Splitsville (Unedited Draft)

Chapter Two- Mary, Anne

MARYANNE\'S DORMROOM . . .

\"This is not happening. This is not happening. This is not happening,\" Maryanne repeated to herself for the four billionth time in the last ten minutes as she paced the floor of her single room. She was not just in a freak, particle accelerator accident like some badly written comic book hero- she was not Radioactive Man- er- Radioactive Woman. She was not the Toxic Avenger- she was not, not, not! She looked down at her pinky ring again- it was definitely changed- this was really happening- she was a badly written comic book hero created by a freak, particle accelerator accident.

And where there is a badly written comic book hero- er- heroine, there\'s an even more badly written comic book villain who was created at the same time- like the woman on the floor. Oh God! She had an evil twin- a clone with all her bad traits and none of her redeeming qualities except her really good hair- it had looked good even singed and mussed on the laboratory floor. And her evil twin was wearing her clothes. Maryanne\'s clothes had been cloned, too. And oh shit- she probably had a key to the dorm! Maryanne\'s evil twin had a key to her dorm and was probably on her way here to do away with her and take her place and since she was exactly like Maryanne right down to the roots of her great hair, nobody would know the difference until the carnage started!

Maryanne knew she was hyperventilating, but if she\'d ever had cause to, it was now, so she didn\'t think to stop. She did manage to put the chain on the door and arm herself- it took a few minutes for her to decide between the hairspray used like mace and the lamp used as a, a lamp, a heavy, heavy lamp swung at the clone\'s head as her weapon. Finally, she decided to start with the lamp and keep the hairspray close at hand in case that failed. She got a good grip on her lamp and positioned herself by the door, ready to strike when the evil clone showed up. A few minutes later, she heard footfalls in the hallway and the rattling of keys. She glanced at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door- she looked nervous, nervous but still cute- she could do this. She flipped her hair back and braced herself for battle.

***

The pinky ring thing was really odd, but it was some sort of proof that this wasn\'t all a dream- Maryanne really was living this weird sci-fi day- she really had been in a particle accelerator accident. She found her room key and slid it into the lock and turned it, wondering if the other version of herself might have had the same instinct and come home, too. The lock seemed to be stuck. She tried turning the key the other way and felt the tumblers go- weird, she could have sworn it was right to unlock and left to lock. She pushed the door open only to have it stop jarringly short against the security chain.

\"Stay out you freak! I have a weapon and I don\'t care what I have to do to stay alive!\" an agitated voice yelled from behind the door. Maryanne\'s other version was in there all right.

\"The hairspray or the lava lamp?\" Maryanne asked, thinking she would have eventually opted for the lamp- the hairspray was only painful in the face but you can beat on any body part with a lamp.

\"You think I\'m gonna tell you?\" she yelled back.

\"Listen, Maryanne or whoever you are, I\'m not going to hurt you. Please let me in.\" Maryanne wasn\'t sure why she wasn\'t as panicked as her counterpart- maybe it was that she got to talk to Matt, got to have someone else help her for a few minutes. The woman behind the door hadn\'t got to do anything but panic, scream, run away and panic some more.

\"There is no way I\'m letting you in so you can eat my brain and murder my family in their sleep, you bitch!\" the double answered.

\"Eww! Now that\'s just gross. I\'m not going to eat your brain- even if I wanted to kill you, and I\'m not saying that I do- \'cause I don\'t- even if I did want to kill you, I would never eat your brain- I\'m a vegetarian!\" Maryanne reasoned.

\"Oh hey, so am I. Go sister- meat is murder,\" the voice behind the door chanted.

\"Of course you\'re a vegetarian, too- we\'re the same person.\"

\"No we\'re not- you are my evil twin- a sin against nature- you\'re the Mr. Hyde- er- Miss Hyde,\" the other Maryanne accused.

\"I am not! That\'s so unfair- if anyone\'s the evil twin, it\'s you- you\'re laying in wait for me to come home all innocent and unsuspecting and then you were gonna brain me with a purple kitschy ode to 1969. That\'s evil if I ever saw it. You are the evil Miss Hyde and I\'m the innocent Mina Harker.\"

\"Wait, Mina Harker\'s from Dracula not Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.\"

\"Oh yeah, I know, but Dr. Jekyll isn\'t that innocent since he did it to himself and Hyde\'s victims were prostitutes, so that\'s not that innocent either. I improvised, sue me.\"

\"No, I guess it works- they are both horror movies.\"

\"So, can I come in now, Jack Prentice down the hall is staring at me.\"

\"Wait, I\'m still not sure you\'re not evil. If I were evil, I\'d claim to be Mina Harker, too.\"

\"Of course you would- we are the same person!\"

\"Oh, right,\" she agreed and unchained the door.

***

Maryanne didn\'t believe the Mina Harker argument- there weren\'t even from the same movie, but she didn\'t want to have to explain killing her evil clone to Jack Prentice- he was a narc- there was no way he wouldn’t tell somebody and how could she manage to explain it all. She figured the only way was to use a little trickery and lull ol\' Miss Hyde into a false sense of security, so she opened the door, but she kept the lamp handy. Her evil twin walked in and closed the door behind her.

\"Thanks for trusting me. You made the right choice,\" the clone assured her.

\"Don\'t mention it,\" Maryanne answered tightly. The clone was standing just next to the full-length mirror on the door and wow! She really did look just like her right down to the mole just to the left of her left eye- just like looking in the mirror. Except- the mole was on the same side on the clone and in the mirror. Maryanne took her right hand and found the raised circle of the mole on the right side of her face.

\"Hey, your mole\'s on the wrong side,\" the freak said, pointing to Maryanne\'s hand.

\"Uh, no. Your mole is the one that moved. My mole is and has always been on the right side of my face. Yours is on the left side,\" Maryanne corrected.

\"Umm wait. This is the right side of my face and here\'s the mole.\" The clone clearly pointed to her left side. \"Yours is the one that moved.\"

\"Nice try. You’re the lefty. Hey, isn\'t the left side also considered the sinister side?\" Maryanne asked. \"You are Miss Hyde!\" She swung the lamp around from behind her and clipped the evil twin right in the mole and Ow! Crap. Maryanne hadn\'t even seen the blow the clone had landed on her. They were both off balance now having given tit for tat.

\"Ow! Crap. I\'m bleeding,\" the clone said, wiping blood from the gash on her temple. Maryanne\'s face hurt like she was bleeding, too. She dropped the lamp and reached up to the sore spot. Her fingers came away bloody. The clone had looked down at her own shoulder and stared at a spot of red there. Then she looked up at Maryanne. \"You slut, you got blood on my favorite skirt set,\" she shouted and lunged at Maryanne\'s throat. Maryanne dodged her, but the clone got a hold on Maryanne\'s arm and viciously slashed her nails down it before cringing back in pain. Maryanne took the opportunity to get a hard backhand in against the clone\'s face and Damn! Somehow her cheek hurt like a mother, even though she knew, she knew that the clone hadn\'t hit here there.

The clone retreated to the far side of the room, found the lava lamp and stood there ready to attack. Maryanne wasn\'t gonna wait for her to get the next blow in. She stepped forward- \"Wait, damn it, Maryanne, wait just a minute,\" the clone said, holding up her empty hand to halt Maryanne. \"God my head hurts! Ow!\" she whimpered. Maryanne could sympathize- the evil twin looked just like Maryanne felt.

\"Okay, cease fire- mine hurts, too,\" Maryanne agreed.

The clone looked up at her and said, \"I can tell- you look just like I feel.\" Maryanne couldn\'t help but laugh at that.

\"No, you look like I feel,\" she contradicted and the clone laughed right along with her. Maryanne reached over and smoothed out the clone\'s ruffled hair without thinking.

\"I\'m not the evil twin, Maryanne and I don\'t think you are either.\"

\"But doesn\'t one of us have to be evil? Isn\'t that the way it works?\" Maryanne sat on the bed with a groan.

\"This isn\'t a horror movie or a comic book. Maybe we\'re both the good twin- we both came from the same woman, right? I don\'t think I was evil enough before the lab accident to have produce an evil twin,\" the clone told her as she found the first aid kit in the closet and joined Maryanne on the bed.

\"Well I\'m sure I wasn\'t evil enough for that either,\" Maryanne added.

\"Of course not- we were the same person- Maryanne and Maryanne wasn\'t evil- she couldn\'t even begin to think evilly and so neither can we,\" the clone assured her pulling out peroxide, first-aid cream and bandages.

\"But we just beat each other up. Isn’t that evil?\" Maryanne asked as the clone cleaned the cut on Maryanne\'s right temple.

\"We were scared.\"

\"You were scared, too?\" Maryanne cleaned out the clones matching head wound and put a bandage on it.

\"See, not evil. Triple promise,\" the clone vowed, raising three fingers in the childhood gesture Maryanne had always used.

\"Me niether,\" Maryanne mimicked the promise gesture with her own hand.

\"I\'m sorry I called you a slut for making me bleed on my shirt,\" the clone apologized as she saw to the scratches on Maryanne\'s arm- they were not deep enough to need bandages.

\"And I\'m sorry for calling you a freak.\"

\"It\'s okay.\"

\"And for thinking you wanted to eat my brain and murder my family,\" Maryanne added as she washed her twin\'s scratched arm.

\"I\'m pretty protective of Granny Pearl, too.\"

\"And calling you a bitch.\"

\"Don\'t worry about it.\"

\"And for calling you evil and a sin against nature.\"

\"It\'s really fine.\"

\"And Miss Hyde- you are such a Mina, really.\"

\"We\'re both Minas- total Minas.\"

\"Oh and for calling you sinister.\"

\"Maryanne, let it go.\"

\"Okay.\"

\"Good.\"

***

\"So, what do you think? Was us fighting masochism or just weird?\" Maryanne asked as they gathered their things to go take a shower. It was only late afternoon, but Maryanne had missed all her classes and it had been a really long few hours, so they were going to shower, order a pizza and work out what to do from there.

\"Well, we didn\'t enjoy it, did we?\" the double answered reasonably.

\"Uh- No!\"

\"And I wasn\'t sure that one of us wasn\'t evil, so I\'m voting not masochism,\" the double asserted.

\"Yeah- the last thing we need is some sort of mental disorder,\" Maryanne agreed.

\"Oh crap- what if we\'re not two people?\" The double asked, suddenly worried about more than who was gonna get to use the bathrobe and the razor.

\"Huh?\"

\"What if we are still one person who\'s had a psychotic break- what if we have multiple personality disorder?\" the double asked, panicking again. Was Maryanne really that high strung, she wondered. She didn\'t remember being that high strung.

\"It\'s still not masochism if we didn\'t enjoy it. We didn\'t enjoy it, right?\"

\"So not the point. We could be mentally unstable- a danger to ourself and others.\"

\"We are so not a danger to anyone else.\"

\"You don\'t think so- I almost bashed your head in with a lava lamp. That\'s not dangerous?\" the double asked.

\"It\'s okay, I promise,\" Maryanne said.

\"Why? Why is it okay?\"

\"Because, your aim is terrible.\"

\"So we\'re not a danger to others because even if we tried to hurt someone, we\'d miss.\"

\"Exactly. Now, wait a few minutes before you come down to the bathroom so people don\'t see us in the hall at the same time, okay,\" Maryanne ordered before stepping out the door.

IN THE BATHROOM . . .

Maryanne searched the stalls for one that wasn\'t backed up- the plumbing was so terrible in the dorm- probably because people are gross when they are drunk- really gross- piss in the sink and flush things that were way too large just to watch the waterfall as the toilet overflowed gross. There was only one stall that was unclogged, so Maryanne used it, and then she got in the shower. It felt so good to be clean she all but forgot about everything that had happened that day. It wasn\'t until she caught a glimpse of her changed pinky ring while she was shaving her legs that she remembered. Then she suddenly wondered where her double was. Maryanne hadn\'t heard her come into the bathroom. Maybe the shower noise had covered it, or maybe the double had vanished- her existence only a temporary after effect of the particle accelerator mishap- maybe it was all a dream or a psychotic break like Maryanne had said- but the ring was still changed, damn it. It was all real.

And when had her double become Maryanne? Maryanne was Maryanne- that other one was, was- she was the other one- except she wasn\'t. Maryanne had felt it from the first- the other one was part of her- Maryanne had an odd need to protect her because they were the same person even if they had two bodies now. And how was that working- the two bodies thing? Maryanne wasn\'t sure if the other Maryanne had noticed, but half the injures each of them was wearing was self-inflicted- every blow to either of them had hurt both of them. Maryanne would have to talk to Maryanne about that when they could talk again.

Maryanne rinsed off and got dressed. Maryanne- the other Maryanne- wasn\'t in the bathroom. Now she was worried. She hurried down the hall to see if Maryanne was still in the room. As she approached her door, Maryanne heard Matt\'s voice coming through the partially opened door to her room. He was in there talking to the other Maryanne- shit. She had to hide. Luckily, there was a cleaning supply closet a few steps away, so she hid in there until she heard Matt leave. Then she waited a minute more and went back to her room to check on Maryanne.

***

MARYANNE\'S DORMROOM . . .

Maryanne paced the room counting to three hundred and sixty before she could go down the hall and pee. She really had to pee- it was getting desperate and why had the clone gotten to go first anyway? She wasn\'t the boss of Maryanne. Maryanne tried to think dry thoughts- two hundred sixteen, the Sahara, two hundred seventeen, a good martini, two hundred eighteen, Bob Newhart\'s comedy stylings, two hundred nineteen, Oh crap! It didn\'t work, she was pissing her pants- except she wasn\'t getting wet. Maryanne could feel the pee leaving her bladder- the relief was unmistakable, but her legs were dry, her panties were dry. Then it stopped- the strange I\'m peeing feeling was over, her bladder was empty and she was still dry. Weird.

Maryanne started counting again- two hundred twenty, two hundred twenty-one, two hun-

There was a loud knock at the door at the same time that Maryanne suddenly got a breezy chill as if she was naked. She checked the tie on her robe- it was secure. Then she answered the door figuring the clone had forgotten the shampoo or something.

\"What did you forget?\" she asked as she opened the door to see Matt Godunov standing in the hall looking concerned. \"Oh- Matt.\" Maryanne flushed hot and felt strangely wetish even though she was still dry as Bob Newhart, \"What are you doing here?\"

\"You\'re kidding, right? I came to check on you,\" Matt replied, stepping inside. \"How\'s your head?\"

\"I\'m doing better, I guess,\" Maryanne answered, wondering why she all the sudden remember having a conversation with Matt in the burnt out physics lab. She hadn\'t seen him there after the accident. He\'d obviously seen the clone, though and now Maryanne was remembering it. That was way off the charts.

\"You do look better. You were so shaky when you left. I was really worried.\"

\"I\'m fine, now,\" Maryanne told him while at the same time ignoring the feeling of being underwater she couldn\'t explain. Did she smell shampoo? \"Uh so, how are you? Do they know what exactly happened yet?\"

\"The fire department is investigating it as arson. They\'re looking for Moores. Are you sure he was there when it went up? There isn\'t any way to really explain why they haven\'t found his body if he was.\"

\"Jesus, Matt. He was there- he changed the dials around, started pulling the machine apart and then started it up and waited for it to do something. Maybe he was suicidal,\" Maryanne answered.

\"Still, his body should have been there, even with the anomalies.\"

\"Anomalies?\" Maryanne could feel the gentle scrape of a razor running over her legs. She glanced down to see the short hairs vanishing in an orderly fashion from her skin.

\"Some of the recording devices weren\'t completely fried in the explosion but all their reading were incongruous with each other. They were probably affected by the blast, but what if they weren\'t? Something very wrong happened in that lab, Maryanne, and you were the only witness. Are you sure you didn’t see anything else?\"

\"Okay, Matt. Here\'s the truth, but don\'t tell me it sounds crazy because I saw it myself and I don’t believe it, okay?\"

\"Okay.\"

\"After Moores got the machine going, he passed out. I saw him from the observation room. And after he passed out, he- he kind of- He doubled.\" Maryanne was gently rubbed dry by an invisible towel catching invisible drips of water- it was really distracting.

\"He doubled? What does that mean?\"

\"He- his body doubled- turned into two bodies. Maybe that was what he wanted to do- clone himself or something.\"

\"Maryanne, there is no way that Moores could have cloned himself using the particle accelerator- it\'s just impossible.\"

\"You think I don\'t know that? I saw it. He doubled. The he did it again.\"

\"He doubled again?\"

\"Two became four. The four became eight and so on. After a few times the copies got, well they got weaker- then the last time he doubled, they went invisible or maybe they stopped existing at all.\"

\"And then what happened?\"

\"I passed out.\"

\"Maryanne- this is crazy. Moores did not clone himself repeatedly and vanish from existence.\"

\"I saw what I saw, Matt.\"

\"But you had a head injury,\" he tried, pointing to the bandage on her temple.

\"You\'re right. It might be that or I might be crazy or you might be dreaming. The only thing I\'m sure of is that I\'m not lying and I know what I saw.\"

\"Okay. I\'ll run some numbers and see if maybe, just maybe there might be a way it could have happened like you said.\"

\"You do that,\" Maryanne agreed as Matt stepped back out into the hall. \"Hey Matt?\"

\"Yeah?\"

\"You\'ll let me know if you figure anything out, right? Because I really want to know, you know?\" She gave him a flirty little smile.

\"Yes, of course I\'ll tell you if I find anything.\"

\"Thanks, Matt.\"

\"You\'re welcome,\" he replied before retreating down the hall.

Maryanne didn\'t bother going down to the bathroom to shower- she was already clean and dry and shaved and empty- which was too strange to be a welcome side effect of all this. She wondered if the clone had any idea that she had done all that for the both of them.

***

Maryanne set her key in the lock and turned it the wrong way again- like how the mole was on the wrong side, the key turned backwards- really a lot of things around her seemed backwards- she was too freaked out to realize it before, but she\'d nearly walked into walls a few time as she made her way back to her room from the lab earlier and the bathroom was on the wrong end of the building- maybe she was all reversed- or maybe the accident affected more than just Maryanne and Moores- maybe it flipped the whole world around. Maryanne shook her head- it was probably just her- she was old lefty now.

The other Maryanne was sitting on the bed looking worried when she came in.

\"Hey, what did Matt have to say?\" Maryanne asked.

\"He wanted to see how you were- you did talk to him after we- after I became we, right?\" the double asked. Maryanne put the toilet things away and sat next to her double on the bed.

\"Yeah. Oh God, I hope you didn\'t say anything to tip him off that there are two of us. I don\'t think we should tell anyone yet- maybe we shouldn\'t ever tell anyone, you know.\"

\"How would we explain it?\" the double agreed.

\"Exactly.\"

\"Maryanne?\" the other Maryanne asked.

\"Yes, Maryanne,\" Maryanne answered.

\"You pee-ed for me.\"

\"What?\"

\"You went to the toilet and now I don\'t have to anymore. Plus, you showered for me and look,\" she slung her bare leg over Maryanne\'s lap, \"you shaved for me too- feel how smooth.\" Maryanne felt the soft, hairless skin of her counterpart\'s thigh.

\"That\'s nothing,\" Maryanne added, \"I\'m pretty sure that we hurt ourselves as much as we hurt each other when we were fighting- I scratched you and my own arm got the scratch, too.\"

\"Ooo, ooo- I remember your conversation with Matt at the lab,\" the double topped, bouncing excitedly on the bed beside Maryanne.

\"You do? Then why don\'t I know what you and he talked about just a little while ago?\"

\"Maybe you do. I had to think about it really hard- I was trying to figure what you two might have said and then I just knew, you know. You should try- concentrate on what we would have talked about.\"

\"Okay, here I go.\" Maryanne closed her eyes and imagined Matt coming to the door unexpectedly and asking if the other Maryanne way all right and then- then she knew- \"You told him about Moores multiplying.\"

\"Yup. Cool. We can read each other\'s minds.\"

\"Actually, I don\'t think we really can. I think it\'s more that we know the same things because we\'re sharing a brain- just like we\'re sharing leg hair and skin and a bladder. Shave one leg and the corresponding one is shaved, too. Teach one brain something and the corresponding brain has that knowledge, too.\"

\"But how is that different than mind reading?\"

\"I\'m think of a number. Try and guess it.\"

\"Okay.\" The other Maryanne made a concentrating face- it was cutely intense- did she look like that when she concentrated? \"Uhh- twelve?\"

\"No. Try again.\"

\"Hmm- forty-two?\"

\"Wrong again. Wanna try again?\"

\"I think you\'re right- I don\'t think I can guess it.\"

\"That\'s the difference.\"

\"But I don\'t get why.\"

\"Because it\'s not new knowledge- you already know all the possible numbers I could be thinking of- now if we were talking about how many of the toilets were stopped up when I went to the bathroom.\"

\"All but one. People are gross, you know,\" the other Maryanne echoed Maryanne\'s earlier thoughts.

\"See- we need more than just a fact- we need a new fact.\"

\"I don\'t know. It makes no sense to me.\"

\"Has anything that has happened today made any sense?\" Maryanne reasoned.

\"Still, this seems to follow rules- just not the same rules as the rest of the world follows.\"

Over dinner, they discussed their situation-

\"I think we need some so we don\'t go completely insane with how we\'re the same person but also two different people,\" Maryanne said around a mouthful of veggie fried rice.

\"I was thinking the same thing,\" the other Maryanne teased. \"What did you have in mind?\"

\"Well first, I think we need new names- at least for ourselves to use. I keep confusing myself with you when I\'m thinking about what\'s happened today and I think separate names would help,\" Maryanne suggested.

\"How about Thing One and Thing Two.\"

\"No. How about Thelma and Louise?\"

\"Run and Rerun?\"

\"Xena and Gabriel?\"

\"Marykate and Ashley?\"

\"Wilma and Betty?\"

\"Maryanne and Ginger?\"

\"Maybe, but which one of us gets to stay Maryanne?\"

\"Ooo- how about we split it- You be Mary and I\'ll be Anne. Ginger\'s a slut anyway.\"

\"Such a slut, you\'re right, but I think you should be Mary because you woke up first and I\'ll be Anne because I woke second. And I\'m old lefty anyway, so I should have the second half of the name.\"

\"Are you sure- I might be the left one- I wielded the lava lamp, remember?\"

\"Lots of things are backwards, not just the mole. I\'m living backwards- it\'s not much different,\" Anne admitted.

\"If you\'re sure?\" Mary prodded.

\"I\'m sure, now rule two- dibs on the bed!\" Anne shouted and sprawled over its surface before Mary could react. \"Have a nice night on the floor, sucker.\"

\"I take it back- I\'m not sorry I called you the evil twin. Make room, you bed hog!\" Mary squirmed her way in, spilling fried noodles all over the blanket and pillow. Anne rolled to her side and they snuggled in facing each other, their Chinese food in the small space between them.

Later Mary went down to the bathroom and brush her teeth for them (Anne was amazed at her instantly fresh breath) and they slept comfortably cuddled up, Mary on her right side and Anne on her left.