And he fights back.
They’re the same size, the same weight, the same everything, but he’s a dirty fighter when he needs to be. Mike’s face is inches from his own, and he’s got this wild look in his eyes, like he’s unsure what he’s doing but knows he has to do it anywa
y, and Greg’s filled with a sense of dissonance, of being in two places at once, but he pushes it away. He snaps his head forward, his brow smashing into Mike’s, and there’s a crack and a bright flash of pain. Mike groans and falls off to the side as Greg tries to clear his vision. He thinks it’s ridiculous that the first thing he sees when the stars stop flashing is a damn horse standing off to the side, watching him curiously.
There will be a horse. You’ll see it when you begin to walk down the road. It will cross the street in front of you. You need to touch the horse. It acts to ground you in the world of Amorea.
Fuck Mike. Fuck everything about him.
He goes for the horse.
He’s almost to his feet when a hand wraps around his ankle and yanks. He falls forward onto his knees, and there’s an arm going around his neck, a body pressed against his back, and he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, and he’s—
He’s Mike now, and he’s terrified, he’s thinking, I’m doing this for Sean, I have to do this for Sean, I can’t let him take this away from me, I’m not a killer, I’m not a killer, I’m not a killer.
He tightens his hold around Greg’s neck, and Mike knows there’s no coming back from this. If he does this, nothing will ever be the same. But there’s Sean, okay? And maybe he’s standing in front of Mike, arm outstretched, and maybe he’s wearing that just-for-Mike smile, and yeah, sure, the rational part of Mike Frazier knows it’s not real in the traditional sense. Knows that Amorea isn’t real, not like the place where Greg Hughes comes from. But he’s made his peace with that. He’s accepted that. It doesn’t matter to him. He knows what he is. He knows what he has. He knows what it will take. Even if he has to do this, even if he has to choke the life out of the man in front of him, even if he has to spend the next three years doing it all again so Sean will love him just the same, he will. He has no other choice. There is no other choice. He can’t stop now, he can’t—
—think clearly because he can’t breathe, and Greg knows he’s in trouble, knows if he doesn’t find some way to get out of this, it’ll be this doppelganger, this thing created from his mind that’ll have the life he wants. He reaches an arm out toward the horse, muscles straining, fingers extended. But the horse is too far away, and it’s just fucking standing there on the side of the road, tail swishing, ears flicking back and forth. It watches them with dark eyes and he can’t fucking reach it.
He brings his arm back sharply, elbowing right into Mike’s side. There’s an explosive breath in his ear, and the grip around his neck loosens slightly. He pushes back as hard as he can off his knees, falling backward on top of Mike, who grunts underneath him. He’s staring up at that Technicolor sky as he sucks in a breath. It burns his throat, but his vision clears and he—
—can’t move, he can’t fucking move because the bastard is on top of him, and he’s having a hard time catching his breath and Mike thinks, no, no, nononono, and—
—he can get up now. He can get up and just fucking fly to that goddamn horse, and maybe if he gets there first, maybe if he’s grounded first, Mike will be nothing, and Greg can have the life he’s owed and—
—all he can think about is the smile on Sean’s face, the way he says hey, big guy and he is real, goddammit, all of this is real and—
It goes on like this. For a time. One gets up and the other takes him down. They both move for the horse, but they are vicious in the way they attack each other. They both know what the end result of this will be. They tire, but they push on, and Greg says, “You can’t take this from me, oh my Christ, you’re not even real,” and Mike says, “You don’t know that, you don’t know that, maybe it’s you, maybe it’s you who isn’t real.” Greg’s incredulous and Mike’s determined, and blood is spilled on the ground, on this blacktop and this dirt that don’t exist outside of the mind of a dying man and a supercomputer. Greg thinks that this is all Hester’s fault, that his flaw in Amorea was trying to take the horrors out of the people he used to make them something different. Maybe Amorea wouldn’t be as it is if he’d kept them as they were—a rapist, a child murderer, drug users and dealers, a wife killer; the list probably went on and on. He’s one of these sins, he is part of that, and he understands why Hester did what he did.
Mike doesn’t care. Mike doesn’t care about any of that. Because he knows how these people are. He knows what they’re capable of. He knows them.
It keeps on spiraling.
Eventually one man is on top of the other, fingers wrapped around his neck, and he’s squeezing, and he’s telling himself to just do it, finish this, and it’ll be over and he won’t ever have to worry about this again. He thinks of his mother and he thinks of his father, and he thinks of Sean and it’s all combined in his head, like they’re almost one again, like they’re almost the same goddamn person, and he says, “No. I am not you. You are not me.”
The other’s eyes are bulging and he’s struggling, bucking his hips, trying to gouge with his fingers, but he’s getting weaker. His face is turning purple and he’s panicking, because he can’t let it end like this. He’s waited for so long for this, to be here, to be in this moment, and this can’t be it. It can’t.
There’s a cool breeze that blows through the trees, causing the branches and the new leaves to sway. The horse grazes, no longer interested in the men on the road. The sun is shining, and the only sounds are the harsh panting coming from the man on top, and the death rattle coming from the man below.
Eventually, one of those noises stops.
The hands fall to the sides.
The body falls limp.
The chest does not rise.
His eyes stare sightless up at the Technicolor sky.
And somehow, life goes on.
HE THINKS, I would do it again. If I had to.
His back hurts. His hands are bleeding from where he’s spent the last hour digging a hole in the earth back in the trees, away from the road.
The horse hasn’t left, is just standing there, like it’s waiting for him.
It probably is. Because that’s what it was created for.