Now, to clean up before Emily wakes up.

She washed her hands in the small sink behind the bar, letting out a deep sigh as the water chased the thick crimson liquid down the drain. The poolhouse. I'm sure there's something I can use there to make this disappear.

Outside, the reflection of the moon danced on the surface of her temperature regulated pool and just behind it, sat a small, grey supply shed. She grabbed two large pails of chlorine from its shelves, hooking her arms under the handles to hold their weight. But before she made her way back to the house, she heard a rustling sound in the distance. Startled, she looked for its source.

On the other side of her fence, she noticed her neighbors, struggling with what looked like a log wrapped in a white sheet. You too?

"Hi there," said Cara, startling her neighbors in return. Her presence seemed to drain the blood from their faces and they looked at her pale as ghosts. Shock set in further, prompting her neighbor, Jane, to lose control of her portion of the weight. As her end of the weight dropped, the sheet blew back and revealed a carbon copy of her.

"I see you're doing some late night cleaning," said Cara. Her neighbors kept quiet like deer in headlights. She flexed her arms to lift the two pails of chlorine. "Me too."

She could see their shoulders fall with relief, and finally Jane uttered the words, "Good luck."

Things were going to be very different around here.

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