"Like totally!"

“Thank you so much for the eyebrow tweezers, Cosima! How did you know I wanted Japanese ones?” 

Tony looks the blonde up and down, equal parts shocked and, frankly, a little turned on. But then again, when isn’t he? “Then I guess we’d better keep our hands to ourselves.”

“All threats aside, who’re you? How many new ones have Sarah and Fe-Fe found while I was gone?”

Krystal scratched her head and scrunched her face for a moment. Sarah and Fe-Fe? Oh yeah, Sherlock Holmes and his urban sister. “Like, I don’t really know how many they’ve found,” she said after a moment. “Like, they keep telling me that I’m one of them, but do I look like Sarah? No. I’ve gotten serious work done and you’re a very handsome version of Sarah, if I don’t say so myself. I’m Krystal, by the way, manicurist.” 

     “Kay, well, Sarah might take that curling iron and shove it where the sun don’t shine, but I bet Alison would love an ugly Christmas sweater. Buuut… she probably won’t think it’s ugly.”

“So, like, I totally got Sarah a curling iron for Christmas because her hair needs it and I’m totally thinking of getting Alison an ugly Christmas sweater.” 

“A doppelganger is a double,” Krystal explained. She didn’t know too much about that stuff, but she had looked it up on Wikipedia and so she had some idea of what she was talking about. Well, she really had no idea, but she would play it safe and fake it until she made it. “Like, two people look similar to each other, but they’re not exactly the same. Like, you and I and Alison look like each other, but we have different hair and we smell different and we act different.”

She scratched her head for a moment trying to explain cosmetics to someone who had probably never used them before or had plastic surgery. “And, like, Botox is a chemical you inject into your forehead to get rid of wrinkles,” she said quietly. “And a face lift is where they tighten the muscles with a surgery to make you look younger. Like, I want one like yesterday, but I can’t have one because the chicken shit doctor says that I’m too young. Like, I’m thirty-two do I look like I’m getting any younger?”

Krystal listened as Helena rattled off the names of other people that supposedly looked something like her, but who were dead. Ok, yeah, but they could still be doubles of each other. Like, there were things like birth marks and defects and what not. Maybe, one of these women had a lazy eye or something or a sixth finger or whatever. And this whole nature versus nurture thing? Ok. Maybe, Cosima had a point, but Krystal wasn’t sure.

“Take one step toward my beautiful mane and we’re gonna have a problem, sweet cheeks.”

“Ok. I was just, like, making a suggestion and we’d totally have a problem. I do  krav maga. Do you know what that is? It’s like Israeli self defense. I could break every bone in your body and you would, like, be screaming for help.” 

“What is Botox?” Helena asked, watching the other clone back away. She grinned, swallowing a laugh. This one was afraid of her. That was alright. Most people were at first. Usually they stopped being afraid after a while. Unless they were bad, and she killed them first. But, this one was not bad, so, she would wait till she was not afraid anymore. “Mmmmm, yes. Sestra Alison’s hair is most ugly.  I do my eyebrows, also. With Maggie’s tweezers. She taught me. What is face lift?” Sestra Olga, and Tomas too, had held her chin and lifted her face–and her head, too–to make her look at them when she was talking, But, probably, this was not the same thing. “Yes, we are. There are too many of us to not be. What is doppelgänger?”

“A doppelganger is a double,” Krystal explained. She didn’t know too much about that stuff, but she had looked it up on Wikipedia and so she had some idea of what she was talking about. Well, she really had no idea, but she would play it safe and fake it until she made it. “Like, two people look similar to each other, but they’re not exactly the same. Like, you and I and Alison look like each other, but we have different hair and we smell different and we act different.”

“That was Sestra Alison, I think. Did she have ugly hair?” Helena tilted her head, peering at her new sister. She had blonde hairs, too, but hers were straight, and the blonde was prettier than Helena’s was. “Yes. We have the same face. How do you not see this?” She leaned toward the other woman, putting her face very close. 

“Her hair was ugly ,” Krystal said. She could have said the same thing about the blonde that was in front of her, but she didn’t dare. As the other leaned towards her, Krystal heard her heart banging in her temples, her stomach was going to explode, and she felt…. No. She knew that she had to fart. Oh wait.

            ‘ that’s not very nice. ’     you are not a very nice clone, miss goderitch. the idea of another helsinki is feeling more affable by the second. (i don’t care what she thinks of my makeup. i will not let something like that bother me, coming from a bimbo tramp who prides herself on two-for-one manicures. sarah manning is a worthy contestant. krystal goderitch deserves to have her entire identity stripped. hello new rachel.)

                ‘ i presume you have lots of questions you’d like to ask me? ’

Questions? Oh boy, there are so many questions that Krystal wanted to ask. She had it all figured out, though. This was a dirty war between two cosmetics companies that were conducting research on babies, apparently. That still didn’t explain what happened to her last two boyfriends or why people kept saying that she looked like someone else, though.

“I got one,” she said after a moment. “When my monthly bill comes in, there’s like this guy who does a vaginal exam on me and I woke up once and I saw him looking in there. Like, what’s up with that? Like, I get a Brazilian wax down there. I know it’s not that hairy and it’s not like I can have children either. So, it’s not like, there’s anything he can look for in there.”

            ‘ rachel duncan. charmed. ’     charmed isn’t the word i’d use when staring in the face of a moron who either doesn’t possess a mirror or has too few brain cells to comprehend the sheer complexity of what is happening before her. but it’s what tilts the corner of her lips and offers the same scrutinising gaze that she fixes everyone with.