"What the fuck is wrong with you, Jasmine! Did you kill this man?"

Caleb had pushed open the bedroom door, with Jasmine and another guy following closely behind him and found a dim TV screen facing an empty computer chair, by the wheels lay a young man on his back.

"No! No, of course not. This kid died after a weekend binge of games fueled by far too many energy drinks. He died of a heart attack, a lonely gamer with no family he keeps in regular contact with, and his only friends are this collection of online buddies who, upon finally noticing his absence, would merely assume he had gotten a life. How ironic."

"That's cool and all, but why are we here with him?" the impatient Caleb snapped at him. He turned his view from Caleb and went to Jasmine.

"You didn't tell him?"

"Caleb, meet your new identity, umm. Danny, what's his name?"

"Uh, Justin. Justin Rivers. I just, uh, hope you all appreciate the complexity of this transaction."

"Yeah. How much?"

"Well, you are the son John Morris, right? You gotta be loaded."

"I doubt I'll see a penny of that, but..."

"But I will," Jasmine interjected. Caleb eyed her with a quizzical glance. She shrugged, before squeaking , "I'm like best friends with his new wife, so...don't worry, I got it."

"That wasn't the deal, though," Danny ranted. "This guy was supposed to pay me, and you were supposed to..."

"Shhh!"

"You'll get your money, provided you don't talk. When the dust settles and it looks like everything's clear, you'll be a very rich man. Sound good?"

Danny rubbed his hands together as his lips curled into a wide grin. "Yeah, I can get with that."

"So what's next? How do I make people believe I'm this guy?"

"Well, in all those books I read about pulling off the perfect escape, it's a rookie mistake to try to pass oneself off as an exact replica when adopting the identity of another. First, you're going to have to dye your hair and change your appearance in a way that makes it believable that this is not the Justin who was a no-life loser with no kind of social skills or confidence. You'll need a way to explain the muscles and no acne."

Jasmine couldn't help but giggle. "But other than that, Caleb. I think we found your long-lost twin brother. You can probably just be yourself."

Caleb knew she wasn't lying. An eerie sensation clung to his skin as he looked down into Justin's wide, glazed-over eyes, and he couldn't help but see his past self.

***

The alarm on his cell phone began to chime as his fingers quickly moved to shut it off. He yawned as he lay stretched out in a bed that just belonged to his dead doppelganger. It felt like a dream. As he rolled out of bed, he stretched his arms once more to the sky as he paced to the window and greeted the early morning sun through the blinds. He peeled them open. There wasn't much of a view; just the other houses on the other side of the quiet side street. He watched the cars and the early-risers beginning to swim about in the concrete veins of the town. He pulled out the wedgie in his saggy white underwear, halfway exposing his pasty, flat bottom. With his other hand, he raked the parts of his now-rusty blond hair that had been flattened in his deep slumber. He wriggled his toes. Beneath his black socks, he felt the chilly surface of an unmoving, impersonal wooden floor.

Caleb looked down at his phone again.

"Don't forget Justin, you've got work at the R-Mart around the corner today," Jasmine had texted him.

"I gotta work at some shitty convenience store?" he balked to himself in a labored groan. He rolled his eyes and tossed the phone on the bed.

Slowly, he cracked open the bedroom door, meandering his way down the narrow hallway. The apartment would have been nice if it hadn't been neglected so badly. The kitchen counter was littered with pizza boxes and nearly-empty liter bottles of sugary soda. Parts of the living room that Justin never touched had already collected dust, and the bodies of several dead flies had gathered on the sliding track of the window. He went into the bathroom and ran the hot water in the bathroom sink, examining this new face of his in the mirror until it got steamy. He didn't look much different, besides the blond highlights, keeping some brown peach fuzz on his upper lip, and some extra dedication to put his hair in a man-bun every morning the way Jasmine taught him, it only felt like a costume this person was wearing. The person staring back had already been through a transformation. His eyes were different; darker, colder. He knew the person staring back had changed long before he had taken on this new identity.

***

"Hey, Justin! I thought I asked you to bring the milk crates in from outside! Who's gonna pay for it if it's spoiled, huh!"

Caleb rolled his eyes, as he set his phone down long enough to respond to his manager. "Oops, my bad."

"If it's spoiled, it's comin' outta your paycheck!"

"No, please don't. How will I manage?" he muttered sarcastically as he dragged his feet out the back door.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Of course, his manager would've never known. He was old and nearsighted, but only used his glasses for reading. Caleb chuckled to himself. Jasmine really had all the angles covered. He was right to make her his accomplice. Not that he had too many options to choose from.

Still, he couldn't help but take issue with the idea of having to follow every detail of Justin's life. Caleb wasn't even getting a paycheck. Those checks were going to Justin's direct deposit. So, he was essentially working for free.

Just as he was about to return to scrolling on his phone, he heard the swift sound of heavy rubber soles barging toward him.

"Didn't sound like 'nothin!'" the manager woofed in his face as he prodded a digit into his ribcage. "Say, Justin, where'd you get all this attitude all of a sudden?"

An electric jolt shot through Caleb's body as he stammered, "what? I don't...normally act like this?"

The manager's eyes got sharp. He stepped back from Caleb to get a better look at him. But in the end, he just said, "get yourself together, kid. You're a good kid. I don't wanna have to fire you."

"Right, sir. Thank you." As soon as the manager went to the back room, Caleb exhaled a big breath as he wiped the moisture from his brow.

The night sky was a dense purple blanket by the time he left work, speckled with the million single lights of the great towers. Above was an artificial ceiling of industrial smog, blacking out all the real stars. Down below, the people swam about like fish. The street lights doused them in grayscale; they were faceless and obscured. Among them was a young man who was a stranger to himself, muddling about in slow motion like a rock stuck in the mud; the river tide diverged and passed right around him. He was the rigid, dried clay of a rigid, faceless entity, eroding on the coarse asphalt panned over his impotent, callous, hard world. His eyes were a dull brown; brown as the mud on his shoes.

"I said—'what'll it be?'"

What? he thought.

"Sir, I haven't got all day. Are you going to order something or daydream?"

Oh.

He had stumbled into the corner food booth; there was one on almost every block. He scratched his head and exhaled a thoughtful sigh, musing over just what bad decision he craved to make that day. There were so many choices, all equally poor—regulated, synthetic, uniform choices of packaged hormonal charges. Let's see, he thought: happy, satisfied, intense euphoria before dramatic crash, minor euphoria with a minor crash, my boyfriend broke up with me binge, forever alone, case of the Mondays, munchie madness, I'm so fat, I work out so I want to not enjoy what I've eaten because I like the feeling of being able to brag about how unenjoyable my diet is. "Um, I'll have a 'for once I'd like to feel fulfilled at my job?'"

"All out of that one, sorry." There was a collective groan from the other patrons.

"Ok, in that case I'll have some 'I'll hate myself for eating this, but it is one of the few options one of my socioeconomic status can afford' and maybe just go light on the euphoric reaction? I want to feel good as I'm eating it, but feel terrible right after I finish." In reality, a number five: a burger with cheese and caramelized onions.

"Sure, we have plenty of that." He pushed a couple buttons. And there it was, a typical fast-food burger, the meat was a charred burgundy beneath a rusty bronze bun. He took a bite once he slid down in his booth—instant smile, deep in his bones, complete with a rolling wave of hunger death crashing into the shores of his belly. He chewed slowly; the sensation was good.

And then, she walked in. Her silver hair against the harsh fluorescent light above cast her in a brilliant aura, and she seemed to glow as she stood in line. He waited for her to turn around and see him, but she never did. He chased her smile, but it was as if the two were in separate dimensions, converging in an instant, and then diverging again, like comets blazing past each other in the infinite space, and never to cross paths again. He blinked, and Ivy was gone.

He looked out the window and immersed himself in the ordinary passerby as he continued the meal. He was three-quarters finished and now already felt like shit for eating it. The crash had come early.

Caleb cleared his tray and left it on the ledge top of the garbage container. Three men sat huddled in a booth by the door. They nodded to each other as they watched him leave.

As he jammed his fists in his jacket pocket and trudged along, he felt the presence of their encroaching footsteps. He squeezed his fists tighter as the blood in his veins began to rush.

"Hey, man, you think you could spare some money for the train?" one of the men crooned.

"Sorry, I don't have any change," Caleb murmured, playing along.

"I wasn't really asking, pussy," the man growled, taking hold of Caleb's sleeve as he and the two others corralled him into the nearest alley. The man was in a tattered dark hoodie with a jacket over it, which he twisted up in the air with his hand in his pocket aimed at Caleb.

"Don't be a hero. Hand over the wallet and be on your way, sir."

"You know, things were starting to get so boring, I wasn't sure how much more I'd be able to take," Caleb muttered with a sigh. "But now that you're here, I can have a little fun."

"Hey, man, ya crazy or stupid or somethin'?" he snapped. He looked Caleb in the eyes. Something had changed. His pupils were dark and deep like a void. His expression was rabid like a wolf baring its teeth. One look in his eyes caused that one mugger to take one step back. He tried to speak out, but his vocal chords wouldn't produce any sound. It was as if he had already been taken by throat by an apex predator, and the sheer pressure was threatening to snap him at the neck.

"Gyaahh!" one of the muggers cried. It was too late. Caleb had taken him by the wrist and broken it, dragging it out of his pocket to expose that all he was holding was a switchblade. But he wouldn't let him go. He twisted his arm back and sent him to his knees. Then he jammed his foot in his shoulder and separated the arm from the joint as he wailed in anguish.

The other two turned to retreat.

"Don't run!" Caleb roared, catching one by the tail of his jacket. "I wanna have more fun!"

He clasped his palm over his mouth and shoved the mugger backwards into the brick wall, leaving a bloody stain, as his limp body started to crumple. Caleb searched for the third mugger while the first one attempted to crawl away with one arm as the other dragged along with his stomach.

The alley walls suddenly lit up with a swirl of blues and reds.

"Officer! Officer! Please! He's in there! He's killing my friends!"

Soon after he heard the sound of stampeding footsteps, and a booming "freeze!" that let him know he was caught. Caleb sighed and lifted his hands above his head.