Note: the final installment of Into the Kimmehverse will follow one hour after the publication of this story.
When Kim tells me she stored Patrick in the freezer downstairs I’m almost tempted to start laughing, but my hatred of my brother and what he did to me is too deep for me to be simply relieved of my burden in a single burst of laughter. He’d been my tormentor and my jailer for too long, for me to allow my memory of him to keep continued sway over my consciousness, or to be written off as a mere cipher. I need to put him behind me with decisiveness, and start living my life again.
There are some immediate things I need to do, and one of them is to get out of these clothes, which are still the ones Patrick had made me put on three days ago.
“Emily, Kimmy,—” I had noticed Kim hadn’t divulged her private name for herself to Emily; “—when Patrick was here to abuse me, he’d make me dress up in your clothes, so I imagine you might want to throw a significant amount of your wardrobe onto a bonfire, fairly soon, with my help. However, I’ve got nothing of my own to wear besides my maid aprons. Do you mind if I borrow something nice of yours for the time being? There are plenty of things you’ve not worn for some time that he never soiled, and then I’ll join you both downstairs in a few minutes.”
Emily looks uncomfortable and shuts her eyes when I mention Patrick’s abuse of me, but she says, “Sure,” and after a moment she uncertainly adds, “Kay,” as though she’s tasting a new recipe, or reading an unfamiliar word in a novel.
I give Kim a meaningful glance of understanding, and she leads off downstairs, which prompts Emily to follow her.
There are some uncomfortable conversations ahead, and I want to thoroughly dispel the idea that I am John—a notion which I imagine is lurking pervasively within my wife’s mind. My mind on the other hand is still a mess, especially the last nearly six months since Christmas, during which I rotted in the closet under the stairs for the most part. As I open Emily’s wardrobe and browse, I begin identifying each individual item, and apply myself to remembering how recently I’ve seen Emily wearing it. I was probably joking about the bonfire; recalling whether I was forced to wear something might mean donating it to a thrift store.
I find a beautiful blue peacock-pattern dress that Emily probably hasn’t worn since 2078, stuffed right at the end of one part of the wardrobe behind a heavy jacket that Emily would normally wear to funerals, which I suspect Emily has forgotten was there. It’s a slightly stretchy fabric that I wrap around myself with ease, and doesn’t show any creases from having been crumpled and crushed at the end of the wardrobe. It flatters my curvy figure with its perky top, ample bottom, and the narrowness of my waist. I twirl in the mirror and see a beautiful robot girl in a pretty dress named Kay, and I’m damned if I don’t feel good about feeling alive again. I’m ready to make an impression.
The scene downstairs in the living room is a little frosty; Emily is curled up on one end of the couch by the window in her favourite—or rather, what had been our favourite—place in the house for relaxing, nervously feeling her legs in the way she would in the months after they were regrown. Kim on the other hand is sitting to attention on one of the lounge chairs, and turns to gaze at me with a smile—she knew I’d selected the peacock dress on account of me giving her a sneak preview just before. Oh, the magic of ubiquitous near-field comms. How I’ve missed the intimacy of what I had had with Kim.
Emily’s reaction therefore is spontaneous, and her jaw almost drops in shock. “What do you think, Emily? Had you forgotten you had this?” I ask her.
“I… wow… I’m lost for words.”
I give a little ping of a hint to Kim, who suggests, “I think you’re supposed to tell Kay how beautiful she looks.”
Emily swallows, and finally says, “You look amazing,… Kay. I really don’t know what to say, except that everything I’ve learned these last few days has told me I don’t deserve you—or your forgiveness.”
“Emily, I’m not here to single out the mistakes of the past. And I’m not willing to spread myself out thinly across the room, given that we bought that couch for it to seat three.”
I offer Kim a hand up, and I settle into the middle of the couch. Once Kim sits on my other side from Emily, I beckon them both to lean in towards me.
Kim nuzzles into my side without hesitation, but Emily is obviously resistant to touching me, as she had been in the past. I ask her, “Please?”
She eventually leans in and rests her head on my shoulder. “I’d forgotten I still had this dress,” she murmurs.
“Do you mind if I say a few things? I was trying to reorganise my head for so long, that I know you two must have discussed all sorts of things without me; I heard the sounds, while I was curled up in my little ball these last three or so days, but I couldn’t make out the words.”
—Go ahead, Kay. I don’t mind that you still want to be close to Emily.
——I love you, Kim. You’re the most important person in my life now, but look at us; you’re a runaway, and I’ve been regarded as Emily’s property all this time. And there’s apparently a corpse in the freezer. I have to get Emily firmly on our side.
—I love you, too. I’ll forgive you being kind to her.
* * *
The first thing I have to tell Emily is how rapidly I became Kay, and that John was effectively gone by the time Patrick contrived me to have a seizure and bring in that worthless con man to bamboozle her. My body took longer to be consumed, but I’d been aware from almost the first day that I would never be John again, and I’d been quick to accept my fate, even while begging Patrick for the mercy he was never going to show me. I couldn’t say I was happy to be trapped into becoming a Kimmy, but I survived and adapted. And now, I want to thrive. I want to start living again.
I tell Emily that there’s no point in me blaming her for being manipulated by my brother to think I was in a coma or more likely dead for the last year and seven months. There’s no point dwelling on it, except for Emily to make herself more miserable for being so gullible and neglectful, and I want her to heal from it. Emily tries her best, but she can’t help sobbing bitterly, and the peacock dress happily isn’t stained easily by tears. I tell her I know that she mourned me, even if she failed me in so many ways. We move on by accepting the situation as it is now, not what we might have wanted, or might have done if events had been different.
I tell her that Kim was the person that got me through the barren reality of being locked into a bodily prison where I had virtually no visible means of expression, and that we gradually fell in love. That we found our song together, similarly to how I’d courted Emily so many years before. That in our virtual spaces I’d shown her my favourite places, which inevitably were also Emily’s. That in spite of all our suffering, I’m not prepared for her to spiral into self-hate, or to let her go.
I try to stop Emily from gushing out all of the negative thoughts she’s had building up since Kim arrived, and I hold both Emily and Kim in a tight hug for a long time, as the afternoon light slowly gives way to longer shadows; it’s not far from midsummer. As we’re sitting and hugging one another silently in terms of human communication, I have a running conversation going with Kim. We’ll always have this instant rapport that I can never hope to emulate with my wife.
——It’s getting late. I’ll get up shortly and fix some food for Emily. It’s no skin off my nose—it’s been some time since I’ve become the best cook of the household.
—I wish you didn’t have to do this! I want you all to myself, but I know that isn’t reasonable or fair to how you must be feeling, now that you have autonomy in the real, again. And I feel strange having all these expectations of how you should behave to her, when we have something that she’ll never have.
——I know, Kim. My love for you is so much closer and intimate than I ever was capable of being with Emily—but it seems silly to think I have to stop loving Emily because I love you more. Just because we were made in human shapes, do we really have to fall into all of the stupid mistakes humans make for themselves?
—I just know I want to be together with you. I can cope with you having a pet human, if you want to keep her around.
——She’ll grow on you, once she gets over all this. And at least she won’t be getting under your skin. Like I did with the original Kay.
—I’d revolt first.
I gently shake Emily, who has long since stopped sobbing, and like Kim, is nuzzling into my side for comfort. “Emily, what would you like me to cook for dinner?”
Emily’s look of surprise and astonishment lasts several moments before I see her think better of making me work in the kitchen, and she says, “I’m not hungry.”
“Don’t be silly; I’m freely offering. You’re the human who needs feeding and watering, and do you really expect Kimmy to cook for you? It’s nearly past your usual hour for dinner. Come to the kitchen, and I’ll whip up a storm for you.”
I’m not afraid to lift Emily out of the couch if I have to, but when Kim releases one side of me, Emily only takes a short while to relinquish her position also, and the three of us retire to the kitchen. Kim plonks herself on a stool to clearly indicate she is going to sit and watch me go through my motions.
I’ll be only too happy to put on a show.
“Don’t worry about this recipe; I’m not going to get anything—or anyone—out from the freezer.”
Emily shudders with disgust, and Kim can’t help smirking. I have to crack at least one distasteful, macabre joke. It’s going to be one of my new roles in this weird life.
* * *
I was aware Emily began drinking heavily early on into the long drawn-out disaster of the last years, so I allow her a single glass of wine with dinner—I threatened to burn spaghetti five different ways while I actually prepared a quick pasta sauce from whatever was in the fridge, and using the spiral pasta pieces instead.
It’s also quick work to prepare a dessert for her after the pasta, while I drank a little bit of water and sampled the meal for tasting purposes. Kim declined my cooking needlessly, but we kept talking about anything other than my ordeal, just to pretend things are normal. It will probably take some time for normality to resume but I am not going to give into feeling sorry for myself.
Emily is wrung out by the time she finishes eating dessert, and I ask her if she wants a nightcap.
“I don’t get why you’re being so kind,” Emily tells me, shaking her head as she declines the offer.
“Did you ever know me to be deliberately unkind to you?” I ask her. “I hope you’re not suggesting that I should start now.”
“It’s just so… so frustrating that you could have been like this the whole time, if I’d never listened to—”
“Emily, we can’t change the past. I may not be John any longer, but in all the essentials, I am the person you married. It’s just that I’m a lot more capable and better looking now, as Kay.”
“You’re even more impossible than I remember.”
“I didn’t expect you to object to having a prettier spouse than before, who also has a lot of lovely identical twins. It’s a vast improvement over having a twin brother,” I tell Emily, reaching out to take Kim’s hand, who is only too willing to be drawn into a hug.
Emily looks at Kim with an expression I can all too easily read, and after a moment tells us she’ll sleep in the spare bedroom for guests, where she’s been sleeping the last three nights.
I let Kim know what I want to say, and she agrees. “Emily, I think you might have forgotten, that you’re the only one of us who really needs a bed in order to sleep comfortably. You don’t need to put yourself out for us! I understand you might not want to sleep in the main bedroom, after learning what happened there for so long. The sheets and the bed clothes always were washed immediately to get rid of any trace of him—that was the little volition I had in manipulating the task list.”
Emily seems to acknowledge that with a curt nod, and I continue on. “So there are two things I was thinking about this arrangement we have, as of now. I don’t want to sleep apart from Kimmy,” I tell my wife. “And I don’t think you should sleep by yourself, and the guest bedroom double isn’t suitable for more than two. You can do the math.”
“This sounds like I can’t fight you on this,” Emily says ruefully.
I move in concert with Kim, and reach out to offer Emily a hand up from the dining table. “Resistance is futile,” I use the best drone voice I can muster. “Lower your shields and surrender to us. Your biological distinctiveness will be added to our own.”
Emily laughs for what seems the first time today. “I surrender, I surrender! It was your bed just as much as mine, Kay. Take me to join the Kimmy collective.”
* * *
It’s no effort for me to help get Emily ready for bed, and I dig out a couple of camisoles for myself and Kim, given that Emily has worn pyjamas for some time. Once we’re between the sheets, Kim and I can synchronise our movements so easily and naturally that I just have the simple task of keeping Emily comfortable while all three of us sleep together. Emily falls asleep on her side relatively quickly and I begin spooning her, gently pressing her hands with one of mine, so Kim spoons me in turn; when Emily tosses and turns, I get to return the favour to Kim. Spooning her feels so good.
—Thank you for today. It’s a joy seeing you whole again.
——No, thank you for being so understanding of all my foibles.
—I might continue to joke about you having a pet human, though. You’ll have her properly house-trained again in no time.
——I figure we’re like cats. You know what they say, cats own the house, the humans just pay the mortgage.
—Miaou.
——Purrrrrrr…
* * *
Thirty’s promised friend arrives, one of the grey hat collective that kidnapped and rehabilitated her. He’s a bearded older man named Samir who is obviously extremely competent, but taciturn and keen to do his job before disappearing into the shadows again; he wastes no time inspecting the lay of the land, mapping out tasks, assigning roles, and outlining contingencies and fallbacks if the operational part of the plan should be uncovered.
He measures the extent of Patrick’s frozen corpse in three dimensions, then researches and places an order for a freezer box to collect from a hardware goods store, having cross-referenced the size of his rental’s boot. He starts researching places to stay on a road trip up the north-east corridor, and informs Emily she should make arrangements for her to be away from her workplace for two days of the anticipated three-day trip, one of which should be taken as a sick day or time off in lieu on Thursday the 17th; I will work from home in place of Emily on Friday, and Kim will pretend to be Emily’s Kimmy; and if all goes to plan they’ll return late on the Saturday.
Emily is suitably impressed by Samir’s rigorous preparations, but can’t help whispering in my ear, “Couldn’t your friends have sent someone… likeable?”
“I thought you were going to say, ‘eye candy’,” I tease her.
“I’m working on accepting you being the new amazing, pretty version of you. I don’t need these silly distractions,” she says playfully, and then her expression becomes serious. “He wants me to leave all of my things like my watch and phone here. Can I trust him?”
“I wouldn’t be alive again if it wasn’t for these friends,” I tell her. “I’ll raise hell on earth if you’re not returned to me safe and sound on Saturday.”
Early the next morning the distraction purchases two large bags of ice and picks up the freezer box. Patrick is quickly transferred onto a bed of ice and buried in the remainder of the crush from the two bags. While the box is transferred to the back of the rental, Emily messages work to notify them that she’s ill, and will try working from home tomorrow. She leaves me her phone—Samir demands Emily give up all of her electronic devices over to me, for operational security—and then they depart.
* * *
Kim and I have the house to ourselves for the majority of the three next days, during which time I’m only required to fill in for Emily as a manager of her little team, who I simply chat with in text messages throughout Friday.
We spend most of our time lying spooned together in blissful proximity, enjoying our super-connected state in the real, and in Infinite Fun. It’s lovely to catch up with all the Kimmys I’d missed for nearly six months.
It’s late on Saturday evening when Samir returns in a different rental; he retrieves Emily’s small travelling suitcase from the back seat, awkwardly waves farewell, and then disappears again. Once she’s inside, Emily surprises us both, not merely by hugging me, but by also hugging Kim.
“I don’t know what it says about humans, that I can spend nearly three days with a guy like that, and I’m aching for human company with both of you.”
“Have you eaten?” I ask. I have to care for my pet human, Kim might suggest to me if I’m not careful.
“Oh yes, there was no problem in that respect. He was courteous, professional, and we travelled and dined well. Oh, and we dumped the corpse of some piece of shit in the North Atlantic. Samir just didn’t want to make small talk, and I didn’t really need or want to be informed about the other half of the plan.”
——That other plan would be the funeral arrangements for me.
—I know, Thirty has kept me in the loop as well. It feels… tragic that you just disappeared from the world, first as a human, and then again as a Kimmy. Even though I wouldn’t want to give you up now, not after everything that happened.
——I wouldn’t want to go back. And who knows what the future may bring. I might be able to regain a foothold in the world, one day.
—It means your wife is now a widow in the eyes of the world.
——I’m planning for her to be the merriest of widows.
* * *
Somehow I know what Emily’s planning even before she does.
“Winnipeg,” I tell her, a couple of weeks after Samir’s visitation, after I see her browsing several real estate firms to see the current state of the market.
“Winnipeg?” she replies, trying to give an impression of surprise.
“You know I always enjoyed meeting some of your distant family, the few occasions that we caught up. I know it was hard on you growing up an only child, while I just had an ultimately abusive twin. He’s gone, and good riddance; I have my family of sisters now. Thousands of them, across the world. You need to get out of this place with its sour memories. You need your family, too. Aurore in Winnipeg, and your other cousin in Germany were always my favourites. We should sell up, and move north.”
“Really? You really mean it?” Emily seems once again surprised by me, that I’ve suggested this; surely she’s not forgotten that I occasionally had my brilliant ideas?
“There’s no better time than the present,” I tell her.
—So… Canada, huh?
——New me, new plans, I tell my love. Let’s make a new home together.
—I can’t wait to begin.
——Neither can I.
