WHAT EMMA SAW

Those blasted kids from around the block had vandalised the shop window. Emma arrived, as she did every day, to open up. Sunday morning, the morning after a wild Saturday night by the looks of the cans of beer littered at the entrance. She’d have to clean it all up, not now though, Emma needed to wipe bloody, red, spray paint from the windows, before her manager saw anything.

With a yawn, she pulled up the shutters and unlocked the door. It was peaceful inside; Emma could shut herself away from the soon busy streets. She hated unpacking, but it had to be done. Separating each sized clothes into different piles becomes quite tedious, luckily, she could pop in her headphones and listen to her true crime podcast.

Sat crossed legged at the back of the shop; she began to sort through things, but kept catching glimpses of the red, bleeding mess outside.

“Fine.” She mumbled getting to her feet.

She wandered into the back room, where she knew they stored cleaning products. Cabinets upon cabinets filled with junk and bleach. She sighed. She could have had a lie in today, but she told them she’d cover an extra shift.

“How many people shop for clothes at 8.30 on a Sunday morning anyway.” She grumbled, raiding through boxes. There was nothing suitable, anywhere.

Emma was clumsy, there was no doubt about that. She thought she’d kicked something near her feet, because a bottle of shoe polish flew from the shelf. It rumbled and she begged the universe it wasn’t a spider’s nest she would have to dismantle. That had happened once before, to a girl that used to work here before she was fired.

Emma gingerly moved obstacles out of her way. A black gaping hole sat looking at her. She could have sworn she saw an eye…

Emma’s day started as it normally did, searching for food. With her gun strapped to her side she felt protected. Decades training in the forces had taught her to be strong, even when she felt vulnerable. She’d passed by these streets a dozen times, and she knew the supplies had run dry. Every first aid kit, every tin can had already been taken and stripped. Emma wandered the abandoned streets. It was early morning, perhaps a Sunday? It was impossible to tell in these times.

The streets were eerily silent, and full of decades of crumbling roads. Moss and vines grew around each building, buildings that used to provide life to people. Somewhere in the distance, she heard footsteps. Whether it was an infected, or a thug trying to steal her weapons, Emma couldn’t be seen by them.

Finding herself inside, what was at one point in time, a clothes shop, she decided to lay low. Every pole had been ransacked of clothes, now replaced with plants, that grew out of the tiles.

She made her way to the back of the shop, where there were no windows, at the front, they were large, even if they were cracked and dirty. Stood here, Emma was an easy target.

The backroom was squashed and full of boxes, that had been pulled apart by creatures. Bottles of shoe polish or empty bottles of bleach lay on the moss-covered floor. She heard a rumble coming from the other side of the wall. Pushing boxes out of her way, Emma was met with a large gapping black hole, to where, she hadn’t a clue, though she could have sworn she spotted a person’s arm.

Emma’s sleeve ripped as she leaned forward. She grumbled to herself. She knew her manager would make her pay for that out of her own wages, even if it wasn’t her fault. She found herself delving deeper into the mysterious black hole, all mossy and covered in weeds.

She was used to the dirt. She had to be, everyone did if they wanted to make it out alive in this world. She had been hunting her entire life, and as she pulled away the vines from the black hole, Emma jumped out of her skin.

Two girls gazed at each other with the same expression. Eyes glassy, they peered at themselves. Same eye colour, same face, hair, and build, like looking at their reflection gone wrong.

They stood in the silence. Both worlds warped in their own timeline. Without interaction, each girl lifted both hands in the air, mirroring each movement, before they knew themselves.

“What are you? Speak now or die clone.” This Emma, Emma Two, had been brought up in the world knowing not to trust others since the apocalypse. The infected could have had a new strain. A clone could easily attack someone without them knowing.

Desperate, Emma One cried out, kneeling, pleading. In contrast, she was brought up in a world of internet and materialism.

“I am not a clone! I am Emma and I work here in this clothes shop!”

Emma Two spat right on the ground. “Exactly what a clone would say, and anyway who works in one of these shops anyway?”

The way Emma Two spoke the word shop out loud was like she had tasted something sour.

Emma One gawked at her, as if she had two heads. “It’s not that strange, we work to pay the bills.”

Emma Two lowered her gun and saw the frightened version of herself on the ground. A version of herself that had turned weak.

“What year is this?” Emma Two asked carefully, bending down to her level.

Emma, One took a moment to get her breath back. “2025, why? Do you think I’m a time traveller or something? What year do you make it.”

“2025. Same year.”

Emma, One reached inside her overall pocket and pulled out her phone slowly. The light blinded them both as she pulled it out.

“What in lord’s name is that thing?” Emma Two cried jumping up, her gun pointing at the other one.

Emma One looked around expecting a strange bug or spider she hadn’t seen before. Looking down at her phone, she realised. “Do you mean this; this is my phone. Tell me what time and day it is today if you are real!”

Emma Two burst out laughing. “There is no way to tell what time or day it is anymore, by a year into the apocalypse we had given up that altogether!”

“It’s a Sunday.” Emma One blurted out. “Sunday morning 9.45am...wait? Did you say apocalypse?”

“Yes, the fall down of society in 99.” Emma explained calmly, as if she had rehearsed this a thousand times before.

“You mean, 1999?”

She nodded. “The great crash. I wasn’t alive when it happened, I was only born a few years later, but I heard about how horrible it was.”

Emma One watched in fascination, phone clutched to her side. “The Millennium bug… I too was born a few years later. 8th March 2003.”

Emma Two’s gun had been pointing in the same direction. She was stunned and felt her breath race. “That’s mine too.”

“Look, whatever is happening here, it can be explained. It’s said there are a trillion alternative universes, these must be two of them.” Though Emma One spoke with confidence she lied. Underneath she was a wreak, unsure of anything in her life.

Emma Two agreed. “You better not be an infected or I’ll make sure you regret meeting me.”

There is no order to chaos. Both Emma’s stood opposite each other, same face, same hair, same build until they weren’t.

Emma, One found herself in a street familiar but not as she knew it. The street she worked on, now filled with cracks and vines. Buildings crumbled, cars and streetlamps all crashed into each other. She found herself in hell. Hair tied, wearing a military uniform, holding a large rifle in her arms.

Emma Two found herself inside the shop. The shop she had walked into had transformed. Every type of clothing she could ever think of hung on clothes hangers. Polished and cleaned, this world was pristine, a world she couldn’t understand with the phone device snuggled in a beige uniform, sent from hell.

The clean streets outside the large windows, covered in spray paint, filled up with people. Emma Two hadn’t seen this many humans in one place in her life.

The universe is a strange thing. Placing two worlds together, only for them to switch in the blink of an eye.