Page 6 of Death and Do-Overs

I flipped through my keys.

Distant thunder crackled across the sky, a threat of the type of storm that belonged in the middle of July instead of the end of October. Nature didn’t care about calendars.

As soon as possible, I’d need to get the dogs out. No one wanted to pee outside in a thunderstorm.

I opened the door, scooped up the box, and headed in. I set down the box and my belongings on the nearest exam table and flipped the lights.

If the box was in fact filled with kittens, as our overnight surprise deliveries usually were, this batch was particularly quiet and particularly still.

That was never a good sign.

A sinking feeling settling in my chest, I put on a pair of thick work gloves and flipped the box open.

Beneath the cardboard flaps, there weren't any kittens.

There was a single, unmoving object in the box, eyes open and staring up at me.

I knew those eyes as well as I knew my own, because they were my own.

A tsunami of shock surged through my veins, a glacial force numbing every molecule of my body from the inside out. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think.

The object was my head.

CHAPTER 2

MAR

Istared unblinking at the head in the box. The hair was black with bangs, like mine. The cheeks were round, like mine. The lips were big, and coated in blood-red lipstick, like mine. I recognized the perpetual frown lines from the mirror, but the complexion was too pale, and the skin at the edge of the lips was cracked and peeling.

It looked like a horror movie prop made of clay and plaster, not flesh and bone.

This couldn’t be real.

This was all some elaborate prank by Wendy or Imogen to….

No, neither of them was the type to find something like this funny. Imogen was a giant ball of sunshine, so ridiculously positive that sometimes I felt like looking at her would permanently burn spots into my retinas.

Wendy’s presence wasn’t so abrasive, but she was loyal, earnest, and not at all antagonistic except in defense of someone she cared about. Mock her best friend Rose, and Wendy would get stabby. I was equally certain she would never send me something like this.

Sending a head in a box as a prank was more like somethingIwould do. That meant…maybe Nie had done it.

Had my clone sent this prop as perverse proof that while on her exciting new adventure to explore the world she still took the time to think of me? This was the most reasonable explanation for the disturbing sight on the exam table in front of me.

Shock waned to mild disturbance, and I tried to find humor in the “gift.” Tomorrow was Halloween, so the timing was perfect. I could set this in the window of my home, or hide it in the medicine cabinet to startle Jayden so thoroughly he’d wet his pants. ‘Tis the season.

Perhaps there was something more to see in the box. Maybe a little note from Nie that explained the history of the object. Or maybe a note about the clearly-gifted artisan who’d crafted our likeness.

I didn’t see a note. Hmm.

I searched the face for a maker’s mark, along with proof of its manufactured nature. I couldn’t find any seams in the rubber.

The black eyeliner was slightly uneven on the left wing. Was that proof?

I checked the mirror on the side wall, and to my chagrin, found my own cat eye slightly off.

All right, the eyes were the next point to check, right? As a suspicious man had recently pointed out, the eyes were the window to the soul. There I’d find the truth.

The open eyes staring up at me had a foggy appearance. Beneath the obscuring haze, the irises were the blandest shade irises could be—graphite.

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