Chapter 5 - The Final Cleansing
I caught them at the brick wall.
The woman stood there, Noah still clutched in her arms.
She looked at the wall, then back at me.
Her perfect face began to twitch.
"This wasn't in the notes," she whispered.
"The map said there was an exit."
"You’re not me," I said, walking toward her.
"You have the photos. You have the scent."
"But you don't know this city."
"And you don't know my son."
Noah stirred in her arms.
His eyes opened, drifting between the two of us.
Two identical faces.
Two identical coats.
"Mom?" he rasped.
"I’m here, Noah," we both said at the same time.
The sound was horrifying.
An echo in a canyon.
Noah looked at the woman holding him.
Then he looked at me.
"The grocery bags," he whispered.
"What?" the woman asked, her voice hitching.
"In the kitchen," Noah said, his voice gaining strength.
"You left the bags on the counter."
"My mom... she always puts the groceries away before she does anything else."
"She hates the smell of warm milk."
"She’s a perfectionist."
The woman holding him tightened her grip.
"I am a perfectionist!" she hissed.
"I cleaned the house! I bleached the floors!"
"No," Noah said, a small, sad smile forming on his lips.
"My mom is messy."
"She leaves coffee mugs everywhere."
"She drops her backpack by the door."
"You... you were too clean."
He shoved himself away from her.
He was weak, but the weight of the truth gave him strength.
He fell to the wet pavement of the alley.
The woman lunged for him, her fingers clawing like talons.
"I am Sarah Miller!" she screamed.
I didn't think.
I grabbed a heavy wooden pallet from the side of the warehouse and swung it with everything I had.
It hit her across the shoulders.
She crashed into the brick wall.
Her wig fell off, revealing a head of thin, patchy blonde hair.
Her face didn't look like mine anymore.
Without the lighting, without the script, she was just a hollow, broken woman.
She looked at me, her eyes filled with a terrifying, empty void.
"I just wanted to be loved," she whispered.
She stood up, but she didn't attack.
She turned and climbed over the brick wall with an unnatural, fluid speed.
She disappeared into the night.
I ran to Noah and pulled him into my arms.
He didn't scream.
He didn't push me away.
He buried his face in my shoulder and cried.
"I'm sorry, Mom," he sobbed. "I'm so sorry."
"It’s okay, baby," I whispered, rocking him back and forth.
"I'm home. I'm really home."
Ethan and the police arrived ten minutes later.
They searched the alley. They searched the warehouse.
They found nothing.
The "Other Sarah" had vanished like smoke.
We moved out of the Lakeview apartment the next day.
We didn't take the furniture.
We didn't take the rugs.
We only took our clothes and the photos that weren't on the basement mirror.
We moved to a small house in the suburbs.
A house with no crawlspaces.
No basements.
A house where we let the coffee mugs sit on the counter for as long as we wanted.
Noah is better now.
The IV is gone, and he’s back at his computer, shouting at his friends through the walls.
Ethan sleeps through the night.
But sometimes, I wake up at 3:00 a.m.
I walk into the kitchen and smell something.
Not bleach.
Not lavender.
Just the faint, unmistakable scent of cinnamon rolls.
And when I look in the mirror...
May you like
For just a split second...
I wait for my reflection to move before I do.
