Mr. Murder

in shades of peach and green. The furniture is upholstered in a teal fabric, and visible wood is a dark red-brown cherry. On the mantel, flanked by a pair of vases on which are depicted Chinese temple scenes, a clock ticks solemnly.
        As she leads him to the sofa, his mother says, "Honey, whose jacket are you wearing?"
        "Mine," he says.
        "But that's the new style varsity jacket."
        "Are Paige and the kids all right?" Dad asks.
        "Yes, they're okay, they haven't been hurt," he says.
        Fingering the jacket, his mother says, "The school only adopted this style two years ago."
        "It's mine," he repeats. He takes off the baseball cap before she can notice that it is slightly too large for him.
        On one wall is an arrangement of photographs of him, Paige, Charlotte, and Emily at different ages. He averts his eyes from that gallery, for it affects him too deeply and threatens to wring more tears from him.
        He must recover and maintain control of his emotions in order to convey the essentials of this complex and mysterious situation to his parents.
        The three of them have little time to devise a plan of action before the imposter arrives.
        His mother sits beside him on the sofa. She holds his right hand in both of hers, squeezing gently, encouragingly. j - To his left, his father perches on the edge of an armchair, leaning . forward, attentive, frowning with worry.
        He has so much to tell them and does not know where to begin.
        He hesitates. For a moment he is afraid he'll never find the right first word, fall mute, oppressed by a psychological block even worse than the one that afflicted him when he sat at the computer in his office and attempted to write the first sentence of a new novel.
        When he suddenly begins to talk, however, the words gush from him as storm waters might explode through a bursting barricade. "A man, there's a man, he looks like me, exactly like me, even I can't see any difference, and he's stolen my life. Paige and the girls think he's me, but he's not me, I don't know who he is or how he fools Paige.
        He took my memories, left me with nothing, and I just don't know how, don't know how, how he managed to steal so much from me and leave me so empty."
        His father appears startled, and well might he be startled by these terrifying revelations. But there's something wrong with Dad's startlement, some subtle quality that eludes definition.
        Mom's hands tighten on his right hand in a way that seems more reflexive than conscious. He dares not look at her.
        He hurries on, aware that they are confused, eager to make them understand. "Talks like me, moves and stands like me, seems to be me, so I've thought hard about it, trying to understand who he could be, where he could've come from, and I keep going back to the same explanation, even if it seems incredible, but it must be like in the movies, you know, like with Kevin McCarthy, or Donald Sutherland in the remake, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, some thing not human, not of this world, something that can imitate us perfectly and bleed away our memories, become us, except some how he failed to kill me and get rid of my body after he took what was in my mind."
        Breathless, he pauses.
        For a moment, neither of his parents speak.
        A look passes between them. He does not like that look. He does not like it at all.
        "Marty," Dad says, "maybe you better go back to the beginning, slow down, tell us exactly what's happened, step by step."
        "I'm trying to tell you," he says exasperatedly. "I know it's incredible, hard to believe, but I am telling you, Dad."
        "I want to help you, Marty. I want to believe. So just calm down, tell me everything from the beginning, give me a chance to under stand."
        "We don't have much time. Don't you understand? Paige and the girls are coming here with this… this creature, this inhuman thing.
        I've got to get them away from it. With your help I've got to kill it somehow and get my family back before it's too late."
        His mother is pale, biting her lip. Her eyes blur with nascent tears.
        Her hands have closed so tightly over his that she is almost hurting him. He dares to hope that she grasps the urgency and dire nature of the threat.
        He says, "It'll be all right, Mom. Somehow we'll handle it. Together we have a