Shatter

Chapter 10: Two

My vision glitched. 

I winced. Was I hit my electricity? 

No, there was none. 

Hallucinations. 

No, not hallucinations, either. My arm was hurting. 

I turned around. 

Two Carmen's, standing above me. 

I yelped fright, and jerked away. 

"Luna, please, you gotta believe me, this is me." one of them said. 

"No, no, no, not this again!" I said, frustrated. "I can't tell, alright? You have the same minds, and I can't tell who's real and who's just a," I waved my hands around, trying to find the word. "An imaginary person?"

One of them rolled their head around, and finally tilted their head up to look at me. "You will have to decide, this time."

"Why?" I asked, afraid of the answer. 

"Because if you don't choose the right one, both will die," they said, perfectly in sync, robotically. 

"Please, stop, don't," I responded. "I can't, alright? I can't." 

"You will have to."

Glitch. 

Glitch. 

Glitch. 

My vision was turning more black, like how it was yesterday. The grey was disappearing. It was also like an old television screen. It was like I was looking through the same lenses when I had encountered the two Carmen's the first time. I had convinced myself that it wasn't real. That I was hallucinating. 

But then again, I blamed nearly every horrible event as a hallucination. 

Suddenly, I had an idea. 
What if Carmen had to simply merge the two separate parts of herself together? What if she didn't accept this different part of her?

My stupid ideas. They just kept coming. That would never work, of course. 

Or... or, would it? 

I reached out my hand. "Carmen," I began. 

"Yes?"

"Accept it." I smiled. "It's just you. Just you. No one else."

"No! What the hell are you talking about, Luna? There's this other clone of me," one of the Carmen's wailed. "I need to get rid of it!"

"It's just you." I repeated. "Just you and your soul. Accept it. There's not two. Just you. Just you. Just you."

Her eyes turned glassy. "No... no, there's two of me." 

"NO," I insisted, in a yell this time, "ACCEPT THAT YOU. ARE. YOU!"

That was too forceful, and I knew it. I was wrong. Maybe there were two hers. I was wrong, and she was right, perhaps. 

Nothing happened. 

But then, one of the Carmen's started to radiate with light, like the sun, turning the black into grey. "Maybe it's just me," she said, her voice echoing in the endless, black, space. 

Grey?

It was grey. 

There was grey again. 

"It's just me," she said, and seemed oblivious to her surroundings. "It's just me."

She floated up into the air. "JUST ME."

But then, she dropped down from the air, and there were two Carmen's again.