The shadows of time in the tank recede, and your nerves are alive. Your muscles feel ready, eager, but you don't feel rested exactly. Your adrenaline is already flowing. Your fingers have a slight tremor as they press the release, opening the tank. 

Your clone is still in their side of the tank. You look around, getting your bearings. The lights glare at you, and you squint into them as you hear the other side of the tank open. Your clone is born, stepping out on its weak, untrained legs. It shields its eyes as it looks at you. You two consider each other, thoughtful for a moment. You always wonder what the clones are thinking in these moments. Faced with you, the original, the source of being that they were sculpted from. Do they understand it? Do they know why they're here? They must. They have a form of your memories, as you understand it. You wonder if they think they themselves are the original. The notion gives you a sense of slow-growing vertigo that you have to press aside. 

You aren't perfectly identical today. Your clone seems to feel the same edginess that you do. It's squeezing its hands into fists, over and over, bracing itself. You watch, shifting your weight, letting your hips cock out at angles, staying light on your feet. You wonder what Julia's game today is.

You don't have to wonder long, because Julia's already approaching. She's got her hair down and she's wearing a flowing pale dress and she's perfect. She radiates happiness and joy. Her arms go wide, welcoming you both, and the light gleams on the edge of the scalpel in her right hand. 

"I hope you slept well," she says, looking at the clone, then at you. Back to the clone again. "I couldn't bear to wait any longer. I've missed you." Both of you make a sound, a noise that's all emphatic grunting and no intelligible words at all. A tank-dumb utterance of agreement. You've missed her desperately, even if you weren't conscious enough to know it as it happened.

Stepping up towards your clone, she smiles. "Hello, baby," she says, in a soft and conspiratorial voice. Instant envy, which only grows as she warmly touches the clone's cheek. You're so enraptured by your longing for her that you barely notice as she slips the scalpel into the clone's arm. Just above the elbow, biting into the bicep. The clone's gasp of pain takes a moment to arrive, and Julia coos with glee as the blood begins to run.

"Don't look at it. Focus on me." She's not talking to you, but you do as she says anyway. You pour all your focus on her. Your clone stands between her and you, tragically, and you see its shoulders lift and fall in a heavy, calming breath. Breathing through the pain. Your own breaths feel fast and thick. "That's it. That's right," Julia purrs, and you gulp air as you watch this scenario develop. Watching as the scalpel strikes again.

This time it's the clone's other arm, down along their wrist. Long and shallow and elegant. Julia works the blade like a paintbrush, tracing a line of welling red pigment. The clone cries out, biting off the last syllables of their pain, and you gasp gently yourself. It's bewitching to watch Julia work. She's shushing the clone, leaning in close, stroking their hair and caressing their face. As blood drips from the clone's fingertips, your jealousy pulses in the pit of you, hot and hard and dense. Julia's going to hurt that poor, lucky, pathetic, blessed clone, she's going to hurt it over and over until it can't take anymore, she's going to bleed it dry, and you're going to be stuck watching. It isn't fair. You're the original, the one who survives, and that means you always get to have more time with Julia. That should be something to love and cherish and appreciate. But who could watch this and not want that intimacy, that closeness? What would you give for that?

Everything?

Just look. She's stepping back, telling the clone "Come here" as she sits. The clone falls to its knees at her feet. You move up as well, without even really thinking about it. You need to be close. Close or not, though, you're not part of what's happening here. The clone is gazing up at Julia with awe, crimson-streaked arms at its side. Julia's looking back at them, smile blissful, as she puts the blade against their ear. She digs in, carving at it, pulling away. There's a hollow gasp of pain, silenced as Julia slips the blade down and notches it into the space behind the clone's collarbone. She holds it there, leaning so close that their foreheads are nearly touching. Both of them are trembling - the clone with pain, Julia with something deeper and more transcendent. All three of you gasp as she yanks the scalpel out, and more fresh blood joins the current.

"I needed this," Julia says, almost musing. The clone's back is hitching up and down, breathing hard through the pain. It must be getting lightheaded. Some of those cuts are really bleeding. "I couldn't stop thinking of this image. You, poked full of holes, leaking slowly for me..."

Again the blade goes in. Near the wrist. Tender, yielding, warm. 

"...until everything is all..."

The blade traces a line across your clone's ribs. Calligraphic, delicate, thin and vital.

"...drained away." 

Plunged, now, into the muscle of the thigh. She holds it there, eyes so wide, drinking in every tremor. You can't breath. This is torture. Goosebumps move across your tragically unbroken skin as Julia and your clone commune with each other. You're cast off, on the outside, forgotten. You're not part of this. Julia needs them right now, not you. And at this point, after being ground down in the tank so many times? Prodded and pulped and digested and coughed up, over and over, god knows how many iterations? Anything that you used to be is gone now. Carved off. If you're not useful to Julia, you're not anything.

Your clone, already blessed with the chance to hurt and bleed for her, gets blessed even further. "Here. Something to focus on," she says, plucking the scalpel from their leg and shifting back in her seat. She pulls her dress up in a slow, transfixing reveal, showing her perfect bare legs. Her spread thighs. Her stiff, yearning cock. A groan tangles in your throat, vocal cords over-taut with the strain of wanting so badly. The need and the envy make your eyes hurt. The clone does what you can't - dips its head forward, mouth open, kissing and licking and pouring its adoration onto Julia's perfect form. Thin red rivulets pour down to the floor, and new fonts are opened as Julia casually works the blade against her supplicant. Her previous slices were purposeful and poised - designed to hurt, or to bleed, or to focus. These are almost random. Slashes and stabs with a loose, flourishing wrist. The tail of a cat in a sunbeam, ticking to and fro.

Your clone absorbs these benedictions with as much fortitude as anyone could expect. Julia lies her head back, eyes half-lidded and staring at the ceiling as the weakening, wavering clone does its best to continue to worship. Julia speaks softly to it, words drifting up to the skies. "Don't stop now. A little more. I know you can do it. Do it for me, baby. Hold on. Just a little longer." 

The clone must not be able to hear her. Those words are invigorating even to you, standing aside, unable to participate. But the clone simply... droops. Its head lolls forward, nestled in Julia's lap, decorated with scarlet ribbons everywhere. Julia looks, smiling indulgently. "Poor thing," she says. Then, miraculously, she looks at you.

"Wake them up for me. I'm not done." 

You've been watching this as though there was an ocean between you, but it takes only two steps to close the gap. You stand over the near-lifeless clone, its shoulders still moving in frail hitches of breath. With one open palm, you slap the back of its head. It's an angry movement, if you're honest with yourself. You've got some hate in your heart for this thing, this discarded bit of you that Julia chose to consume. It gets the privilege of her attention, her intimate focus, and it just gives up this easily? You're disgusted by it. You strike it again as it groans, weakly trying to lift its head. "Not so fast," Julia says as it fights to open its eyes. She holds up the scalpel, ticking it back and forth playfully. "You're doing good, but you aren't done. Stay with me. Hang on as long as you can, now." She pushes the scalpel forward, into the clone's cheek, seeking out the last bits of life left inside the husk it's become.

It's not got enough strength to do much, so you grip the back of its neck. Press its face to Julia's length. Julia lounges back again, humming approvingly. You dig your hand into the clone's hair, blood-slick from a cut to its scalp. You work it like a puppet, using your clone's lolling tongue to demonstrate your adulation second-hand. You feel it go fully limp just as Julia groans, back arching, and she cums. One thick jet erupts over the bloodied face, then another. A third. The rapture radiating off of her is intoxicating, and despite being relegated for so much of this, you absorb every ounce of that feeling that you can. It's so wonderful to help Julia feel good, even if you're there as an afterthought.

As she comes down, she touches the clone's still, silent face. "You did so good for me," she says. She doesn't look at you.

When she finally does, it's like it often is. Like you're something left behind. The dishes that need to be washed up after a fine meal. Her face doesn't have hatred or disdain, exactly. More like resignation. 

"Well," she says, and a bit of smirk grows on her face. "I hope you enjoyed the show."

You nod. The awful thing is, it's true. You did. It hurts terribly, but it's better than the alternative. Better than not being a part at all.

"That's good," she says, and some of the joy is returning to her. "Who knows?" she says, as she glances to the two chambers of the tank. "Maybe next time, you'll be lucky."

You look at the still-sticky puddles on the floor before her, and wonder about luck.

You get into the left side.

You get into the right side.