Broken Glass

Joseph L Kellogg

Glasses clinked in five identical sets of hands, between five identical husbands and wives, distinguished by only their clothes and the colored bands they wore around their wrists. RedBrian watched all the other Brians like fragments of a carnival mirror, reflections of himself from other universes, moving out of sync with him as they talked over the noise of the bar, wishing each other a happy birthday. Five Pats echoed congratulations at them, blond hair shimmering in the light from neon beer signs. A hand reached over and pulled his face to the side.

“Happy Birthday,” Janice said, kissing him briefly on the lips. The sole brunette at the table, she nuzzled his nose for a moment, then pushed back her chair. “I’m going to make room for another drink.”

YellowBrian leaned over and blew beer-soaked breath into RedBrian’s ear as he spoke. “So what’s the news with Janice?” he asked, chuckling. “You ever gonna make an honest woman out of her?”

“Eventually, I guess,” RedBrian said. “I’m just waiting for the right time, you know?”

“You’ve been dating for what, three years now? What else could you be waiting for?”

At the end of the table GreenPat brushed her hair back, and words popped up unbidden from RedBrian’s subconscious. I’m waiting for her. Just behind her ear he caught a glimpse of the scar from that car wreck when Pat was a kid. Each of the different Pats had almost identical scars, hidden under their hair, reminders of their brush with death. All of them except for RedPat; in a different universe, a different song was playing on the radio, she was dancing to a different beat, and the shard of glass hit her in a different spot, cutting right through her jugular instead. RedPat, the girl he was supposed to marry, was currently drifting toward the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, her cremated body fertilizing seaweed instead of wishing him another happy birthday.

YellowBrian interrupted his brooding. “I’ve heard her talking at the office,” he said. “She’s getting tired of waiting for you to pop the question. You’d better make your move before she does, if you know what I mean.”

“You really think so?” asked RedBrian, dragging his finger listlessly through the icing on his slice of cake. Red mentally kicked himself for not being ready to get married. Janice was a great girl, and in other circumstances he probably could have lived quite happily. But when the other universes were discovered, and Slide Stations started popping up around the world, he met his five doppelgängers and saw how nauseatingly happy they were with their Pats. After a few months of searching for his own, all he’d found was the small plaque in the cemetery and a couple of parents who still cried over their little lost angel.

Janice sidled back up to Red at the table, and brushed a lock of hair from his forehead. “Are you feeling alright?” she asked.

“I think I might be coming down with something, actually,” he replied. “Sorry. You mind if I go ahead and take you back to the Station?”

“No, of course not,” Janice said coolly, scratching at her yellow wristband.

“We might as well catch a ride with you,” said YellowBrian as he slammed down the last of his beer and helped YellowPat to her feet. “I’ve got to be at work bright and early tomorrow. Come on, sweetie.”

 

As soon as RedBrian climbed into the driver’s seat, his car smelled the alcohol on his breath and switched to automatic control.

“Would You Like To Go Home?” the computer asked in the staccato tones of piecemeal voice recordings.

“No,” Red muttered. “Take us to the Slide Station first.”

The car rumbled to life and began maneuvering out of the parking garage, while Red leaned his seat back until he hit YellowBrian’s knees behind him. After a few minutes, they’d escaped downtown and were cruising down the highway toward the next city over. Janice turned around in her seat up front and wrinkled her forehead at YellowBrian.

“Are you still working on that client you went to lunch with the other day? The Brazilian company, right?”

“Yeah, I’ve just gotta work out-”

Headlights. Spinning. Flying. Glass rained on the left side of Red’s face, and Janice’s hair swung in a circle as the car rolled once and thudded back down onto the wheels. Something hissed in the hood, and hot blood coated Red’s left arm. He groaned and turned his head. Janice and YellowPat were only scratched up, but unconscious from the impact. He kicked open his door, crushed by the collision with the other car, and stumbled to the backseat to check on YellowBrian. His stomach twisted when he looked in the broken-out window. A fist-sized shard of glass protruded from Yellow’s throat, and more blood flowed over his pale, motionless body.

Red stood dumbfounded for a moment. He remembered that the car’s computer would have already called for an ambulance. There were only a few minutes before emergency services would arrive, but YellowBrian was already long gone. Still slightly dazed from shock, blood loss, and alcohol, he pried open the back door, dragged Yellow out, and started taking off both of their clothes and armbands.

 

Brian woke up, his arms and legs aching, with the dull glow of fluorescent lights above him in an antiseptic white ceiling. Someone off to his side squeezed his hand.

“Sweetie?” Pat’s face leaned down over his and gave him a weak smile. “How are you feeling?”

Brian’s eyes darted down to Pat’s wristband. Yellow.

“I hurt like hell,” Brian said. “What happened?”

“There was an accident on the highway,” Pat said. “Do you remember anything?”

“I... I think I remember getting hit, spinning. Was I driving?”

“No, sweetie, Red was driving, but it wasn’t his fault. He was on automatic, and another car jumped the median.”

Brian glanced down at his own wrist, pulling his hand out from under the hospital blanket. Yellow. But he was RedBrian, wasn’t he? “Was anyone else hurt?”

“Janice and I are fine,” Pat answered. “But Red... They found him in the front seat; he was dead when the paramedics got there.”

Brian remembered vague images of looking at one of his doubles in the back seat, covered with blood. He glanced down at his wrist again. If he was Yellow, why did he remember being Red? The haze started to lift in his mind, and he remembered the feeling of wrapping a blood-soaked shirt around himself on the highway, the warmth of the fluid shielding him from the chill of the night. He remembered pulling off his wristband... oh, God.

Pat brushed aside his hair, and he smiled. It felt so natural, like this was how it was meant to be. While he’d been drunk, he must have done something he never would have done sober, but he was thankful for it. All these years, he’d had to watch all of his doubles with their Pats. Now here she was doting on him.

Outside his vision, the door latch clicked, and Pat turned to look. “Janice, he’s awake,” she said.

Janice walked into the room and onto Brian’s left side. Her face was covered with scratches, some of them bandaged. They didn’t seem to detract from her prettiness nearly as much as her red, swollen eyes. She crossed her arms tightly across her chest, sniffed back some tears, and squeaked out a cursory “Hi, Brian.”

“Hi, Janice.” Brian scratched carefully around the stitches on his arm. “Look... I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Brian didn’t answer.

 

A few days later, the rubber tip of Brian’s crutch dug into the false grass under the collapsible pavilion as he plodded down the center aisle toward the coffin. He wasn’t sure where to sit, but then he spotted the rest of his doubles lined up in the front row, and he followed their lead. He took a seat next to YellowPat. His Pat. Rain pattered on the tarp above them, and the folding chairs sat slightly off-kilter on the uneven ground beneath the green carpet. Everyone sat in a cocoon of plastic, while nature shuddered and cried around them. Brian set his crutches down next to his chair, and caught Janice’s eye across the aisle.

Part of Brian wanted to run up to her, take her into his arms, and tell her that he was still alive, and it was someone else in that coffin. But it was too late for that. A man got up and spoke, a preacher that Brian barely remembered from his days in elementary school. After a few opening remarks and a reading from the Psalms, he stepped aside to let Brian’s brother Pete give the eulogy. Brian chuckled at each story of their childhood exploits, but his heart seized at each one, wondering if YellowBrian had the same stories. Did he even have a brother? He wasn’t sure.

Pat reached over and took Brian’s hand. He twitched, almost pulling back on reflex.But no, she meant to take his hand – he was her husband. He closed his eyes and repeated that fact to himself silently, over and over. I am YellowBrian. I am YellowBrian. I am YellowBrian. He rubbed his hands together to ward off the cold of the rain around them, and was reminded of the plain gold wedding band he wore now. ‘Til death do us part.’

As YellowBrian’s—his—brother stepped away from the microphone, the mourners lined up to pay their last respects. Brian looked down into the casket as he passed, looked at his own face lying silently on velvet, and he wasn’t sure who was dead and who was alive. Soon the undertaker lowered the body into the grave, and began piling dirt on top of it. Each thud of wet earth resonated in Brian’s chest like a shotgun blast, and he wanted to run to the grave, crying that he’d dropped his keys inside, anything that would make them stop. As long as he was above ground, Brian could tell everyone what had happened, swap the wristbands back, and crawl into the casket where he belonged. But Pat tugged at his hand and led him away to the car. She drove them to the luncheon, where they served three different kinds of casserole.

 

A week later, Brian stared at the invoices on his computer screen. He wished he could ask one of his doubles what to do. Even though he had the same job as all the others, their account numbers and names were different. But he couldn’t concentrate on it anyway. All he could think about was the barely audible sound of muffled tears from Janice’s desk two cubicles down. He remembered wishing before that they lived in the same universe, and he didn’t have to pay for a Slide every time he wanted to see her. Now she was working just a few feet away, and he didn’t know what to say, or if he wanted to say anything.

After a few more hours of staring blankly at paperwork he didn’t recognize, Brian counted the seconds on the clock until it reached closing time, then shut down his computer, grabbed his jacket, walked down the hall and into the parking garage. As he trudged through the dimly-lit concrete path, he passed Janice’s car, where she leaned listlessly against the door, her forehead pressed against the window with lethargic apathy.

“How are you doing?” Brian asked. It was the first thing he’d said to her all day.

“Bad,” she said with a harsh sniffle. “I just don’t know where to go from here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought we were meant for each other. His was the only Pat that died in that car wreck as a girl, but I was the only Janice that survived mine. It had symmetry, you know?”

“And now... he died in a car wreck,” Brian said flatly.

“I guess that’s symmetrical too,” Janice growled.

“Is there anything I can do?” Brian stepped forward and leaned against the car next to her.

“I think I just need space. I can’t look at your face without thinking it’s him, even just for a second, and... and I don’t think I can handle that.”

“If it makes you feel better, I think he wanted to propose.” It was true. He thought that he had wanted to propose. “He just didn’t know how to do it.”

“It doesn’t count for much now, does it?”

“No, I suppose not.”

They stood silently and the roar of car engines echoing in the parking garage died down as everyone else started their commute. Brian gave her a pained smile, then began to slink away when she grabbed his arm.

“Wait.” She looked up anxiously into his face. “I never really got to say goodbye. Can I...?” She stood up on her toes and kissed Brian briefly, her lips tinged with the salt of tears and sweetness of chapstick. “I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t have-”

Brian clutched the back of her head and pulled her into him. He kissed her, sucking at her lips like they were his last chance of survival. At first she resisted, but her hands soon wrapped around his back and she sighed with painful relief. With blindly groping hands, she opened the back door of her car, and they fell into the seat. Something in the back of Brian’s mind pointed out that where she had been his consolation prize before, now he was hers. But that thought was pushed away as her clothes slipped off, hastily revealing her familiar warmth.

 

That night, a buckle jangled as Brian dropped his bag to the ground by the front door. A plate of spaghetti sat at the table, the clumps of Parmesan cheese stained orange from the sauce. Pat drifted in from the kitchen, her makeup already wiped off.

“Hey, sweetie,” she said weakly, kissing him on the cheek. Her lips burned, and Brian worried that she would taste Janice on him. “I’m sorry I didn’t wait for you, but I didn’t know when you’d be home.”

“I just... needed to take a detour. Clear my head.”

“I know.” She wrapped her arms around him, and buried her face against his neck. “I know this has been hard on you. I wish there was something I could do to make you feel better.”

Brian lifted his hand, looking at the reflection of the light on his wedding ring. She was his wife now, and this was the most they had touched since the hospital. Everything he had ever wanted was in his arms right now, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Janice.

“I just need time,” he said, pulling away from Pat’s embrace. “I’m going to the study to think, maybe watch TV. I’ll join you for bed later.”

The battered old recliner in the study was unfamiliar, and springs poked him in unexpected places when he sat. He could still feel Janice all over him, their mingled sweat tainting his clothes. Had he cheated on Pat? He wore the ring, but he wasn’t the one that made that promise to her. Brian took the ring off and turned it absentmindedly in his fingers. He thought he could see flecks of dried blood still stuck on the inside, but his gut told him those should have worn off already. He wanted to call up one of his doubles and ask his advice, but he knew that wouldn’t help. They had no experience here; whatever he did, he was on his own.

Brian grabbed a coat from the closet, reading the label on the inside of the collar before putting it on. Cecil Lawrence. Lawrence was a good name. Maybe he could become a Lawrence. Not Larry. Lawrence.

He crept into the kitchen, scrawled a note, and left it on the table. His—no, not his, YellowBrian’s—wedding ring plunked down on top of it. Stepping out into the night, he closed the front door as quietly as he could. The sky was clear and full of moonlight as he drove to the Slide Station, and it was still clear on the Red side. When he reached the cemetery, Brian didn’t need his flashlight to find his way to the fresh grave, green shoots just peaking up out of the damp brown soil.

With slow and steady strokes, Brian dug a small hole on top of the grave with his bare hands, dropping the dirt carefully to the side with each handful. Then he placed the yellow wristband inside, and filled it back in. It didn’t occur to him until he was back in the car that they wouldn’t let him back through the Slide Station without a wristband. But at least he was in his own universe now, and if he never saw one of his doubles again, Lawrence could figure things out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Joseph L. Kellogg works as an environmental chemist by day, and writes speculative fiction by night. He lives in Northeast Tennessee with his wife and absolutely, positively, no cats.