Diana Princess of Themyscira, Clark Kent, and Batman

Sunday. Afternoon. She was immersed in And Quiet Flows the Don. She did not mind the lengthy Russian classics, overwhelmed with the never-ending tragedy. 

It was snowing outside. She had a coffee cup on her nightstand, which was already half empty. The thought of making more of it brought a smile to her face. The comfort of her pajamas, the softness of her bed, the —

The alarm goes off. This shit again.

The alarm system going off was a weekly, sometimes daily occasion. She always forgot to call someone to fix it. 

Checking the cameras, without expecting to see anything, she freezes. For a split second, she notices someone in the hallway. Rushingly, she locks the door. Rechecking the phone, there wasn’t anyone in the hallway. 

She takes the gun from her nightstand and gets behind the bed. She aims her gun toward the door. 

She rings the police. 

“Hello, Miss Kosorich. We believe the alarm should stop any minute now. No worries”

“This time… someone is in my house. Please send someone”

The tone of the operator changes. 

“Alright, stay calm. Are you in a safe spot now?” 

“Yes”

“Where are they now?”

“I do not know”

“That is okay. Please remain where you are” She hears typing. 

“Two police officers are on their way. They will be there in four minutes” 

“Please stay on the line. I am scared”

“Of course. Make sure you are in a safe spot and remain silent. They will be there in three”

The alarm stops. She hears voices, and checking her phone, she sees the police officers. 

“They have arrived. Are you upstairs?”

“Yes”

“Great. Please remain where you are until you hear a knock” 

After a few minutes, she hears a few gentle knocks on the door. 

“Miss Kosorich. It is the police. We have checked the house. All is clear” 

She opens the door. 

“Are you okay?”

“Did you find anyone?” 

They look at each other. 

“No. There is not anyone in the house. But, we will take another look, to make sure”

After twenty minutes or so, they come up to her “We have not found anything. Nothing tells us that anyone has been here. Can you show us the footage?” The footage from the cameras has been deleted. 

They look back at her.

“I did not do anything”

They give each other looks. 

“That does not happen..often. You do have a garden, right?” 

She nods. 

“Okay. Lock yourself again. We will go and take a look” 

After searching the garden, she opens the door to the same reply “We have not found anything”

“We are so sorry that we cannot help you any better. We will patrol this area more. Do you have anyone to stay with or can anyone come over?” 

“Thank you” 

As she is showing the police officers a way out, the older one says “I like your books. I am a big fan, professor Kosorich” 

Ignoring him, she closes the doors. 

Once she is back in her bedroom, the warmth of the afternoon had disappeared. Her coffee had gone cold, and Sholokhov’s book lay there sadly. 

How will she spend the night here? How will she ever be able to fall asleep? 

She kept hearing footsteps, someone going upstairs, doors opening and closing…

That is just the defensive mechanism of my brain, she kept repeating to herself. 

She takes the coffee cup from her bedroom in one hand, and the gun in the other. She locks the bedroom door. Looks over the rails. Each play of shadows seemed like an emerging killer. 

Back in her bedroom from the trip to the kitchen, reaching for Sholokhov, she realizes her bed was made. The bed was made in the same way she made it each morning. 

The book was not to be found on the bed, but it was put on the nightstand. 

Instant fear paralyzes her. The sound of her heart beating dominated her hearing. 

She takes the gun out of the pocket of her robe.  

What was worse she locked the doors, did that mean someone unlocked them, made the bed, left, and locked them again? 

She knew that she was not crazy or imagining things. She had to fight it whatever it was. Everything that her field taught her was to defend herself, no matter the price. Her expertise was Abrahamic religions, and one of the recurring lessons of the Old Testament, – which she considered heavy metal when it came to its level of violence – was to go for the kill before the enemy even attempts it. 

She worked out, ran each morning, and did vinyasa yoga. She was stronger than whatever creep decided to fuck around with her. 

She went to the shooting range each week, she knew how to handle a gun. The steadiness of her aim increases as the encouraging talk takes a toll. 

Now it was time to take a tour around her bedroom.

She goes around her bed first. Reciting a few psalms, she looks under the bed. Nothing. She is quick to raise her head, as she was paranoid that someone would be waiting for her. 

Checking her closet, nothing. She made sure to go through each spot that could serve as a hiding spot. Some of the clothes that she wore a few days ago were already clean and folded. Strange. 

She kept forgetting when she washed her laundry. 

With more courage, she checks the top of the bed. Taking Sholokhov, she realizes a different page was marked. I definitely did not read this much, she put the bookmark back on page 288. 

From downstairs she hears a sound. From the cameras, she sees something going on in the kitchen. 

With each step more careful than the other, she approaches the rails. Looks over, and now she hears a boiling sound. Over the stairs, she can see the cezve on the stove. Shit, shit, shit. She hears faint footsteps. Someone was walking around the kitchen. 

She points her gun toward the kitchen. She sees the cezve being lifted and water being poured into one of her coffee cups from the coffee set that she got in Turkey. Son of a bitch! 

Into the cezve with the half water left, two teaspoons of the coffee – the special kind that she also got from Turkey – are put in and then mixed with water. The cezve is put back on the stove to boil. The same exact process! Once it boiled, this fellow coffee aficionado poured the water from the cup into the cezve.

This motherfucker was making Turkish coffee in the middle of her house, in the middle of the day while the light was still shining through the window! 

And the smell of it. It was so good, almost better than the one she made. 

Then, on top of it all, on the coffee plate a piece of Turkish delight is put, the nut kind, which was her favorite! This was the last act of provocation, she was not to take this shit any longer. 

“Listen, u fuck! This is the last day where u play these fucking games!” 

She shoots towards the kitchen. She manages to hit the stove and shoots again, and this time, with the intended precision, she shoots the coffee cup. She hears the coffee-lover-intruder running, and leaving the house through the kitchen door. 

She runs downstairs, fired up from the adrenaline, and newly found courage. She is set on catching this intruder. For how long was this creep observing her, that they learned to make such fine coffee? She knew it was fine as it smelled so good, that she almost felt bad for shooting the cup.

Running through the snowy garden, she saw footprints. In the middle of it, this person obviously tripped and fell, but continued running. She ran out on the street, looking around, aiming her gun toward the trees and cars. 

A kid who was sledding on the nearby hill sees her, and screams. Running away with a purple sled, he yells in panic “A mass shooter! Run for your lives!” The kid continues screaming, and more kids join him in screaming. 

Confused by them, she then realizes she was in a purple robe, in her pajamas, running around a snowy street pointing her gun everywhere. She now understood the screams.

In that moment, a police car, with annoyingly loud rotating sirens, stops in front of her. 

The same officers step out of the car. 

The one who likes her books says “Miss Kosorich, please put the gun down. Let us help you” He had a concerned face. How did they know to come? She did not even call them. Did the kids call them? Did someone else already see her wandering around with the gun, or was it the gunshots? 

“Why are you here?” 

“It is okay. Let us get you to the house first” 

Sitting down in her living room, the officers keep staring at the damage in the kitchen. The admirer of her work goes on to say “You gave us a call that you were being attacked. But then in the middle of it, the line broke, and you were not there anymore. You also said that someone was firing bullets at you.” 

She understood nothing, and that is precisely the type of face she had. 

“I did not call you” 

“You did. At least it sounded like you. We traced it back to your house. But, it was a different number. Do you maybe possess another phone or?” 

She looks at them annoyed.  

“Zaid, can you give us a moment?”

The younger police officer nods and leaves the living room. 

“Miss Kosorich, I am on your side. I have a feeling something is going on but I am not sure what. When you called, it sounded like you were running, but then you fell or–” 

“First of all, thank you. But, no, I did not call you. I am not crazy. What if this is the same person that got into my house today, and it’s just another one of their games?” 

“I am not following”

“When you left today, I went back to my bedroom, and someone made my bed the same way I make it. I saw someone making coffee the same way I do. Why would someone be making my bed and making coffee in the same way I do?”

He sighs. 

“I wish I could know why. How about this? You leave this house, sleep somewhere else, my partner and I will take you to the other spot, and we will also keep an eye on the house until it is safe for you to come back” 

“I will go with my own car, thank you” 

He smiles, as he did not expect anything else. 

“Will you let us at least give you a police escort?” 

She smiles at his stubbornness. 

“Of course, thank you officer” 

He nods. “Please call me Conor” 

She nods.

In the hotel room, she kept checking the house cameras on her phone. 

Nothing. She knew the paranoid phone checking every thirty seconds would not help her, so she put the phone down. 

Arriving at the university the next morning, she comes across her superior, Brooke. 

“Good morning, Brooke”

“Yes…morning, uhmmm… you were not supposed to come to work today, right?”

Oh, shit did everyone already find out about her burglar-who-also-likes-turkish-coffee situation?

“I think I was supposed to?”

She still looks at her all confused. 

“Well, you just called me ten minutes ago. You said you would not be coming to work today, and you mentioned something about being attacked, and I am surprised to see you here” 

“I did not call you. Wait… What attack?” How does she know about the attack? Strange to put it in such a way, attack. It did not feel like an attack, she never got attacked, rather it was an intrusion. 

Brooke is even more confused, and she continues

“Well, you did call me from a different number, but that was you, right? Are you making a joke or something? You called me and said Hey Brooke, I will not be coming to work today. My house was under fire, so I have to take some safety measures. I will call you once everything is under control”

Tamara feels that she is about to make some connection. What Brooke just said was sort of the truth, but it was a truth from someone else’s perspective. Someone else’s perspective! 

“Wait can u give me the number you got the call from?” 

“Sure” 

When in her office, she calls Conor. “Conor, can you please give me the phone number, from which I called you yesterday when the shooting happened” 

It was the same number. It was the same area code, and searching in her contacts there was no such number.  

Her intuition pushed her to open her phone cameras again. 

Someone is again in the kitchen. A woman. She was cleaning up the spilled coffee from yesterday.  

Speeding down the road, she did not want the woman to leave the house before her. She parks her car a few houses down. Wanting to enter the house through one of its secret doors, but the door was already unlocked. Someone also familiarized themselves with this house. 

At this point, she did not care if she put herself in danger, or if she was impatient to wait for Conor. She enters the living room. She finds a woman, a brunette, just like Tamara, reading a book from her collection, and next to her was a coffee cup, along with the Turkish delight. 

She was standing behind her. 

“Who are you?” Tamara says calmly, while in complete shock. Her house, her privacy, her books, her coffee, everything she cherished about her life seemed to have been under attack. 

In fear, the woman gets up and turns around. It was a similar face, almost an identical one. 

She was breathing as if she saw a ghost. 

“Get out, or I will call the police!”

Tamara keeps staring at her doppelgänger. Besides looking and sounding like her, she wore her clothes, the very same clothes she saw folded yesterday. 

“I live here. How did you do all of this? Was that you yesterday, with the alarm, and coffee? How?”

“Please get out! If you want, I will give you money!” 

Tamara stood there, wanting answers.

“What is your name?” 

“Please get out or I will scream” 

“Calm down” 

Conor arrives. 

“What is going on?” He says, and utter shock takes over his face. 

He looks at Tamara “Is this your sister?” 

“I have no sister, and this is the first time that I see this woman” 

At one point the doppelgänger says “What is going on? Where am I?” 

Tamara asks “What?” 

“Who are you people!? Get me out of here!” She starts screaming and breaking things. Tamara and Conor try to sustain her, and at one point she faints. 

At the police station, after the doppelgänger has been examined, the doctor tells them “She suffers from multiple personality disorder. She thinks she is you, and other people as well. It seems she does have one character who is actually her, but she does not get to be in that state for a long time” He looks at Tamara.

“She wants to talk to you” 

“I have been a fan of your work for a while,” The doppelgänger tells her, sitting across from Tamara. She even used the same perfume. Tamara thought she was overdoing it with the perfume, and that is why she was constantly low on it. Doppelgänger continues 

“I started following you on social media, and fell in love with your personality. That is when I decided to go to the university, and find out more about you. I knew we looked kinda alike. I started imitating everything about you, then I found ways to get into your house, even sleep in your bed, drink the coffee you drink at the same time of the day, and I was doing so often that I lost track of when I was I, and when I was you” She smiles to herself. She continues 

“You know that moment when Justice League members put their hands on lasso of truth, and all of them say their real names, and Bruce Wayne is the only one to say, Batman. What first was a hobby, a job on the side became his actual life. He was first living Bruce Wayne and playing Batman. Without being aware of it, he started playing Bruce Wayne and living Batman. That is me.

Sometimes I would find myself in your house completely lost. Or sometimes I would realize what I was doing, that I was not you, then I would have a panic attack. 

The stupid alarm kept going off every time I would come in. I am sorry about that. I tried fixing it, but I was not good enough of an electrician. Then, I created this programme that would delete your entire camera footage every thirty minutes” She sighs. 

“Anyways, I think you will not have to deal with me anymore, as I will probably stay here for a while” 

Tamara is sitting in the hallway. 

Conor “They are still examining her. They might put her in an asylum, but whatever else happens next, I will inform you about it” 

“Conor, when does your shift end?”

“In about fifteen minutes. Why?”

“Would you like to have some Turkish coffee with some Turkish delights?”