Consciousness clung poisonously to the YouPet even as the pain ricocheted from the tips of her toes to the top of her head like a bullet trapped inside her body at full speed, her vision blacking in and out.  She wanted out so desperately, but no such mercy was delivered.

            She only became aware that Jennifer had picked her up again by her hips between a thumb and forefinger when she realized her feet were no longer touching the ground and she was instead being brandished before those demonic green eyes of hers again.

            “I don’t care, you know,” the little Jennifer spat out into the icy silence as the searing pain receded more slowly than before, bruises swelling up like diseases across her ravaged body.

            Jennifer froze, continuing to dangle her pet nine stories in the air, and bit her lip pensively.

            This was something she hadn’t expected.

            “You don’t, huh?” the real Jennifer queried with bemusement.  “You don’t care.  So you’re saying I could just let go of you again.  Maybe drop a chair on you.  Throw you out the window of my room.  Go put on my Louis Vuitton spikes, go find wherever you landed in the yard, and stick one right through your stomach like a kebob.  And you wouldn’t care?”

            The YouPet shook her head furiously up and down, knowing she had little time left to communicate effectively before Jennifer tried something else.  “That’s right.  And you know why?”

            “Why’s that, mini-me?”

            “Because I’m NOT just mini-you!” screeched the YouPet with newfound vigor, even getting Jennifer to flinch at the muted cry of her own voice.  “I’m JENNIFER!”

            “Don’t be stupid.  I think we both know who’s who.  What more do you need to see to get that through your tiny head?”

            “I don’t need to see anything else.  Yes, maybe I didn’t come out of mom like you did.  But I am you in every other way.”
            “Really?  Because I don’t remember somebody having the right to kill me if they felt like it,” Jennifer opined thoughtfully.  “You, on the other hand…”

            “I’m not finished!” the YouPet hissed.  “I remember stealing that midterm answer key back in ninth grade.  I remember punching Sherry in the face when she called Betsy a whore.  I remember fucking Tommy behind the trash cans at that Bed Bath & Beyond in college.  And most of all, I remember why I made copies of you.”

            “So?”

            “Don’t play stupid, we’re both thinking it.  We have the same goddamned brain!” the YouPet shrieked, her words flowing like fiery poetry.  “I can’t stand the sight of myself anymore.  I wake up and want to know why I exist and why I can’t just squeeze out the weak part of myself so I can really become something.  And I can’t, because I don’t know how, so instead I did THIS.”

            Jennifer’s verdant eyes glowed with recognition even she couldn’t hide, her cheeks slowly frosting into a ghostly white.

            “There is nothing that makes us different.  I hate so much about myself, and I am you.  You were just too afraid to say it before.  But now, no no matter what you do, no matter what you say, no matter how hard you try to forget it, you’ve heard the truth in your own voice.  You won’t be able to ever get it out of your head that deep down, you know that the only thing keeping it inside you is somebody threatening to kill you,” the YouPet bellowed meekly through parched lips.  “And that’s pretty fucked up.”

            The behemoth original Jennifer nodded solemnly, biting her lip again.  The silence chilled both of their lips and caused the collective heart rate of the room to settle into a death march pace.

            “Not bad.  Now allow me to make a counterargument,” Jennifer said simply.  “Here’s one thing that makes us different,” Her mighty fingers curled downward around the inverted form of her clone, pinning her inside her fist and squeezing without remorse until she felt the tiny limbs wobbling uncontrollably with agony again.

            But unlike when she was stepping on the YouPet, she didn’t let up when she felt the thrashing.  Jennifer clenched every muscle in her arm, tightening her grip as though she were hanging from the ledge of a collapsing building.  She gritted her teeth and put everything she had into squeezing, even wrapping her other hand around her fist and pressed until her knuckles turned white.

            A pop was heard.  Then a crack, like dry straw.  Then a few more cracks.  Bones snapping as easily as peanut shells.

            “And here’s another thing,” the gargantuan woman giggled softly as she opened her hand to let the broken YouPet sprawl in her palm.  She licked her lips, savoring the sight of her vanquished form literally under her absolute power.  “You remember how many of you I was planning on ordering, right?”

            The YouPet nodded, her throat too dry to summon words freely, as the pain exploded outward from all thirty-seven bones she’d just had broken, settling permanently into the forefront of her brain.

            “Say it,” Jennifer demanded.

            “F-F-Four,” the YouPet wept sorely from pain rather than concession, keeping her eyes closed so she could at least enjoy the solitude of darkness for a few brief moments.

            “Right.  What were they all for?” Jennifer continued.

            The YouPet took a deep breath, a death rattle beginning to emanate from within her with each attempted word.  “One, tag.  One, s-s-stomp.  One…” she sputtered, swallowing again.  “…s-s-scissors.  One… dildo.”

            “Not bad,” Jennifer congratulated, juggling the YouPet’s battered and limp form between her fingertips, agitating her broken bones with each casual bounce of her expansive palm.  “But here’s the thing.  After I did the procedure, I changed the order.  And I added one more.”

            “O-O-One… more?” the YouPet wheezed.

            “Just one,” Jennifer repeated innocently, holding her pointer finger up for visual reference.  “And do you know who that is?”

            The YouPet gulped and met identical eyes with Jennifer.  No words were needed for them to understand each other.

            “I guess that’s one thing you didn’t know, huh?” Jennifer teased.  “Just one little fact that I decided myself, before you existed, before I had you in my hands or under my foot.  One teeny tiny little decision I made that makes me Jennifer, and you a pathetic little piece of shit that’s costing me fifty bucks.”

            The YouPet closed her eyes again as the tears rolled anew down her flushed cheeks.  It was time.

            The rest came swiftly.  Jennifer’s mouth unleashed, her tongue striking out like a slimy crimson cobra as the YouPet was pushed over her thick, quivering lips.  The splashdown into the pooled saliva was sudden but was quickly followed up as Jennifer’s tongue slaked her clone along a slick row of teeth capable of snapping through even a YouPet ribcage and then pinned her up against the roof of her dark mouth.

            The YouPet had stopped trying to breathe several seconds before and was simply letting her body fold in any direction Jennifer’s tongue chose.  She was flung like a ragdoll from cheek to cheek as Jennifer sampled the flavor of her own skin, getting irritated as she felt her luscious red locks getting sticky in the soggy shuffle and gluing to the sides of her tongue.

            She had had enough.

            The tongue curled backward, scooping the YouPet into a convenient ball of broken bones and swollen skin with only the tiniest glimmer of a consciousness still contained inside as it was bundled toward the back of the throat, carried on a sweltering river of phlegm and froth to the abyss of her gullet.

            The twenty-five-year-old woman stood alone with herself, drenched in the calm of the air and the lump burrowing without identity through her esophagus.

            That part of her was gone.  The bad part.  There was nothing left to fear.

            She was Jennifer, and no one was going to take that away from her, even if they bellowed it in her own tiny voice from her own tiny lips.  Everything was fixed now, and couldn’t be broken again.

            Right?

            Jennifer York opened her eyes, yawning, and felt happier than she had in a long time.  She was so excited she could hardly stand it.   Now that she’d undergone this part of the process, all she had to do now was wait two weeks for her four YouPets to arrive, and she could begin the games.  The whole thing was mapped out in her head like a choreographed dance, and she was itching to feel each tiny version of herself writhe like a worm under her thumb.

            Come to think of it, maybe four wasn’t going to be enough.  It would probably be best to have them send her a fifth as well, even with the increase in cost, to ensure she had enough back-ups.

            Yes, definitely.  A fifth.

            The comfortable white foam recliner she’d laid down on for the procedure seemed to have been replaced with a cheaper material beneath her back, but she hardly noticed or cared, nor did she pay much attention to the low humming coming from outside the walls of the room.  In fact, the only puzzlement she had was from being told earlier that this DNA extraction procedure would leave her with some discomfort when she awoke, but that was wrong.  She only felt free and energetic now.

            Like she was brand new.