Touch me. Touch me like you didn't touch me last night.

grafunkel

chuckdawg

pensylvania_joe

            I’m not sure what’s going to happen, so I lift my finger away from the trigger. 

            They’ve been standing there for almost a minute, facing one another; both were confused, like the world didn’t make sense.  Like they finally realized that not all snowflakes are beautiful and unique.  I can understand that.  The two of them are identical.  Well, not exactly, but pretty damned close.  One of them had a goatee, and the other sported an earring, but the rest of it was the same, straight down to the threadbare suits trying to look like new.  Like a set of twins who went to different colleges and were seeing each other at thanksgiving that first year.  New friends, new interests, same old suits.

            I can’t make out the voices, but the lips are easy enough to read.

            “No,” Goatee says, “You’re holding the gun the way I do.”

            “Don’t be pedantic,” replies Earring.

            “Sorry.  Sarcastic comments have a way of slipping out under circumstances like these.”

            Earring flexes his grip on the gun.  So does Goatee.  I think about shooting them both, but decide to keep watching.  “Look, this is fascinating,” says Earring, “But as much as I’d love to keep talking to you—“

            “I need to go that way,” Goatee finishes, pointing past Earring with his free hand.

            “And I need to go that way,” Earring also doesn’t lower his gun when he points past Goatee.

            “Well then.”

            “Shall we?”

            “Oh, let’s.”

            They both twirl, Goatee to his right, Earring to his left.  They’re like a mirror image.  The shots sound like one.  I move the scope back and forth, looking for some kind of wound on one of them.  Nothing.

            “Did I?” Earring asks, searching his body for a wound like some kind of cartoon character.

            “No,” Goatee says.  “Am I?”  His motion looks just like Earring’s.  I’m not surprised at this point.

            “No.”

            They both look at the ground.  I move my sights to see what they’re looking at.

            “You’ve got to be kidding me.”  I think we all say it at the same time.

            They walk towards the lump of metal between them, then bend down as one to look at it, moving their hands to point their guns at one another’s temple.  No chance of it happening again.  I pivot a little so that I have a clean shot through both of them.

            Earring picks up what used to be the two slugs they fired at one another with his free hand.  “I’d be really impressed—“ he says.

            “If I knew how we did that.” Goatee finishes.

            They get up, taking their guns from one another’s heads and back away.  Not as far this time.  Still pointing the guns.  I take my finger off the trigger again.  Maybe there’s more of this to see.

            “Is this some kind of clone thing?”  Earring asks.

            “Do I look like your clone?”

            I try not to laugh.  “Kinda,” Earring says.

            Goatee nods.  “Yeah,” he says.  “Shit.”

            “It seems pretty clear to me that things are a little messed up here, yeah?”

            “I’m inclined to agree,” Goatee says.

            “So,” Earring scratches his head, “what are we going to do about this?”

            “How about we set our guns down and walk past each other, yeah?”  That way Goatee keeps ending his sentences with ‘yeah’ would really bother me if I didn’t do it myself.  Then again, maybe that’s why it does bother me, yeah?

            “Suits me.”

            “On three then.”

            I put my finger back on the trigger.  One way or another, they’re not getting off this roof alive.  But I doubt I’ll have to do anything.  If I know them, and I’m starting to think that I do, this isn’t going to be so simple.

            “One,” Earring says.

            They both lower their guns a bit, at the same rate. 

            “Two,” says Goatee.

            “Three,” Earring doesn’t even finish the word before his gun whips back up.  A quick, but predictable move.  On both their parts.

            The bullets don’t hit one another this time.  But the guns do hit the ground.

            “Fuck,” Goatee says.

            “You shot me,” Earring says, moving his hand away from his abdomen and looking at the blood.

            “I did.”

            “Jerk.”

            “You shot me too.”

            “Yup.”

            “Ouch.”

            Earring drops to his knees, just half a second before Goatee does.  “Seriously,” he says, “What the hell?”

            Goatee coughs a little bit.  There’s blood on his lips.  That’s not good for him.  “I just figured,” he says, “You were putting your gun down.”

            “I knew you couldn’t be trusted,” Earring says.

            “Neither could you,” Goatee says, moving his hand away from the wound in his stomach.

            “Good point.”

            “Ow.”

            Earring leans his back against the lip of the rooftop.  Goatee starts crawling towards him.  Maybe to throttle him, but I doubt it.  I think they’re just going to sit there and die, yeah?  “That was a damned good shot,” Earring says.

            “You too,” Goatee says.  “I think you clipped the lung.”

            “Well fuck,” Earring says as Goatee settles down next to him.  “There go my dinner plans.”

            “Don’t talk about food,” Goatee says.  “I’ve got a stomach ache.”

            Earring laughs a little, a process which seems more painful than it’s worth.  I take the time to figure out that I could probably shoot the second one before the first one really even realized what was going on.

            Trouble is, where to start?

            “Going to miss my appointment now,” Earring says.

            “And I’m going to miss mine,” Goatee responds.

            “If I hadn’t taken that shortcut,”

            “I wouldn’t have gotten lost.”

            “Getting lost, though—“

            “Is just ending up where you’re supposed to be.”  I whisper the words as they both say them together.  Strange when that happens.

            They look at each other like they don’t know what’s going on. 

            “My dad used to say that,” Earring says.

            “Mine too.”

            “Tall, black hair, beard?”

            “Short, bald, smooth cleft chin.”

            Earring closes his eyes for a second.  It won’t be long now.  I think I’ll shoot whoever survives the longest.  “Shit,” he says.

            “So not brothers,” Goatee says.

            “Not clones.”  I don’t know where Earring got that from, but I’ll let him labor under the misconception.  No time to correct it, after all.

            “Quite the fortuitous coincidence, yeah?”  Goatee says.

            “Fortuitous?”  Earring asks.  “In what way?  We’re both shot.”

            “Probably going to die,” Goatee agrees.

            “So in what way was it fortuitous?”  Earring asks.

            “Ironically?”  Goatee suggests.  “Sarcastically?”

            “More of that circumstantial sarcasm thing, huh?”

            “I really should get that looked at.”

            Earring shakes his head.  He’s getting pale.  I move my sight down a little and look at the pool of blood growing between them.  Can’t tell whose blood is whose.  I guess that’s appropriate.

            Goatee looks over at the guns, not too far away.  Earring’s is closer, not that it matters.  “Should we, you know, go for our guns again?”

            Earing shakes his head.  “No point, really.”

            Goatee smiles.  “It’ll only end in tears.”

            “Did your mother used to say that too?”  Earring asks, his breathing getting slower.

            Goatee shakes his head.  “Fortune cookie,” he says.  He smiles, then slumps down.  I watch his hand collapse down next to him.

            “Shit.” Earring says, just before I pull the trigger.

           It’s like killing yourself, yeah?  Only easier.