Nora

“Oh get the fuck out of here!” Nora swore as she backed away from the creature crawling across the bed toward her. She wiped her mouth with her clean hand, while wiping her other hand on the grass carpet to get the ichor from the rotting thing off her fingers before the sensation made her throw up again.

The small decaying creature growled for a moment, then jumped from the bed in her direction, landing on all fours smoothly, mewling like the world’s most disgusting pet cat imaginable.

“Is it going to be like that?” Nora warned. “I’m not a little girl anymore, you can’t scare me. Not anymore! Come any closer and I’ll squash you like the bug you are!”

The doppelganger suddenly decided it wasn’t up to the challenge and scuttled away back into the gloom now surrounding the mock bedroom. Nora glanced around, looking for wherever the real girl – the real Amy Lougheed – might be hiding.

“Amy,” she tried in a softer voice, straining to hear for any movement, breathing, even sobbing. There was something from a cabinet on the side of the room, something moving inside it making it rattle. Nora slowly padded her way over, then reached out, tensed, then yanked the drawer open. As she did, the scale of the drawer changed, widened, grew in scale as she pulled it all the way out, dropping the whole thing onto the grass at her feet.

There, crouched amongst the stuffed animals, gripping onto her stuffed owl was the seven-year-old girl she’d been searching for. Nora reached out and took the shuddering child into her arms.

Amy responded in kind, wrapping her arms and legs around her, tight, as though Nora was the only real thing in the whole world. That wasn’t far from the truth.

“It’s all right Amy,” she said. “I’m taking you home.”

The girl tensed, suddenly began to pull away.

“It will be better now,” Nora promised. Somehow, she hoped, it would be better. There would be words to that effect in her report to Flores. Hopefully, with some court ordered counseling it would be. Her parents had signed waivers. They’d have to agree to something.

Amy relaxed again, nodding. They’d done the necessary research and interviews. Her home life could never have been ideal, not with her ending up in this place. But maybe that’s why and how she was the one to find Amy.

“Broken people end up in broken places,” Ephram had once told her. “They’ve always been magnets for each other.”

Then, with the girl in her arms, Nora made her way back the way she’d come, light turning dark and then dark turning light the presence of Benny, Frank and most important, Gary’s light guiding her all the way.

She gasped a breath of shock, finding herself thigh deep in the lake, the other three standing around her. Oh, that water was cold.

“Awesome job Nora,” Benny offered, patting her back, matched gazes with the girl. “Let’s get you back to camp, Amy, you like marshmallows, right?”

Nora glanced around, her gaze stopping at a Gary. He smiled back at her, nodding, then helped her out of the water.

He seemed far happier than he had when they went in. Two rescues this time, then. Nora could feel a glow coming from within herself too, a smile stretching across her face in response to his.

Their fire burned brightly as the others huddled under the dark trees. Amy slept in a sleeping back beside her. The last hour had been all marshmallows, camp songs, and an intense call over the Benny’s iPhone with her mom and dad.

“Two for two,” Benny noted. “You’ve got the charm kid. We’re going to have to invite you in for all of these.”

“Maybe,” Nora noted, then sipped on her hot chocolate. “The important thing is she’s going home. It’s a win. We needed it.”

Frank didn’t seem so enthusiastic, and didn’t talk about what he’d encountered. It didn’t matter for now. That would come up in the reviews if it was important. Gary, she noticed, seemed altogether a different man, as though some weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Maybe he was a different man. Reviews would show that as well, in case that was the original, the one who began his life on this planet. She’d get Harold to look over Flores’ shoulder when she wrote them.

Gary was staring into the fire as a marshmallow burned and melted on his stick. Nora reached out, touched his arm.

“Sorry about not telling you what was really going on,” Nora said. “People who’ve been transported like you have don’t tend to react well to things they’ve suppressed for their whole life. Most react like what we’re telling them is nuts or worse.”

He gave her a half nod.

“You mean like running headlong into a forest in the middle of the night,” he replied with a half-smile.

“If it makes you feel any better, you couldn’t have gotten far,” she tried.

“Don’t worry about it,” he replied with a smile. “I’m glad you gave me the chance to… get things right – in my head. Something hadn’t felt right for as long as I can remember, about myself, the world. I needed this chance...”

“You meet your other self?” Benny wanted to know.

“Yeah…” Gary said. “He’s doing okay. I guess it wasn’t really as bad as I thought it was, or he was right to say he could handle it, even if I couldn’t. He’s doing well. Married. Kids. Morgage. I sort of envy him.”

“But you didn’t go back?” Nora asked. “You didn’t want your life, the one you would have. Did want to make the trade with him again.”

“I wouldn’t have had that life,” he replied. “And I wasn’t about to take it away from him. It’s his. He earned it. I’ll find my way here.”

Gary sighed, scraped the melted marshmallow off his stick, looked for a fresh on.

“like I always have,” he finished.

“Think you’ll stay with us, then?” she asked. “On the job?”

He laughed.

“Sure,” he replied. “Hopefully the next team building exercise will be a little less bizarre.”

“Yeah,” she replied, felt a sudden chill of a cold wind through her jacket, then shook her head, then snorted a laugh of her own. “Probably not.”