The front door is secure.
The only other way into the house is through the French doors that lead from the screened-in porch into the living room.
Jennie moves through the kitchen.
Lisa will be looking to her to tell her what's next and Jennie have no idea.
They can't take the car.
They'll have to leave on foot.
As Jennie reaches the living room, her thoughts come in a raging stream of consciousness.
What do we need to bring with us?
Phones.
Money.
Where's our money?
In an envelope in the bottom dresser drawer of our bedroom.
What else do we need?
What can we not forget?
How many versions of me tracked us here?
Am I going to die tonight?
By my own hand?
Jennie feels her way through the darkness, past the sleeper sofa, to the French doors. As she reach down to test the handles, she realize—it shouldn't be this cold in here.
Unless these doors were recently opened.
As in a few seconds ago.
They're locked now, and Jennie doesn't remember locking them.
Through the glass panes, she can see something on the patio, but it's too dark to make out any detail.
Jennie thinks it's moving.
She needs to get back to her wife.
As Jennie turn away from the French doors, a shadow rises from behind the sofa.
Her heart stops.
A lamp blinks on.
Jennie sees herself standing ten feet away, one hand on the light switch, the other pointing a gun at her.
She's wearing nothing but her underwear and her hands are covered in blood.
Coming around the sofa with the gun aimed at Jennie's face, the other Jennie says quietly, "Take your clothes off."
The slash across her face identifies her.
Jennie glances behind her through the French doors.
The lamplight illuminates just enough of the patio for her to see a pile of clothes—Timberlands and a trench coat—and another Jennie lying on her side, her head in a pool of blood, throat laid open.
The other Jennie says, "I won't tell you again."
Jennie starts undoing the buttons of her shirt.
"We know each other," She say.
"Obviously."
"No, that cut on your face. We had beers together two nights ago." The original Jennie watches that piece of information land, but it doesn't derail the other like she hoped.
The other says, "That doesn't change what has to happen. This is the end. You'd do the same and you know it."
"I wouldn't, actually. I thought so at first, but I wouldn't."
The original slide her arms out of the sleeves, tosses the shirt.
She knows what the other is planning: dress herself in Jennie's clothes. Go to Lisa pretending to be her. She'll have to reopen the slash across her face to make it look like a fresh wound.
The original Jennie says, "I had a plan to protect her."
"Yeah, I read it. I'm not sacrificing myself so someone else can be with my wife. Jeans too."
The original unbuttons them, thinking, I misjudged. We're not all the same.
"How many of us have you murdered tonight?" Jennie asks.
"Four. I'll kill a thousand of you if that's what it takes."
As Jennie pulls off the jeans, one leg at a time, she asks, "Something happened to you in the box, in those worlds you mentioned. What turned you into this?"
"Maybe you don't want them back badly enough. And if that's the case, you don't deserve them any—"
Jennie throw the jeans at the other and charges at her.
Wrapping her arms around the other's thighs, Jennie lifts with everything she got and run her straight into the wall, crushing the air out of her lungs.
The gun hits the floor.
The original kick it into the kitchen as the other Jennie crumples.
Jennie drives her knee into her lookalike.
She hears bone crunch.
Grabbing her head, Jennie brings her knee back for another blow, but the other sweeps Jennie's left leg out from under her.
Jennie slams into the hardwood floor, the back of her head hitting so hard she see bursts of light, and then the other's on top of her, blood dripping off her ruined face, one hand squeezing Jennie's throat.
When the other hits Jennie, she feels her cheek fracture in a supernova of pain below her left eye.
The other hits her again.
Jennie blinks through a sheet of tears and blood, and the next time she can see clearly, the other is holding a knife in the hand she was hitting Jennie with.
Gunshot.
Jennie's ears were ringing.
A small black hole through her sternum and blood spilling out of it and down the center of her chest. The knife drops from her hands onto the floor beside Jennie. She watches her put a finger in the hole and try to plug it, but the blood won't be stopped.
The other takes a wet, ragged breath and looks up at the woman who shot her.
Jennie cranes her neck too, just enough to see another Jennie aiming a gun at her.
This one is clean and reserved, and she's wearing the black leather jacket that Lisa gave to the original Jennie ten years ago during their anniversary.
On her left hand, a gold wedding band gleams.
Jennie's wedding ring.
Jennie2 pulls the trigger again, and the next bullet shears off the side of Jennie's attacker's skull.
She topples.
Jennie turn over and sit up slowly.
Spitting blood.
Her face on fire.
Jennie2 aims the gun at the original.
She's going to pull the trigger.
Jennie actually see her death coming, and she have no words, just a fleeting image of her as a child on her grandparents' farm in western Iowa. A warm spring day. A massive sky. Cornfields. She's dribbling a soccer ball through the backyard towards the "goal"—a space between two maple trees.
Jennie thinks, Why this last memory on the brink of my death? Was I the most happy in that moment? The most purely myself?
"Stop it!"
Lisa is standing in the kitchen nook, dressed now.
She looks at Jennie2.
She looks at Jennie.
At the Jennie with a bullet through her head.
The Jennie on the screened-in porch with her throat cut.
And somehow, without so much as a tremor in her voice, Lisa manages to ask, "Where is my wife?"
Jennie2 looks momentarily thrown.
Jennie wipes the blood out of her eyes. "Right here."
"What did we do tonight?" Lisa asks.
"We danced to bad music, came home, and made love." Jennie answers Lisa as she looks at the woman who stole her life. "You're the one who kidnapped me?"
Jennie2 looks at Lisa.
"She knows everything," Jennie continues. "There's no point in lying."
Lisa asks, "How could you do this to me? To yourself?" Lisa's voice breaks, taking in the horror all around them.
Jennie2 looks at her.
She is only six or seven feet away, but Jennie is sitting on the floor.
Jennie couldn't reach her before she pulled the trigger.
Jennie thinks, Get her talking.
"How'd you find us?" Jennie asks.
"Lisa's cell has a find-my-phone app."
Jennie looks at Jennie2. "And the others?"
"I don't know. I guess they followed me here."
"How many?"
"I have no idea." Jennie2 turns to Lisa. "I got everything I ever wanted, except you. And you haunted me. What we could've been. That's why—"
"Then you should've stayed with me fifteen years ago when you had the chance."
"Then I wouldn't have built the box."
"And that would be so terrible, why? Look around. Has your life's work caused anything but pain?"
Jennie2 made up her excuse, "Every moment, every breath, contains a choice. But life is imperfect. We make the wrong choices. So we end up living in a state of perpetual regret, and is there anything worse? I built something that could actually eradicate regret. Let you find worlds where you made the right choice."
"Life doesn't work that way. You live with your choices and learn. You don't cheat the system." Lisa says, her tone is cold, her eyes are tired.
So slowly, Jennie transfers her weight onto her feet.
But the other catches her, says, "Don't even."
"You going to kill me in front of her?" Jennie asks. "Really?"
"You had such enormous dreams," Jennie states. "You could've stayed in my world, in the life I built, and actually lived them."
"Oh, is that how you justify what you did?"
"I know how your mind works. The horror you face every day walking to the train to go teach, thinking, Is this really it? Maybe you're brave enough to admit it. Maybe you're not."
With full of rage, Jennie's voice raised, "You don't get to—"
"Actually, I do get to judge you, Jennie, because I am you. Maybe we branched into different worlds fifteen years ago, but we're wired the same. You weren't born to teach undergrad physics. To watch other people win the acclaim that should've been yours. There is nothing you can't do. I know, because I've done it all. Look at what I built. I could wake up in your brownstone every morning and look myself in the mirror because I achieved everything I ever wanted. Can you say the same? What have you done?"
"I made a life with Lisa."
"I handed you, handed both of us, what everyone secretly wants. The chance to live two lives. Our best two lives."
"I don't want two lives. I want Lisa."
Jennie looks at Lisa.
"And I want her. Please. Let us have our life. You don't have to do this." Lisa says with full conviction.
The other's face hardens.
Her eyes narrow.
She moves towards Jennie.
Lisa screams, "No!"
The gun is inches from Jennie's face.
Jennie stare up into her doppelgänger's eyes, ask, "So you kill me and then what? What does it get you? It won't make her want you."
Jennie2's hand is trembling.
Lisa starts toward Jennie2.
"Don't you touch her."
"Lisa please stay there." Jennie stare down the barrel of the gun. "You've lost, Jennie."
Lisa is still coming and as she closes in, Jennie2's eyes cut away from Jennie for a split second.
Jennie immediately slaps the gun out of the other's hand, grab the knife off the floor, and bury it in her stomach, the blade sliding in with almost no resistance.
Standing, Jennie jerk's the knife out, and as Jennie2 falls into her, grasping her shoulders, Jennie sticks her again with the blade.
Over and over and over.
So much blood pouring through her shirt and onto her hands, and the rusted smell of it filling the room.
The other is clutching Jennie, the knife still embedded in her gut.
Jennie rips out and shoves the other away from her.
She teeters.
Grimacing.
Holding her stomach.
Blood leaking through her fingers.
Her legs fail her.
She sits, and then, with a groan, stretches out on her side and lets her head rest against the floor.
Jennie lock eyes with Lisa. Then Jennie goes to Jennie2 and searches her pockets as she moans, finally emerging with Jennie's set of car keys.
"Where's the Suburban?" Jennie asks.
When she answers, Jennie have to lean in close to hear her voice: "A quarter mile past the turnoff. On the shoulder."
Jennie rushes over to the clothes she stripped out of just moments ago, dressing quickly.
When she finishes buttoning her shirt, she bends down to tie her boots, glancing over at Jennie2, bleeding out on the floorboards of the old cabin.
Jennie lifts the gun from the floor and wipe the grip off on her jeans.
They need to leave.
Who knows how many more are coming.
Her doppelgänger says Jennie's name.
Jennie looks over—the other's holding her wedding band in her blood-soaked fingers.
Jennie walks towards the doppelganger and as she takes the ring and slides it onto her finger over the ring of thread, Jennie2 grabs her arm and pulls her down towards her face.
Jennie2 is trying to say something.
"I can't hear you."
"Look...in...the glove box."
Lisa comes over, wrapping her arms fiercely around Jennie, trying to hold back tears, but her shoulders jerk and the sobs break loose. As she cries in her arms helplessly, Jennie thinks of the horror her wife just witnessed, and it brings tears to her eyes.
Jennie holds Lisa's face between her hands. "You saved my life. If you hadn't tried to stop her, I never would've had a chance." Jennie then wipes the tears from Lisa's eyes as her wife tries to calm herself down. They looked at each other for a few seconds and then nodded at each other, as if silently agreeing at some thing.
They rush through the living room, sidestepping pools of blood.
Jennie unlocks the French doors, and as Lisa moves out onto the screened-in porch, Jennie glances back at the woman who caused all this.
Her eyes are still open, blinking slowly, watching them go.
Stepping outside, Jennie pull the doors closed after her.
Jennie have to track through the blood of one more version of her to reach the screen door.
She's not sure which way to go.
They head down to the shoreline, follow it north through the trees.
The lake as smooth and black as obsidian.
She keeps scanning the woods for other Jennies—one could step out from behind a tree and take her life at any second. After a hundred yards, they turn from the shoreline and move in the general direction of the road.
Four gunshots ring out at the cabin.
They are running now, struggling through the snow, both Jennie and Lisa gasping for breath. The adrenaline tide is keeping the pain of Jennie's bruised face at bay, but she wonders for how much longer.
They break out of the forest onto the road.
Jennie stands on the double-yellow line, and for a moment, the woods are silent.
"I don't know which way to go anymore" Jennie admits, panting.
"North." Her wife answers. Jennie nods and they jog down the middle of the road.
"I see it."
Straight ahead, off the right-side shoulder, Jennie clocks the back of their Suburban pulled halfway into the trees.
They got inside, and as Jennie pushes the key into the ignition, she catches movement in the side mirror—a shadow sprinting towards them on the road.
Jennie cranks the engine, releases the emergency brake, and shift into gear.
Whipping the Suburban around, Jennie pins the gas pedal to the floor.
"Get down."
"Why?" Lisa asks.
"Please!"
They accelerate into darkness.
Jennie punches on the lights.
They fire straight onto another Jennie, standing in the middle of the road, aiming a gun at the car.
There's a burst of fire.
A bullet punctures the windshield and rips through the headrest an inch away from Jennie's right ear.
Another muzzle flash, another gunshot.
Lisa and Jennie both screamed.
How broken must this version of Jennie be to risk hitting Lisa?
The other Jennie tries to step out of the way a half second too late. The right edge of the bumper clips her waist, the contact devastating. It slings her around hard and fast, her head slamming into the front passenger window with enough force to break the glass.
In the rearview mirror, the original Jennie watches her tumble across the road as they keep accelerating.
"Are you hurt?"
"I'm okay" Lisa says, beginning to brush the pebbles of safety glass out of her hair.
---
They speed down the dark highway.
No one says a word.
It's three in the morning, and they are the only car on the road.
The night air streams through the bullet holes in the windshield, the road noise deafening through the broken window beside Lisa's head.
"Do you still have your phone with you?"
"Yeah."
"Can I have it?"
Lisa handed them over, and Jennie lowers the window several inches and chuck the phone out of the car.
"They're going to keep coming, aren't they?" Lisa asks. "They're never going to stop."
She's right. The other Jennies can't be trusted.
Jennie was wrong about the lottery. "I thought there was a way to fix this."
"So what do we do?"
Exhaustion crushes down on Jennie.
Her face hurting more every second.
Jennie looks over at Lisa. "Open the glove box."
"What am I looking for?" her wife asks.
"I'm not sure."
Lisa pulls out the Suburban's owner's manual.
Their insurance and registration paperwork.
A tire-pressure gauge.
A flashlight.
And a small leather bag that Jennie knows all too well.