But even as his murderous intent ebbed away, the anger and loathing still gripped his gut. Except that, for the first time, it felt more like what it actually was—self-loathing. It was something sharp, focused inward. It felt like regret. It was a hatred for every time he had ever ignored his own best interest, for every time he’d allowed himself to be swayed off course by propriety and appearance and someone else’s ideas. He was disgusted by what he saw in front of him. And Brent’s words came flooding back to him in that moment, words that had been uttered in a forced performance, but now rang achingly true in his ears. For the first time, perhaps, with his eyes wide open, he accepted this as himself. Standing there now, he had the sensation of choking on every single desire he’d ever forced himself to swallow. Everything he’d wasted was stuck in the back of his throat. Jeremiah suddenly found himself wanting not to kill the clone, but to change him. He wanted to warn him.

He grabbed his double by the necktie and pushed his head back down into the unforgiving cement floor with a thud. The clone let out a grunt at the impact and closed his eyes in agony.

Jeremiah got to his feet, stood over him, fuming.

“Stand up!” he shouted, and punctuated the command with his boot in the clone’s shoulder. “Stand up and fight! You used to fight! What the hell happened to you?”

He kicked him again and then a third time until the clone struggled to get his hands underneath him and push himself up to a sitting position. He sat there for a moment, dazed, and then began to scoot away backward. Jeremiah kicked him again in the side and the clone grunted and fell back down in a heap, his face buried in his arms.

“Stop sniveling!” Jeremiah shouted. “Do something! Why the hell do you just lie there and take it? You let the whole goddamn world trample on you—kick the shit out of you—until there’s nothing left! Look at me! Hit me! Fight back!”

The clone kept his face buried and Jeremiah heard muffled sounds as though he were actually sobbing on the floor in front of him.

“Look at me!” Jeremiah commanded again. The clone turned his head slowly and looked up at him, red-faced and wheezing, trying wordlessly to beg for his life, attempting to make sense of what he was seeing. But there was no making sense of this.

“I don’t know who you are,” the clone moaned. “I don’t know who you are.”

Jeremiah knelt down on one knee, the knife now at his side, and looked him hard in the eye.

“You know,” he told him. “You know exactly who I am. You just won’t see it. You’ll never see it because you’re too afraid to really look at anything. You’re too weak. Or maybe you’re just crazy. Am I really here, Jeremiah? Or have you completely lost your mind? Maybe they’ll put you away, just like Uncle Charlie!”