Antigreen

Nothing else particularly strange happened that night, which filled her with the refreshed false hope that the events of the party were a one-off… or two-off, or three-off–or so on by induction.

Her reflection failed to reappear, even after she'd closed up with Stella and returned home to stare into the smaller and dirtier mirror above her bathroom sink. Not wanting to be deterred by its absence, Calliope brushed her teeth without her head down for the first time in years, staring through the empty glass at the wall behind her head. So there was one benefit, she supposed.

Her naive expectation that It would stay unseen and unheard persisted through her dreamless slumber until the very next morning, when she stumbled into the kitchen with one foot still asleep to find herself already spoken for.

There at the table with her back turned was Erika, and across from her–Calliope, the other one. It sat perfectly straight and still like It'd been rigged that way since time immemorial.

"Oh hey, you're up early!" Erika's voice sent both chill and relief down her spine. Even the most familiar sounds seemed to startle her now…but at least Erika's sunny disposition meant that her doppelganger was still invisible to anyone else. That was something.

"Hey, you left the milk out last night, can you not do that? I'm eating my cereal dry and I'm super busy today."

"What? No I didn't." Three pairs of eyes, two real and one not, landed on the carton of milk over on the counter. It did look out of place there.

"Really? I dunno, then–I found it like that this morning all warm. I emptied it out but left it there so I'd remember."

"Erika I swear, I didn't leave the milk out!"

Her roommate threw up her hands, still clasping a spoon. "Okay, damn! Maybe we have a ghost, it's an old building, or whatever."

"What kind of a ghost leaves milk out?"

Calliope made eye contact with her double. There was that burning behind her eyes again, right on cue. Her head felt fuzzy–yeah, she was the one haunted, all right.

"Dunno. Poltergeist, maybe? C'mon, there's not much left, help me finish 'em. I know you're a freak and eat it dry anyway." Erika smiled and gestured to the opposite chair–the one occupied by the monster she couldn't see.

Callie decided to ignore the thing wearing her face and, after grabbing utensils, sat down in the third and actually empty chair. Erika poured out the remainder of the box into her bowl. At the very bottom the cereal disks devolved into little more than crumbs–those were the best parts.

"Thanks." She tried to focus on the crunch and cookie flavor and not the pair of psychedelic eyes watching her with rapt attention. It was difficult enough to eat when being watched by something human, even more so when the thing watching only existed within her imagination.

Erika cast a playful grin in her direction. "Did you know: in Korea, my nana would eat this every day for weeks? It was all they had for rations, there'd be like, lines around the block and stuff."

"Wait, really? Is that why it got popular?" She paused with the spoon halfway to her mouth.

"No, stupid. I'm fucking with you."

"Oh." Duh. "Well it's better than the kimchi in the fridge, maybe y'all should eat it all the time." In spite of the circumstances, she was smiling.

Erika was quick to retort. "You just don't like kimchi because you're white, or autistic, or something! Sorry the fridge isn't filled with dino nuggets!"

"Hey! I haven't had those in like–"

"This one is different from you?" The ghost at the table spoke, interrupting the banter. Calliope tripped over her words: "like, uh–"

"Yeah, what, like three days right? That's nothing!" Erika showed no signs of having heard It. Lucky her–she wasn't the one with a pressure cooker around her head that insisted she cook up fresh answers. How the hell could she reply without letting Erika know she was hearing voices? Even a furtive glance in Its direction risked making her look crockpot insane in front of her roommate. Of course she was "different", in a million ways: Erika didn't talk to herself! Erika was normal, Erika was social and funny; Erika had an actual work ethic. Erika wasn't a dropout or a freak like her. Erika–

"Hey uh, Earth to Callie? You okay?"

The pressure let up with a snap and the apparition shifted Its attention away from Calliope to her companion. It received Its answer without the need for her directed thought; from the residual echo in her mind she was reminded of how It could parse her surface-level thoughts, like skimming through a sleeve of supermarket tabloids.

"What? Sorry, I'm–I think I'm just tired." She said. The ability of an exhausted comment to excuse an exhaustive amount of weird behavior was something marvelous.She turned to give Erika a reassuring smile to support it, in the process making eye contact. It should've been but for a brief moment, but for some reason instead of breaking away at the first chance, Calliope persisted in her gaze. Erika's eyes were almonds, brown and dark… there was a little image of the kitchen inverted and distorted there in carnelian mirrors, and in that image, smeared into a crescent on the left: the unmistakable glow of the Thing across the table. Its colors shifted in an indescribable and hypnotic pattern–her eyes watered to dispel them.

She blinked. Erika's eyes twitched; her nostrils flared.

"Oh, hey… shit… what the fuck?" Erika dabbed at the space between her nose and mouth; her fingers came away with blood. Wait, what? Escaping from one nostril, a trickle of red descended to curve around her lip.

"Fuck. Erika! Are you okay? I'm so sorry!" Calliope exclaimed. It was instinct, another pointless apology. It couldn't possibly have been her fault. Right?

"You're always saying 'sorry'! It's not you, I probs just forgot to take my vitamin today." Erika sniffled. She grabbed a napkin to wipe up the nosebleed, which appeared to be stopping or slowing down. The panic in Callie's heart matched its pace and slowed in turn.

"Oh yeah, you're like super anemic." She thought it best to laugh it off.

"Literally. 'Kay, hang on." Erika stood up and shuffled away into the hall, leaving a drop of blood on the vinyl tablecloth and a bowl of cereal that wasn't even close to empty yet. That left Calliope to grapple with the demon-thing: she glared at the other version of her as soon as the sound of Erika's footsteps fell away, on the carpet of her bedroom rather than the hallway's ancient hardwood. It was far too convenient for her to get a nosebleed right then, right when they made eye contact and the queer feeling had come over her. No, her unseen companion definitely had something to do it with it–somehow.

"Your hypothesis is confirmed." It droned. "Erika is different from you."

Calliope was stunned: the words amounted to more than an admission!

"No shit, we're different people. What the fuck did you even do?" She hissed.

"We sent a pattern, a signal. A hypothesis of our own. It was not properly received."

"Why? To do what, exactly? Give her a nosebleed? You're making me look fucking crazy!"

A shadow of a hand with too many fingers grasped her, right at the scruff of the neck like she was a disobedient kitten. The sensation was degrading; that could only mean one thing: Calliope groaned in anticipation of–

The flashback. She was in physics class again–eight-oh-two Electricity & Magnetism, judging by the dilapidated scenery of the lecture hall in the windowless basement of building twenty-six. The lecture was about… inductance, she thought, based on the multitude of circuits with little spiral squiggles on the blackboard down below. Except the memory wasn't fully organic: It'd superimposed little images of her and Erika's faces in chalk next to the notes, and off to the side there was a complex chicken-scratch asterisk that seemed an obvious stand-in for the Thing Itself. A thin dotted line showed her and It to be connected–oh, how lovely–but there was an airgap between her face and Erika's. That was what It'd attempted to cross, using saccades to try and bridge the void between them and contact Erika's mind as It had hers. Thoughts were Its inductors… the vellus hairs on her arms stood on end as if by static electricity. She was grateful Its resonance had failed.

The vision shifted back into the kitchen and brought the dull, resonant throbbing that followed a migraine. The other Calliope's stare was as blank as ever: innocent or ignorant. That was the most infuriating thing, that It was one or the other regarding the outcome of Its little "experiment". A nosebleed was a physical thing, however minor, meaning it carried consequences. It was also–she begrudged–actual physical proof that she wasn't going crazy. Weighing the confirmation against consequence, she supposed It could've been much worse: if It could reach out and give Erika a nosebleed with a look, what else could It do? Could It lift a car using only the power of her mind? She doubted it… though it was just like her to develop ESP while at the same time having zero control over it. Whatever power was conducted through her wasn't even really hers!

Calliope thought chew It out and try and impress some basic respect for human life and the dignity of noses or whatever, but stopped before uttering a word. They were no longer alone; Erika returned into the kitchen more ferrous than before.

"I just took two, hope that's enough? Or not too much. Hey–are you okay?" The padded soles of her onesie–fruit-themed again, cranberries today–muffled her approach, and Callie hid the scowl on her face a second too late.

"What? Oh–just… little bit of a headache, I guess." She lied. Breakfast resumed as Erika retook her seat.

"Maybe you should take 'em too, I know for sure you're not getting enough vitamin D."

"Ugh, fine. I don't think that's it, though."

"Mm, okay." Erika's spoon clinked against the bottom of the bowl. "Did you stab yourself this week?"

A shot of unexplained anxiety stabbed into her brain. She had no desire to talk or even think about that while It was watching and listening. "Yeah."

"Ah… hope you feel better, then! You got work today?"

"Nah. Think Stella's closing alone this time. You still have clinical rotation, right?"

"Yuppp." Erika ran her fingers through her hair, down from the red hairclip in the front to back behind her ear. Calliope envied how she managed to have it so long; whether from dryness or dye her own mop of dull purple was fried more often than not. In contrast Erika's was shiny-sleek and beautiful in a way she could never achieve, anymore than she could be beatified. "It's really beating me up, but it's only a few more months." Erika groaned; Callie supposed saints had to suffer, somewhat.

"Maybe that's why you're getting nosebleeds. From like, stress." She paired the deception with a sidelong glance at her doppelganger–still observing their conversation with mute interest. She meant it as a warning, even though she recognized she lacked the power to actually enforce it. Asking It to behave when It'd shown no such inclination so far was more of a plea, really.

Erika sighed. "I dunno, girl. Thanks for eating breakfast with me though! I feel like we never get to hang out lately." The smile on her face was genuine and sweet; Calliope could only return an imitation of it.

"Totally! I guess, if you wanna hang… you could come to Annette's party Friday?"

"I have clinical that night! And I know you're just gonna get high!" Erika's expression inverted. "It really isn't good for you."

Normally she would've had no issue dismissing Erika's moralizing about her bad habits, but she had to concede that she had something of a point this time. Her last trip had been far from good, the kind of cautionary tale told to a wide-eyed Calliope in grade school by an inactive-duty police officer paired with the mantra of "don't do drugs, kids". She wasn't so stupid as to blame It on the mere act of getting high, though–the psychedelic vehicle that'd conveyed her to their rendezvous wasn't at fault. She just had cosmically bad karma or something.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"Well, it feels like a pretty good time for me!" She joked. Humor felt like the wrong tone to strike considering her circumstances, but it was easily a brighter chord than if she attempted to explain what'd actually happened.

Erika pouted; perhaps she'd detected the tritone in her false harmony. "Ugh, whatever," she admitted. "I gotta get ready. I'll see you late tonight, kay?"

"Sure!" She was eager for any change in topic, even if it was an end.

Erika left in a hurry; afterwards, it seemed the Thing that insisted on haunting her took the absence as a cue for It to exit, stage nowhere. One spoonful of leftover cereal bits from the bottom of the box It was there, and the next: vanished without a trace. Calliope was wise enough to know that Its absence from the spotlight didn't mean absence from the theatre of her mind: if she closed her eyes and tuned out the world she could feel a familiar presence, an alien lurking in the deepest recesses of thought. The realization that It might stay there for good–like the scent of mildew in a dank basement–made her stomach sink lower than the foundation of her apartment building.

Calliope however was no stranger to avoiding unpleasant thoughts. Avoidance was her middle name and so she busted out her most circumambulating cursive: music in her earbuds ensured she couldn't hear the unearthly hum It placed in every silence; social media beamed straight into her brain guaranteed an endless array of distractions. That was how she intended to remain for the next twelve-or-so hours, or however long it took her to relax: reclining on the couch thinking and doing absolutely nothing useful.

And she would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for the mundane needs of her body, when she went to the bathroom a little while later and turned from the toilet to find her own face leering out at her from behind the shower curtain: It scared her half to death and would have made her wet herself if not for her just having went.

"What the–Jesus Christ!" She screamed, falling back against the door. The reflection had transplanted itself out of the mirror to reenact a shitty horror film cliché–but any nerdy humor in the situation was entirely lost on her poor heart, now pounding against the confines of her chest.

It stood there in the bathtub like it was the most normal thing in the world. On Its face was that trademark ambivalence, like that of a doll.

"A large part of your experience appears to be repetitive." It said, releasing the curtain so it fell, slack.

"What? I don't–wait–is that why you're scaring the shit out of me? To like, shake things up? Fuck you, I almost fucking died!" She wheeled around and reached for the doorknob, intending to leave It in the bathtub and calm herself in a room without a mirror. But it was no longer there: the door was flatter than a piece of driftwood. Calliope groped at the space it would've been for far too long before turning back.

"C'mon, that's low. L-let me out, please?" She couldn't hide the rising fear in her voice despite her best efforts; her thoughts betrayed her to It either way.

It stared into her soul without a word. Those eyes–not-brown, pink again–were almost… pleading? Like it was asking to be heard out.

"Please, can you let me out–" She repeated.

"We would require that you provide more unique experiences."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

Her head swam; like she was a bird, her vision flitted out the bedroom window and soared over the city streets. She scrunched her eyes shut and it ended; she opened them again to the nightmare standing still there. She couldn't believe what she was hearing.

There was just no way, it was too absurd. In Its own freaky extraterrestrial manner, It'd just told her to "touch grass".

"I seriously can't believe this is fucking happening right now." She said.

"We use this 'would require' to grant you agency in this… your agreement is not strictly necessary."

Her blood ran cold again. It always made threats in the exact same tone it used for literally everything else, which made them all the more unnerving. She understood: if she didn't get out and do something, It would do it for her. Forget the missing doorknob; she was backed into a corner in more ways than one.

"Fine. Whatever. I'll bring us to the park, I guess. But can you at least fuck off until we're there? And no more giving people nosebleeds!" She cringed to realize she'd grouped the two of them together, like they were a unit… it was absolutely imperative that she remain the driver in her head and It, the passenger.

It smiled–God she hated how goofy it looked on her own stupid face–and disappeared into thin air. Calliope felt It settle at the very back of her mind: that nesting arrangement was rapidly becoming routine for both of them. She wasn't many things, not one of them a homemaker, and neither was she happy to have it reclining in her brain… but a quiet housemate was better than a loud one. Just to be sure of no shenanigans, she crept forward to examine the spot where It'd stood inside the tub. There was nothing but water there, little puddles and a pink ring around the drain whose hue seemed suspect–probably she could blame it on too much iron in the water, or bacteria maybe. There was some mundane explanation.

That she was going out on a weekday in winter to the nearby park would likely be equally mundane, she figured. It'd been ages since she'd last been that way… sometimes it was faster to cut through it on the way to the 7/11 at the far corner, with its eternal array of rotating hot dogs in an array of ruddy shades–and of course it was cold enough now that all the foliage would be a leafless New England greige anyway. It was rare too that she would be out and about while the sun was shining. The park's shortcut status was made moot by the moon at night, or the lack of it–since it was unlit–and that was probably why it seemed especially unfamiliar. Had the sign at the entrance always simply read just "Puddingstone Park"? The marker wasn't made of that eponymous brew, instead being wrongly smooth and onyx-dark, maybe marble?–why was that? Why was she noticing every meaningless little detail as if for the first time?

Calliope passed through the wrought-iron gates without fanfare. She knew why. It had heightened her awareness to ensure It could drink in every drop of the "experience", lame though it might be. At least the Thing had kept Its promise of staying silent until they–no, she, they were not together–arrived. Now that she passed the threshold, she braced herself for the frightful sight of It jumping out at her from behind some gnarled tree. A second, then several, then a minute passed with no such scare, while her mind rested on tenterhooks. So far her paranoia was unsubstantiated.

Ahead, the little paved path forked in two at a right angle. Both directions were about equally boring, with dried grass and hibernating trees the only attractions.

"Don't know what you expected, it's boring as shit out here." She said.

The world veered to the left, and she almost vomited before it righted itself again. The feeling reminded her of the motion sickness she was prone to, though she hadn't moved, and it was unlikely that the world actually had either. That left one possibility she should have seen coming: complying with her request to be neither seen nor heard, It fucked with her remaining, unmentioned senses instead: her inner ear, tugging on it to direct her towards the sinister path. Like reins to a horse. Fucker.

She cursed under her breath and complied; what choice did she have? The left path led away from the way out, up and over a gentle hill to the corner of the park she'd never visited. Calliope at first thought that her breath condensing in the cold air would be the only interesting sight that way. But past the dead or dying grass, in the silence of a winter morning, the gravel at last terminated half-heartedly a dozen yards from a squat building made of glass. Its panes were either sweaty or frosted, too much so to see anything inside besides indistinct shapes. Huh, so the park had some sort of greenhouse. Neat.

It yanked her cochlea again and she stumbled forwards, nearly emptying her stomach-full of half-digested cereal in the process.

"Alright!" She coughed. "Fuck, you can talk or whatever, just, stop doing that!" She was grateful there was nobody else around to hear her yell at what–to the rest of the world–was a hallucination. God, she really had to get used to using her inside voice to talk to It.

Callie waited in place for a few moments, but there was no reply, just a subtle shifting she was only dimly aware of. "Ugh, fine, or don't say anything! I don't care–I'll go in anyway!"

She set off in a huff. Around the corner of the building there was indeed a door, with a sign dictating what was probably the rules of the greenhouse in legible block letters. She didn't even give herself–or It–a chance to perceive them before pulling on the handle.

Her first impression was that she'd stepped into a rainforest. Inside was everything outside was not: where the foliage along the path was a dull brown, here the greenery truly was green–and a myriad of other colors besides. The dry chill was replaced with warm damp air that was almost too thick to breathe comfortably. Two tables ran the length of the building with a break in the center, dividing the space in three, or six, and they were filled with rows of potted plants that sprouted up into flowers and succulents and a dozen other things besides. While they were the focus, along the walls there were a few larger pots with taller plants, and tables scattered with trowels and gardening tools she couldn't name. It was altogether breathtaking–or again that was probably just the humidity.

Calliope basked in the warmth for a while, like a lizard sunning itself. A subtle hum–from the climate control system, she guessed–permeated the space, giving it an almost ethereal air.

"Wow…it's gotta be so expensive to keep this warm in the winter." She breathed, invisibly now. No sooner did she take a step forward than did a chill run through her and overwhelm the heat. Her vision darkened…and then gave way, to a mass of aubergine hair as her double stepped out of her into the space ahead. It continued down the aisle without looking back.

"S-seriously? Fucking uncalled f-for!" She cursed through chattering teeth. Why did It insist on being so cold, anyway?

After giving the room a quick once over, she concluded that it was in fact empty, except for herself and the apparition. The latter had wandered over to the far end of the room and was in the midst of inspecting a colorful pot of pink pitcher flowers, or appearing to, anyway. That they were alone was good: she figured the worst It could do was frighten her, with no others around with eyes to harm or diminish her sanity in. So she let her guard down, and turned her attention to the table on her left. There was a little succulent there in a clay pot that reminded her of the one she and Erika kept on the kitchen's windowsill next to the table, though this one looked better fed and watered. At that, she cringed–if she couldn't care for a plant that was well-known to be easy to care for, how could be responsible for herself? If she–Calliope–were vegetable rather than animal, if she were a houseplant with leaves and spines and stamen…she would be wilting and neglected. How sad was that?

Her rumination on her poor self-maintenance was interrupted by that familiar monotone. "Please turn" was all It said, with an air of urgency, and despite the mounting horror of what she would find, Calliope obeyed. Graciously, no terror leapt out at her. There It was still wearing her face beside those pitcher plants. They really were quite pretty; it was the brightest hue of fuchsia she'd ever seen on a flower. And though It didn't thank her in words she at last understood: It could only see through her eyes, experience the world through her senses, and she'd been focused on the rather drab cactus to the exclusion of all else. Did It have, like…preferences for flowers? That would be decidedly un-alien, wouldn't it?

Calli took one cautious step after another towards It to bring the flowers into a better view, stopping when there was about two feet of space between her and the doppelganger. New details emerged with decreased distance: there was a card resting against the pot that described the species–Sarracenia purpurea–with cursive notes explaining care and cultivation in thin strokes. Apparently you were supposed to feed it dried bugs every month or so, and the container for them was on one of the tables on the back wall. Yuck–she made a mental note to avoid that section. She wasn't the only one engaging in mental stenography, either: even though her double remained perfectly still, she could feel It ingesting the information she'd just read, turning it over at every angle in a methodical, clinical way, like a mortician. Its attention to detail was impressive and a little scary.

"So, uh…" her throat was dry; why was she trying to talk to It again? "Why this plant, what's special about it?"

"This one is familiar, in another form. To you it may be expressed that We are "like" this plant. Patient, watchful and very colourful."

Its mouth moved in the right way, but the voice was firmly inside her head. That spurred on a thought: An inside voice, something best used for discharging secrets or other emotionally galvanic information. Is that what this was, her serving as Its confidant? Or was "patient" more a euphemism for "deadly", the way a climbing vine might choke the life out of the tree it wrapped around?

"You're not gonna like, eat me, right? Like, a bug, or something?" The air around them seemed to hang still, and heavier than usual. She felt enveloped.

"No." The feeling passed. Calliope returned her eyes to the pitcher plant, and the duo considered it in silence. It was both natural and strange-looking, with its green leaves yielding to magenta veins that spidered out in all directions, and little upside-down bells that were just begging for a fly or a bee to land in them. Their fate wasn't that dissimilar to hers, right? They both had stumbled into something beyond their comprehension and been caught. But she had it rather easy, on the whole–at least if It was now slowly digesting her in some cosmic sense, it didn't hurt. Usually. It wasn't malevolent any more than the plant was, just…different, from her and from everything and everyone she'd ever known.

And yet…It looked like her. That gave Callie an idea.

"Hey, so…if you can just put anything in my head, do you have to like, look like me? Couldn't you, I dunno–"

It fixed Its gaze on her. She wished It hadn't; she was struck thoughtless for a moment.

"You wish to retain your feeble individuality. This projection erodes that."

"No, no, just, I thought–wait, what do you mean 'erodes'?"

"With this reflection you may in time interpret our thoughts as your own. You may no longer see a distinction when they are delivered in this way."

A beat. Her ego cowered in Its cage. Was that how it worked? On multiple occasions throughout the day she'd referred to the two of them as a group, blurring the lines between host and…parasite? No, that was a bit harsh. Symbiote? If talking to a thing that looked like her and sounded like her would break down her individuality, well…that just made it all the more imperative that It immediately cease being her spitting image. Pathetic though it was, her sense of self was all she had; Calliope valued it above damn near anything else.

"Yeah, so…I'm kind of terrified of not being an individual or whatever, so if you could just, like, let me keep that–"

We will acquiesce. This will take 'time'.

It had–of course–known what she was going to say before she said it, and promptly vanished. That left her mouth hanging half-open on a half-finished syllable. She was suddenly conscious of the fact that if anyone were looking in, she would've just appeared to have had a brief and one-sided philosophical conversation with a goddamn pitcher plant! If It knew what she was going to say, why couldn't It also intuit the tact necessary to not disappear in the middle of a sentence? Whatever…in mere moments, the whirring It left in her brain became imperceptible again. All that was left was the totally ordinary hum of the greenhouse. Whatever It was planning, it was evidently not for her to know.

Calliope regarded the little mass of pink bells on the table in front. It did not regard her back.

"Can I fucking go home now?" She said to the roomful of plants.