The Real Me

by Cassandra Erica, 2022

A clean-shaven, well-kempt man in a gray suit exited the front door of an eggshell-colored wood-paneled house, onto a perfectly mown lawn surrounded by a white picket fence. His short, dark brown hair waved a bit in the wind as he approached the day’s newspaper.

June 28, 1969 - Queers Riot At Stonewall Inn

The man frowned. What was this country coming to? Even the idea of degenerates like those trying to take for themselves a shred of his hard-earned respect made him sick to his core. No proper God-fearing nation could ever conceive of it.

He brushed a speck of soot from his brown leather shoes, freshly polished, and walked out the gate toward the train station. He boarded the morning train to work and opened his newspaper. The rest was quite good news - his stock holdings were up, for one. And his company had just landed an account with one of the largest banks on the east coast. Surely he would be promoted to work on it - his boss was highly impressed at his previous performance evaluation.

He boarded an elevator up to the fourth floor, and as the doors opened he was greeted with a standing ovation.

“Jones, my boy!” Mr. Leach exclaimed. “I’m sure you’ve heard the good news?”

“Indeed I have, sir. But may I ask why you all seem so preoccupied with me?”

“Jones, Jones, you are too modest! The CEO of Chase Bank personally requested you to handle the account! We never could have done it without you.”

Jones gestured towards the crowd. “May I…”

“By all means,” Leach replied.

Jones looked towards the crowd - full of bright, shining faces, all much the same. Each man was clean cut and wore a suit not unlike his own. He knew they would hang on his every word, and since his team would be made up of picks from this group, this was his chance to gain even more of their respect.

“Gentlemen, I’d like to thank each and every one of you for your hard work. If not for your efforts, I’m certain we would not have made this amazing accomplishment. Pat yourselves on the backs, and - if I may, Mr. Leach - I would like to buy every one of you a round at the bar down the road after work!”

The men cheered and dispersed. Back to work, for the whole lot of them. Leach pulled Jones into his office.

“Well, Shirley, you really have done it. It’s only right that with your promotion comes a hefty salary increase. I’m prepared to ask the board to offer you thirty-five thousand, along with a performance bonus each Christmas. What do you say?”

“Sir, I…” Jones hesitated. “I don’t know what to say. This is more than double what I made before!”

“If it’s not enough, I can ask for forty, but I’m afraid that’s as far as I -”

“No, no, I’m very happy with thirty-five.”

“That’s fantastic to hear, my boy. Not to pry, but with this salary increase, I imagine you and your wife might finally think about children?”

“Oh, I’m not married, sir.”

“But… well, I could have sworn I saw you with a woman ages ago… oh, never mind, it’s really none of my business. Keep up the good work, Jones!”

“I will, Mr. Leach.”

That evening, the whole office crowded into the bar, filling each nook and cranny, each barstool, booth, and billiard table with warm bodies covered in jackets and slacks. More than one of them kept their ties flipped behind their backs, but Shirley Jones always wore a tie clip. It was a raucous time, but such noise could never bother him. He could sleep through it, if he wanted. He’d heard worse.

Jones wasn’t all that interested in fraternizing with his colleagues - underlings, now. He never felt much for a single one of them. Not Brown, not Martin, not Davis, not even Leach. The fact was, all of these people were just tools to him. Tools to do a job. A job which, according to his impressive salary, needed doing.

It was in late twilight by the time the men left the bar, and Jones was the last out. He’d had little to drink - this excursion was for the others’ sake. To get them to like him, to respect him, and if necessary, to fear him. There had been plenty of embarrassments to last at least to the end of the year. He carried with him the newspaper from the morning, and walked toward the train station.

On arriving home, he noticed something peculiar. The cellar light was on. He was nearly certain he’d shut it off before he left. He crept down the stairs, his leather soles echoing on the smooth concrete. The harsh yellow light turned his suit a sickly brown and cast shadows on the creases of his face.

That’s when she saw him. She looked at him with a dead stare, through his eyes as if she were searching for a soul. She never could find one. He looked at her, too, his pupils scanning her shaven head and the pile of hair and filth which surrounded her. The stained, baggy clothing she wore made her breasts, or lack thereof, ambiguous.

Jones turned his eyes to the light switch. Perhaps he had missed it. Perhaps he hadn’t.

“Did you turn this light on?” Jones asked.

“How could I?” the woman responded, holding up her boney, chained arms. “It’s not often you allow me to move from this spot.”

Jones, not fully convinced, walked toward her, gently caressing the dusty cloning tank as he strolled past. He threw the newspaper violently at her feet.

“I think it unwise that you would consider disobeying me… or lying. Is that really what you want, Shirley - for me to be angry with you?”

She looked down at the paper. The finance section was showing, with the article about Jones’ company front and center.

“I take it this ‘financial triumph’ is your doing?”

“Yes it is,” Jones replied. “Proud of me?”

“It’s hard to be proud when I haven’t eaten since five PM yesterday! That should have been my accomplishment, you sociopath! Mine!”

“You sure are energetic for a frail woman who hasn’t eaten in over twenty-seven hours.”

Shirley began to sweat. Jones put his face uncomfortably near hers.

“I know you’re planning something. Don’t think for even a moment that you could be even a single step ahead of me. We have the same brain, Shirley. The same DNA. The only difference is I already have the upper hand. If you cross me - and I will know it - there will be dire consequences. Understood?”

Shirley nodded in submission.

“Feel free to keep this newspaper in the corner. Your toilet privileges are revoked.”

Jones flipped off the light switch and walked up the stairs, closing the door behind him, leaving total darkness. Shirley was left alone again with her cold bare feet on the even colder basement floor. She’d given up on screaming for help years ago; it just made him angry. Nothing but her thoughts kept her company as she cried herself to sleep.

It was that dream again. The one at the bank, where they had denied her a home loan on account of her being a woman. Before she knew it, she was at a table at her favorite restaurant, looking across at the love of her life - Susan. There she was in all her beauty, with her wavy blonde hair almost fluttering at each giggle. It was this night that Shirley told of her great plan to get everything they ever wanted. She blinked and Susan was gone, replaced by those fake-smiling eyes. Him.

Shirley panicked, falling back in her chair and through the floor, landing in her old apartment. It was a friendly place, with a breakfast nook, bookshelves, and tasteful wallpaper that reflected the golden light from the window. But it hadn’t been enough. Shirley wanted more. She deserved more. And this shipping crate in the corner held the key to it. It was labeled, “ACME Corporation: Clone-O-Matic 1000.”

She resisted herself as her arms pried off the sides of the box and revealed the hulking device. It looked almost alien in nature, with smooth curving glass that formed an impossible-seeming egg shape. The control panel jutted out from the base of the machine on a tendril, as though it was presented to her by Cthulu itself. She noticed the manual taped to the panel, adorned by bright red lettering which read, “DANGER OF IMPROPER USE - READ MANUAL THOROUGHLY.” She ignored it. Why did she ignore it?

All she bothered to read was as much as she thought she needed to know. Shirley plucked a single hair from her head, inserting it into the receptacle before adjusting one or two levers and pulling down the power switch. It blew the circuit. It was dark. The room was illuminated by nothing more than moonlight. Yet she could see something. She inched closer, closer, closer. His eyes opened, reddened by the liquid in the tank. She fell back to the floor, and hit her head on the baseboard.

Shirley awoke with a jolt as the front door slammed up above. Morning light came in through the basement windows, tinted by the red residue in the cloning tank. It hadn’t always been like this. The day after his birth, he walked into the very same bank which had denied her before and used her name to get a home loan. They purchased this house together. But now… now she lived in its basement. It had been years, now. Five, by her count. Five years of five PM table scraps and shackled trips to the bathroom. Five years without Susan. Where could she have gone? Did he…

No. Can’t think about that. Have to focus. Now that she was positive he was gone, Shirley used a hairpin to pick the locks on her handcuffs. The cloning machine was almost functional again - she’d been refurbishing it - but she was sure it wouldn’t be long before he killed her. He’d taken her identity and she hadn’t seen another face in years - who would come looking? Susan… no. Susan was gone. And if Shirley wanted any hope of finding her, she had to succeed. It needed to happen tonight.

Shirley took a swig of orange juice from the refrigerator and put on a record to calm her nerves. The Beatles. It was Susan’s favorite. Unable to find a fuse, she cut off a length of thick wire from the TV antenna. This was going to have to work. Maybe the cloning tank wouldn’t survive it, but it was a risk she needed to take. Carrying a kitchen knife and the worn and duct-taped instruction manual, Shirley went back down to the basement. This time, she knew what she was doing.

She shoved the wire into the fuse slot of the machine, and it came back to life - refilling itself with the thick goo. She pricked her finger, squeezed a drop of blood into the receptacle, flipped some levers, and pulled the power switch down. The lights went out. The distant sound of Paul McCartney’s voice slowed to a stop. It was eerily silent. But the machine continued.

Shirley was nervous for a moment. What if it didn’t work? What if it did? Last time hadn’t gone so well, who’s to say this clone wouldn’t turn on its master? She looked closely into the tank - and her own eyes stared back.

Mr. Jones arrived back at his home after a long day’s work at the office. The Chase account had proven to be monstrously difficult to get control of. Whoever had handled it before did a piss-poor job at organizing. Not so with Jones, not a chance. For him, everything was always in its place, precisely where he decided it should be. But this was not what he saw when he entered the front door.

The lights wouldn’t come on when he flicked the switch. He pulled out his lighter, and flicked it on. The dim flame illuminated the record player in the parlor - there was a disc on it. She’d escaped the cellar. But she hadn’t gone far. He could make out the silhouette of a woman on the couch.

“Amazing. Truly amazing. This was your plan, Shirley? That second X chromosome is a liability. I should put you out of your misery.”

Still holding the lighter in his left hand, he reached into his pocket with the right and withdrew a pocket knife.

“Now, do me a favor and get off the couch first. Once you’re gone, I won’t have a woman to clean up the blood for me.”

The silhouette got up and walked slowly towards Jones as he opened the knife. He swiped at her and she slapped the lighter out of his hand, catching the carpet ablaze. He could see her clearer now. Her arm was bleeding down its length, where the knife had cut. Now he only had to finish the task.

“You really think you have a Y chromosome?” she taunted. “Where exactly do you think you would have gotten it?”

“From the cloning machine. Obviously.”

“Only one person’s DNA went into that machine. And that DNA didn’t have one. You don’t have a Y chromosome, Mr. Jones. The machine only fed you testosterone until you could produce your own. You’re exactly like those queers you hate so much.”

“NO!” Jones screamed, swiping at her again with the knife. “You lie!”

The fire was raging now. It had spread to the curtains, and now the record shelves. Vinyl was burning.

“You’re a clone of a woman, Mr. Jones! Nothing can ever change that!”

He screamed out as his blade pierced her chest. She grimaced, barely holding onto consciousness, as he lowered her to the floor. On his knees now, he refused to break eye contact. He wanted to see life leave her eyes.

“Could a woman have stabbed you in the heart and twisted it like this?” He pressed harder into her breast, blood gushing out like the inferno around them. Barely conscious, she looked him in the eye and responded.

“Yes.”

A sharpness struck him in the back. He looked down at his chest, feeling around with his hand. There was blood on his tie clip. He looked behind and saw Shirley standing there.

“You… you…”

“No, you. You were outsmarted by a woman. Or two.”

Jones rolled over. He wanted to lay down, but it would only push the knife further in.

“Do you think you’ve won? Just because you’ve killed me? You’re nothing without me. Nothing! You have no rights! No prospects! Your home is burning around you!” Jones chuckled. “And your little gal pal…”

“You didn’t…”

Jones reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a lock of wavy, blonde hair. He began laughing, cackling, really, as he laid himself down on the knife, it pushing all the way through his chest. Shirley took the hair from his hand as his suit caught fire. He cackled to his last breath as the flames consumed him.

The worst of it was over. Shirley had succeeded. She was free. As free as a lesbian could be in 1969. But what life truly awaited her outside? She made her way down the basement steps, relishing the cool concrete’s relief. She fell on her knees before the cloning machine and looked down at the lock of hair in her grasp. It was covered in blood.