The day Kelly and Matt entered the Realm Under the Hill...

“What? Ya need me to go too, bro?” Charit Quee asked while wiggling to show disappointment. It followed its kin over to the communal area deep within their underground hive.

Hertzor held two memory chests in its bulbous black tentacles and rested one of them on the scarred table in front of Charit before shrugging a limb.

“Yeah. We got a special commission.” Hertzor opened its own memory chest. After a few seconds, its body transformed into a human child, about 10 or 11 years old with sandy blond hair. Clothes were also in the chest, which Quaa shuffled into.

“Wasn’t I going next week or somethin’?”

He, because it was a he now, scowled with his puffy human lips.

“Get over it.” His voice, deep and scratchy, did not match the child at all. “Besides, it’s a short-term job. We’re supposed to kill off these kids soon.”

“Can’t I use this dub’ to start my break?”

“What? You wanna to go for a holiday in these bods?” He spun.

It shrugged. “They grow.”

“Forget about it. We got two months max. Then we go to another money maker.”

“Fine. But you better give me the higher quality of the two bods.”

“Just open it already.”

Charit turned one coal colored tentacle into smaller digits and opened the box. Memories poured into its mind of a life very foreign to it. The human girl, Kelly Knight, lived an utterly unadventurous life. She’d focused most of her energies on soccer, friends, and studying to go to someplace called Harvard. The strange goober didn't even have thoughts about romance, for herself, which led to her not getting a lot of the naughty references her friends would say. Her parents, on the other hand, doted on her and thought she could do no wrong. The only odd thing, other than her being a human who lacked a sense of romance, was how obsessive the girl could become.

Charit twisted its formless body to match the teenager’s then colored every inch based on the diagram embedded within the memories. Clothes sat at the bottom of the chest so she, because Charit now shared Kelly’s gender, put them on one awkward limb at a time.

She looked at Hertz-Matt and grinned. “Hey, I got an idea.” Her voice sounded more like it belonged to a frog than Kelly. “Since we’re only gonna be here for a couple of calendar pages, how about we have a little fun?”

“Fun?”

“Make our dub’s loathed like a nasty stench in a small room.”

On his face, which slowly melted like a hot candle, a wide smile grew. “Now, that’s not a bad idea. Usually, we got to play nice, but this is a fast mission so who gives a squat?”

***

Char-Kelly and Hertz-Matt appeared in the kitchen in the exact place where their originals had disappeared. It smelled of burnt plastic and the lemony scent of used magic. Char-Kelly immediately ran over to a cupboard and started tossing boxes of old cereal and unused cans to the kitchen floor. Some of the bites flew out of the boxes and scattered.

“What you doin’?” Hertz-Matt asked.

“Lookin’ for booze, duh.”

He snorted. “What? In this house? Ain’t this family dry or somethin’?”

She opened a cabinet and found some expensive looking china. A menacing chuckle passed her lips. “Huh? Is it? I guess we can save booze for celebratin’. Let’s start with some vandalism and then cause some real damage.”

She grabbed a plate and tossed it onto the tile. It shattered into three large pieces, one of which flew at Matt.

The boy backed up a few steps. “Woah! Careful.”

“Careful,” she copied sarcastically. With a smirk, she grabbed a teacup and threw it at his head. It shattered on impact. A line of blood poured from the wound. “It’s not like we can’t seal up some minor injuries.”

With narrowed eyes, he touched his hand to his forehead and scowled. A contemplative expression crossed his face.

“Heh. Now there’s an idea.” A frying pan rested on the gas stove. He slapped its handle causing it to spin off the grill and caught it. After swinging it a couple of times in midair he ran over and bashed Char-Kelly in the temple.

The sound of bones cracking and pain ran through her senses, causing her world to spin.

“Hey, that hurt!”

“So did that cup!”

“As if.” She grabbed a stack of plates.

He crouched low to attack again.

Using her long stride, she closed the distance and aimed the dishes at his forehead.

Keys dropped. A strangled gasp echoed through the kitchen, one that came from neither of the doppelganger siblings.