the point of no return
Miguel stumbled down the hallway, licking his lips to swallow down the bile that was ever rising in his throat. He knew his home--his own home--like the back of his hand, and thought it was particularly harder when his whole vision was blurred.
The air was thick with tension and the waves around his head warped with each lumbering step he took forward, further down the hallway to where the bright, pastel walls of his daughter’s room were significantly dimmed due to the darkness of the night.
He never truly noticed the smell or the taste of the blood even in the face of a warm glob of it trickling down his chapped lips, the exigency to put one foot in front of the other acting an abrupt fog on his mind ever since the gunshot rang true in his head.
Miguel used a sweat-drenched palm to silently slide open the sticker bombed door to his daughters room. The light of the warm hallway slipped in, illuminating the white fuzz of his jacket and allowing him to see the ugly brown stains of crusted blood that dotted around his right side.
His eyes, albeit untrained, attempted to focus on the pink hue of his daughter’s linen sheets. He spotted one plushie, two; all messily strewn across her mattress from where she normally propped them up every night and kissed them to bed.
And that was because, he realised with a jolt that hurt more than any gunshot wound, something had taken their place.
He sharply breathed in and ignored the untimely pressure on his lungs, trying to make out the lump shadowed by the lack of Gabriella’s night-light being turned on as it usually always was.
Miguel knew that, perhaps when he saw the serene undulating movements of its chest as it lay there, he should’ve screamed, or yelled, or even rushed right up there and shoved it away for even thinking of nearing his daughter’s cozy bed.
But he simply stared, hanging woozily in the doorway as he watched this thing embrace his daughter with bulky arms that were too similar to his own.
Gabriella’s lips were parted as she splayed out, all the more naive and susceptible in this sleeping fashion. She was swallowed by the beast as she slept in its arms, and the picture they exposed reminded Miguel all too much of his own experiences with lulling Gabriella to sleep after her respective nightmares. Gabriella was swaddled in her favorite blanket, whilst this thing fought to keep a single folded corner of it.
His eyes finally focused as the pain of his wound ebbed away into the fainter corners of his mind in his stupor, and he found himself staring at himself in the face of this beast. It-- no, his?-- eyes were pinched shut as they were in a deep sleep, the expression of concentration causing the vague wrinkles of his forehead to rear themselves.
The only thing separating that Miguel and his precious Gabriella was her teddy bear snuggled between them, squished in the warmth and abandoned by the young girl in favor of her father.
Her father, Miguel decided as he stared at this intruder, would never truly be his label.
Miguel spotted Gabriella’s worn soccer ball sitting on the wooden floorboards instead of tucked away in her closet like it had been for as long as he could remember. It hadn’t seen the light of day in months; not after she had tossed it aside and proclaimed she was simply ‘no good’ at the sport anymore.
He considered walking back out into the hallway and checking if anything else was misplaced, but opted against it in fear of what could happen if he let his daughter and this.. thing to lie unattended in her bed.
It felt as if he was staring into a lens, witnessing from a third person perspective a memory that had already happened. And with the subtle differences in this posture he found himself observing an uncanny event that he wished on every glow-in-the-dark star on Gabriella’s ceiling that it wasn’t real.
But no pinch, no gunshot wound, could take away the fact that it was.
Arterial blood rose up his throat and he fought to keep it down with a brief grimace and a clench of his clammy fists. He cursed himself for not moving sooner, and yet he wondered what else he could do. From the pocket of his long legging, his hand was greeted with the cool metal of the pistol that had been carelessly dropped next to him for him to retrieve when he had recovered from the initial shot of the gun.
He stared at it momentarily, feeling the weight of it sit heavily in his palm. He doesn’t dare raise it; not yet, not when this man’s face is buried so close to his daughter’s with the faintest traces of a goodnight kiss prior.
And then, as if he had been shot again, its eyes opened. Red, bright, and above all hostile. It stares for a moment, unblinking, and its arms tighten around Gabriella’s drowsily oblivious form. As it does, Miguel loses sight of her precious face.
And in the timespan of what was five seconds, he comes to terms with the fact that this thing in his daughter’s bed has his face, body and mind. This thing, oh so similar, has come in through the night in the form of a bullet and swept his daughter (the real Miguel, as his mind strained to address) into its arms with the intent of mirroring Miguel’s natural love preserved only for his daughter.
Miguel only realises he’s raised the gun once the pounding in his head no doubt from blood loss has subsided and the light that slips in from the opened crack in Gabriella’s window bounces off of the metal. The intruder’s eyes widen, for just the faintest of moments, and yet he can’t bring himself to move; to rid Gabriella of the nest she had enveloped herself in.
“Get away from her.” Miguel compels himself to speak, and his thumb darts to the trigger. He couldn’t recall a time where he had been willing to use a firearm, though in the other Miguel’s hands it was used with such discipline, such confidence.
“Go.” He urged, waving the pistol for emphasis. To even entertain the thought of his own daughter being caught in the crossfire made Miguel sick, and it seemed this counterpart - this variant - thought the same with the way he instinctively shielded her.
Miguel would say that great minds thought alike, but there was nothing great about this situation or the beast looming in front of him.
He watched this other Miguel unfurl himself and slip off the mattress so precariously in a way that only reminded him of the way he used to reluctantly pull away from Gabriella after kissing her goodnight due to his wife beckoning him to their own bedroom.
Gabriella stirred as she was left vulnerable to the elements, and both men froze where they were standing.
“Papá,” she faintly called, her eyes still lazily closed.
They met eyes, a merge of brown and red staring at each other for a collective moment of internal decision on who the hell was going to speak.
“Vete a la cama, princess, todo está bien.” This version of himself spoke, and Miguel had never considered how odd it would feel to hear your voice coming from another person's lips until that moment. It almost sounded identical; save for the fact that his voice sounded worn and strained.
Gabriella complied and closed her eyes, blissfully unaware of her surroundings and the two figures in her room. Her little face sunk into her sheets and she opted to tuck herself into her teddy bear to make up for the space that this other Miguel was no longer occupying.
A silence of trepidation passed over them again. Miguel stared at this intruder and waited for him to do something, anything with the idea that he had nothing but malicious intent. They waited until Gabriella’s breathing had slowed and she was asleep once again before Miguel exhaled a deep breath that had been trapped inside his lungs for far too long.
As he did, he winced, and looked down at the wound in his side. Right. That. One hand dropped from the pistol he held to cup it and soothe what was left of the blood leaking, and suddenly he felt all the more vulnerable with only one hand on the firearm.
When the other Miguel didn’t make a move on him, and stood frozen on the spot, he allowed himself to fall lax by just a fraction. He needed this wound switched, now, because he feared Gabriella would fall into this intruder’s hands otherwise.
Like she was intended to, he bitterly thought.
After a long and all-too delayed pause, he spoke. His voice was steady and unnervingly calm, despite the battle of morals within his head at this moment. “Who are you?”
The other Miguel stiffened. Perhaps he didn’t know himself, or perhaps he was considering whether to be truthful or not. Miguel could only hope he decided to be.
And the answer he received spoke volumes and forced an onslaught of emotions despite the hushed tone the other Miguel had chosen to use for Gabriella’s sake.
“I’m you.”