“I’m not getting in that box, Mother.” I could bolt, but if I do I’ll have to leave the CeCe double behind, evaporating in a cloud of black smoke. Humans are not made for speed. “Look,” I say, pointing at CeCe’s body, “I’m nineteen. I don’t have to go anywhere with you.”
“You’re a doppelganger, not a human. Age makes no difference. You’re a fledgling and you’re body jumping, imbibing in alcohol, having sexual relations with whatever crosses your path—I saw your little gutter-slut with that man in the alley the other night! Don’t tell me it wasn’t you!—and most of all, you’re leaving a trail of unexplainable situations a mile long! Move it.” She shakes the box at me. I wonder if she even knows what was originally packaged in it and what it was used for.
“Gutter-slut,” I say, pointing at my host’s body again, “has a name. CeCe. The real CeCe was not sucking down the drinks or fornicating in an alley. I was, with her borrowed body. It could be worse, Mother. The real CeCe could be shopping across the street, or I could have told the real CeCe about us, taken her Down Under, and both of us could’ve joined you at Purgatory. But none of that happened—did it?—because the real CeCe is in Europe for the month. My last body was in the hospital in a coma for, like, forever! So, I am not body jumping!”
Tampon box waving, Mother says, “You most certainly—”
“And,” I say with a fair share of drama, “if you can tell me one thing I’ve done that is worse than killing every human you dress yourself in, I’ll hit the sewer and stay there.”
I stare at the stupid tampon box and shudder. If I shed the human double I’m wearing, the sunlight will turn me into gray powder. Mother will scoop me up, carry my remains to the nearest sewer grate, and toss me in. Once out of the sun—and the eyes of humans—I will reform into my dark, ugly, ghoulish, scare-up-a-heart-attack doppelganger self. Not going to happen.
Mother fills her lungs with air, not something she needs to do, but it keeps the cadaver she’s wearing fresh. “That is how we survive—from one body to the next—you know the rules. Doubling up is strongly discouraged.”
Slathering coconut-smelling oil over CeCe’s legs and firm flat belly, I ignore the bulbous woman with gray, freshly permed hair, flowered dress, and rolled down support hose my mother is dressed in and speak directly to the monster underneath. “We have no right to play God, to take a perfectly healthy human that suits our needs, wants, or curiosities, and suck the life out of her or him just to exist for another few days, weeks, whatever. You could find someone dying in a hospital, or an automobile accident or something, and slip in five minutes before the light winks out. Or you could just double up on a human, like I prefer to do—like our ancestors did—and then whoosh, shed it like a snakeskin when there’s a threat of discovery.”
“Borrowing leaves a trail and we stopped doing that hundreds of years ago for that very reason.”
The eyes on the poor woman she wears are stretched wide and beginning to milk over; the veins in her neck are near bursting. It saddens me, but I guess that really doesn’t matter. My mother has already killed her.
I put the lotion down and settle back, sliding my sunglasses on as my mother moves up beside me and blocks the damn sun on the upper part of CeCe’s body. Crap, I need a distraction, and it isn’t even lunchtime.
“What if someone recognized that—” Mother points at my new host and glares with the old lady’s face wrinkled in disgust. “—very ripe body fornicating with that young man in the alley, and tells someone the girl knows? Or worse yet, the young man in question confront the owner when it gets back?”
CeCe’s perfectly manicured acrylics wave away the questions. “But she wasn’t in the alley. I was. The real CeCe’ll say so, should anyone ask, and all will be well with the world.” I fan my fingers. “You’re blocking my sun.”
When Mother sidles a bit to her right, I continue. “We may not be using the same methods we used ’hundreds of years ago,’” I say, using two fingers on each hand to accentuate the quote, “but the humans are still using the phrase ’everyone has a double,’ labeling our kind politically incorrect by plastering pictures up on the Internet to back up this idiocy. Nicolas Cage’s double is some guy from before the dinosaurs—humans have no clue—and the same with Justin Timberlake, and a plethora of other examples under the heading of doppelgangers—sheesh—more like reincarnation. But hey, it helps to have some idiot tell anyone that will listen that truth is weirder than fiction and doppelgangers do exist. Nobody really believes it—it’s a perfect setup.”
My host’s delicate fingers slide her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose, and rich brown eyes twinkle at my mother. “Besides, what’s so much better about walking around in broad daylight dressed in a dead chick? Like no one notices that?”