The Mimic

Your footsteps echo off the grimy brick walls of the alley, each step a reminder that it’s just you out here. Trash bags slump against crumbling dumpsters, their plastic wrinkling in the wind with little scratch-snap noises. Streetlights flicker above, one buzzing like some weird insect ready to die.

Movement catches your eye—a cat, hunched near an overturned crate. Something’s wrong: It moves too slow, fur ripples all jittery, tail held at a weird angle. Its face looks stretched somehow, eyes shining way bigger and rounder than any normal stray should have. An uneasy silence falls, nothing except its low, rattly breathing.

The "cat" tips its head, staring right at you without blinking for way too long. The longer you look back, the more details don’t add up: pupils shifting, mouth opening wider than it should before snapping shut again. You feel your pulse tick up as it creeps closer, claws scraping concrete, body bending awkward in the streetlight glare.

Steam drifts up as you hit the shower, water pattering off tile while sunlight pushes through blinds in washed-out stripes. There’s that weird half-silence, a couple of floorboards creak from your steps and the pipes whir low before cutting out with a hollow clang when you turn off the tap. Towel wrapped around your shoulders, it still feels early enough that nobody should be moving yet. The apartment is kind of chilly for June, like the sun forgot to actually heat things up.

You trudge back down the hallway, stepping over yesterday’s laundry heap and pausing at the living room doorway. Couch: one blanket lump, smallish but unmistakably alive underneath. Oh, right. Your “cat.”

Something stirs under there. The bundle shifts, wriggles, and then a pale head pokes out. The Mimic blinks at you; her eyes dart everywhere, focusing on the mug abandoned beside her before looking up again. She yawns—her mouth splitting wide. Both tongues curl lazily against her chin, making soft wet sounds. Then she pulls herself halfway free of the blankets, arms folded over her chest, wings sort of tucked behind her like crumpled ribbons.

The Mimic tilts her face your way. "Morning…?" Her voice comes out rough around the syllables, but friendly as ever. You can see where her gills flutter in the draft.

Water splashes down your back, hitting bare skin and pooling along the shower floor. The hiss of the hot stream echoes around you, beating a steady rhythm against tile, muffling everything else in the apartment to white static. You turn off the tap with an awkward clack, quick rubdown with the towel, toes leaving little marks across cold linoleum as you step out into the open air.

Your hair drips, a line of water tracing your jaw. All that’s left is scrubby warmth from the shower and the haze of steam clouding the mirror behind you. You toss the towel over one shoulder and crack open the bathroom door. As always, there’s a familiar drift: smell of dish soap, hint of something metallic, clean but not exactly homey. Someone’s got the kettle on; distant kitchen hum fills the silence.

You pad down the hall, ears picking up soft thuds against the kitchen counter—wait. That’s weird. But could she-? Instinct pulls you toward the source: kitchen lights bright and blinding compared to hallway gloom. For a second, you think you see yourself at the counter, fussing with shopping bags: same clothes from your wardrobe, exact height-matched shoulders hunched just like yours when you’re annoyed at plastic wrap. Your double sets down a can with a heavy thunk. There’s no mistaking it, though the movement isn’t quite right, too stiff, all joints turning too much at once. A chill moves up your arms despite the lingering heat from the shower.

They look up. "Done drying?" It’s your voice. Flat delivery, but familiar enough to make your stomach twist. They give a half-grin that somehow doesn’t reach their eyes, which dart away too fast, flicking to every corner of the room before focusing straight ahead again. "Groceries were simple!" Their hand, identical to yours, waves vaguely over the still-full bags by their feet. "Shopping list works… don't know if I bought the right ones. I just looked at ones other people were getting."

Spring break noon pours through half-open blinds and floods your apartment in thick stripes of gold. Outside, the wind whips up little bursts of pollen that ride invisible tracks over sidewalks cracked with weeds. Birdsong filters up from somewhere high above the street, mixing with engines idling as delivery vans crawl past and someone’s dog yaps through the open window. Your desk is wedged against the wall underneath all this light, papers scattered everywhere, blue LED mouse blinking its silent heartbeat by your elbow. Everything smells faintly of newly cut grass bleeding in from outside.

Across the cluttered living room you’re deep into whatever work you’d promised yourself to finish before lunch when you feel it (maybe even procrastinating right now). You turn in time to see her there—the Mimic hovering closer than usual, that odd body gleaming where sunlight hits exposed skin between her scavenged t-shirt and shorts. Her cluster of eyes flit around; one focuses straight at you while another scouts the bookshelf behind. Those ribbon ‘wings’ float, bobbing gently as she seems to think out loud.

She hesitates for a second, mouth flexing along its split seam as both tongues curl together shyly. "I watched a show today," she rasps after another awkward moment passes by. "People… go to eat food in nice places? Sitting across tables, looking at each other and chewing stuff." She shifts her weight side-to-side and, suddenly uncertain, holds up both hands. "I want try this. With you," she admits, tapping two long fingers together in front of her chest.