Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. She's Different Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

SHE’S…DIFFERENT

Dawson Briggs shot me an email, then a text, and finally a phone call. It’s not that I’m a busy man, it’s just that I’m not a fan of Dawson Briggs, not anymore.

We’d grown up together. Same grade school. Same high school. Same city for university. At the beginning of his sixth year, for about six months before his government grants kicked in, he lived in the storage closet of the apartment I’d shared with the love of my life, Cora Soto. When Dawson got his grant, he moved out, and Cora went with him. I’d played it off like I was the bigger man, like it was no sweat.

Hell, I’d eventually showed up for their wedding.

“Hey, Dawson. I’m kind of busy,” I said after taking the call, and I was busy, busy watching a thirty-year-old rerun of Unsolved Mysteries. Robert Stack’s voice was part of the reason I became a private investigator.

“Yeah, right. You’ve been ducking me for a month. I’m having a housewarming thing—I know you didn’t forget—and me and Cora really want you to be here.”

“I don’t know, man; I’m kind of swamped.”

Dawson sighed. “Look, I was telling Henry, the department head, about you. I guess someone’s stolen schematics on a hard drive and the cops have found squat. I told him you’re the best of the best.”

“I hear lies make Baby Jesus cry,” I said.

“Come on. It’s paying work.”

It was my turn to sigh. In all reality, I couldn’t pass up a paying job.

—

My place was a two-bedroom in an apartment building that pre-dated consumer air-conditioners. It left the walls bubbly beneath the myriad layers of paint, the floors beneath the threadbare carpets warbled, and security was nil—the rear exit didn’t even close all the way. Most days it was possible to catch a contact high just walking down the hall. Other days the cat serenades and urine scents were enough to make me wince.

Dawson and Cora’s place was a damned palace by comparison. Three acres of land. A smooth black laneway that bulged into a turnaround before an eight-car garage. When I got there, my 1999 Nissan Altima couldn’t have stuck out more if it was a hot air balloon amidst the Porsches and BMWs and Mercedes, and even one Maybach. My duds were Target chic. My shoes were old enough to play little league.

There was orchestral music coming from the backyard and I followed it, not once doubting this was a mistake. Then I saw Cora and my heart galloped against my ribcage. She was in a dress that was worth more than my car, one that hugged her form like lingerie. She was talking to another hoity-toity when I stepped up.

“Cora, how’s it going?”

She nodded and looked at me as if for a moment she didn’t register who I was. “Shamus Reynolds, it’s so good to see you. Have you met Joanne Lancaster?”

I know I frowned because I felt it in all the muscles of my face and all the senses that measured personal disappointment. I’d never stopped loving her, and now I was being pawned off on some stranger.

“Hi?” Joanne Lancaster said and held out her hand.

I gave it a brief squeeze. “Back at ya,” I said, forcing joviality as Cora started away.

“Didn’t you and her used to date?” Joanne said, a martini glass less than an inch from her lips.

“We were engaged,” I said absently and immediately regretted it.

Joanne gave my body a complete frontal scan. “At least she traded up,” she said and barked a laugh that sent her head back.

Being the bigger man would mean swallowing a remark like this, letting it slide, so I said, “Let me guess, you’re someone’s second trophy wife. How much mileage you got left? Neck’s looking a little waddly,” before I started toward the rest of the crowd, leaving Joanne in my dust with a dainty hand pressing at her throat.

I spotted Dawson with a group of men, all sipping beer from glasses. A waiter was heading their way and I intercepted him, snatching a weepy glass from his tray. He said nothing. I’d never been to a party where people in tuxedos buzzed around backyards handing out drinks. Cora certainly had traded up, and then some.

“Shamus!”

I stopped, and before I turned to face the shouting Dawson Briggs, I downed half my beer. “Dawson,” I said, “nice place. Only thing better than those dudes handing out drinks would be well-trained monkeys.”

Dawson grinned so widely it made his cheeks look like rubber. “Those ‘dudes’ paid for this party, this house, hell, they paid for everything I own.”

“Huh?”

“They’re robots. I actually came up with the idea when I was living in your closet—not the idea of robots, I mean how to achieve human equilibrium while in motion, while looking naturally human.”

On the tip of my tongue were the words, was that before or after you’d started screwing my fiancé? Instead, I echoed my prior statement: “Huh.”

“Come on, I’ll introduce you to Henry Mercer.”

—

I knew within about two minutes of talking to Henry Mercer that he was conning his department and that he’d sold the schematics. I gave him my email address—save making a scene—and started looking for Cora. There was nothing in me that honestly thought she’d give it all up and come away with me, but I couldn’t help myself in imagining it as a possibility—in infinite universes, perhaps this was the one where a beautiful woman traded in prestige, wealth, and her marriage for a drab, underemployed lay-about who pined for the good old days, days decades before he was born. I’d have made a tremendous gumshoe in the days when people used words like gumshoe.

“Cora, are you ignoring me?”

She tilted her head slightly. “No, Shamus Reynolds, of course not,” she said, and then once again left me standing.

A young woman in a tuxedo with a tray of beers swapped me my empty glass for a fresh one. “She’s been different the last two weeks.”

My brows furrowed and I poked the woman’s bicep. “Are you people?”

She rolled her eyes. “Those robots are too much…Dawson’s my uncle. I was staying with them and one of the chargers crapped out and the suit fit, so…” She shrugged.

“Huh. What do you mean Cora’s different?”

The niece scrunched her face to the right and shrugged again. “Just different.”

—

With the party dwindling and Dawson saying his goodbyes, I wandered into the mansion, feeling the instant urge to smash something. And there was plenty to smash. It was like walking into an episode of Cribs, but nothing was rented and nothing was fake.

I heard water running and followed my ears once again. The kitchen was expansive, state-of-the-art. The two butler robots and the niece were busy with trays and drinkware—handing out new glasses with each drink had made for a lot of dishes. I watched the robots, trying to detect any robotiness and detected none. It was incredible.

“No wonder you have it all,” I mumbled as I turned away and headed down a long hall of many doors. I wanted to find Cora. She didn’t owe me an explanation as to her aloofness, but I wanted one, felt in the right to demand one.

The old Cora was so warm, playful, and when she’d left me, she bawled, apologizing for falling out of love with me and then falling in love elsewhere. She sent Christmas cards and Facebook messages on my birthdays. She tried, and it had been me who had to be aloof. Seeing her with Dawson, even these six years later, depressed me enough to get bombed and make a fool of myself. Thankfully, this time I was too curious to focus on what I’d lost.

The first door I came to was a study of some fashion. On the wall above the fireplace was a huge painting of Dawson and Cora looking stiff and proper, the way all those kinds of portraits look. I closed my eyes and imagined myself in the painting, next to Cora. I’d never be rich, and I’d never be fancy; of course she’d left me.

“Maybe Dawson’ll can make me a robot Cora,” I said and turned away from the study and continued down the hallway. The thought of a second Cora burrowed into me like a tick. My mind took the leaps a PI’s mind takes, and my feet stopped moving over the thick, welcoming carpet.

Cora had been different these last two weeks according to the niece. Cora had acted strangely twice since I’d been there. I had to swallow down the possibility.

“No,” I whispered, suddenly thinking perhaps Dawson had done something with Cora and replaced her with a robot. “No,” I said again.

A clicking came to me then, like the winding of an old point and shoot film camera. On my toes, I crept to the next door on my right and nudged it open. It was dark. Lifeless. I crossed the hall and nudged open another door.

The clicking was instantly louder. I scanned the space. I saw part of a bed and dresser, a closet, and…Cora stepped into view of the dresser mirror. She held her right hand with her left and began turning it.

Click. Click. Click.

And turning it and turning it.

Click. Click. Click.

She then set the hand on the dresser and stabbed her handless wrist into a steel port of some fashion. She lifted her gaze to the mirror, and I jerked away. Quick as I could without sacrificing too much stealth, I hurried back to the kitchen, my mind spinning.

He’d done it, he’d really done it.

“So, where’s the real Cora?”

—

Turned out the niece was named Sherry, and when I told her, her eyes flared and she grabbed my arm in both hands.

“I knew it!” she said, hissing it into my face beneath a shower of spittle.

“Is there a lab in this place?”

“Downstairs, but it’s locked. Can’t we just call—I guess nobody would believe us if we did.”

“That’s exactly right. Take me downstairs.”

She took a deep breath through her nose. “Okay.”

Sherry led the way to two doors down, which opened onto a staircase. The plush carpet matched the upper hallway, the walls were a pebbled off-white, and, once to the bottom, the ceilings weren’t as high as upstairs, but were much higher than any other basement I’d been in. There was another den, though it looked unused—my guess, built in forethought for little ones, or as a refuge from little ones. There was a wine cellar with glass walls and door. Sherry didn’t seem to look at any of it as she marched by, straight to a wooden door at the end of the room.

“Behind here,” she said.

I was already looking at the lock thinking cakewalk when she opened the door to an unfinished utility room that housed dual furnaces, three water heaters, two bulky electrical panels, and countless little black boxes hanging on the walls with wires streaming forth from the bodies like spider legs. Standing most prominently—likely because I was looking for it—was a heavy steel door with a fingerprint reader.

There was less than a second when I wondered about what I’d do. Robot Cora had taken off a hand upstairs, all I had to do was snatch it and bring it down. From the holster at the small of my back, I pulled out the snub-nosed .38 I carried—legally, I kept the paperwork directly behind my PI license, should any cops take offense.

“Find a nice shadowy spot to hide. I’ll be back in a jiffy.” Sherry had wide eyes on my revolver, so I lowered it to the side of my thigh. “Go on, now.”

She stumbled in reverse, and I watched her until she settled in behind one of the furnaces. Good enough. I reached the top of the stairs and heard no footfalls. Into the hallway, the coast remained clear. The door to the bedroom where I’d seen Cora remove her hand was now closed, which gave me hope she’d gone, but also had my adrenalin spiking. If I had to, I wasn’t certain I could fire onto anyone identical to Cora—I mean, what if it was her? The real her.

The door latch clicked quietly open, and I peeked inside. Nothing to see, nothing to hear. Keeping that fine line mix between quickness and stealth, I crossed the bedroom and snatched the hand from the dresser. Out, door closed behind me, up the hall, through the door to the basement, down the stairs, and halfway across the underused den, it hit me. This was all so, so easy. Nothing ever went this easily. I lifted the revolver from my side and held it before me. Something definitely felt fishy.

Sherry stood from her hiding spot as soon as I entered the room. “Stay there,” I said. Just because I gave her a shove and she rolled her eyes when I asked if she was a robot, that didn’t mean she wasn’t. Hell, she hadn’t even denied it, not really.

The little scanner accepted the Cora print, and I opened the door. Three long tables of electrical components: wires, couplers, processing chips, circuit boards, and so on. Along one wall was a bank of computers; along another were two massive 3D printers. Along the third were great rolls of pale pink rubber or silicone that made me think of the carpet section at Lowe’s. Along the fourth wall were refrigerators.

A lump formed in my throat as I considered what might be in those fridges. Too shocked for stealth or caution, I stumbled to the first fridge, paused for a deep breath, and then swung open the door. Soda cans and water bottles in showroom perfect rows. A harried laugh began playing up from my belly into my chest.

“Losing it,” I whispered and took a step deeper into the room.

A sensor caught me, and another row of lights came alive, revealing a massive clear tube, Cora’s nude form floating in a viscous green fluid. Her eyes were closed. A hose ran down her throat and tubes ran up her nostrils.

My only thought was that I had to get her out of there, and panic had blinded me to the possible damage I might do. As if on a whim of its own, the revolver came up and I pointed it at the tube.

“Don’t,” Dawson’s voice said from behind me.

I spun. “What have you—you know what?” Rage propelling me, I stomped toward him, firing three of my five shots into his chest at quick succession. “This ends now!” I fired my fourth round into the man’s face where he lay on the ground.

A series of sparks danced from the hole.

“You killed the prototype,” Dawson’s voice said, another Dawson stepping in through the door.

This time the one-handed Cora was with him. That hand was still in my hand, and I dropped it like a hot potato. One round left, I fired at Dawson. The round pinged loudly off his chest and whizzed back by my ear. It hit something far down the room, the crack was tremendous. Fluid splashed. From the utility room came three loud beeps.

The Cora robot shouted, “Sherry!” and broke by me in a sprint, skillfully grabbing her hand along the way. As she moved, more lights came on, revealing more tubes, dozens of them. A wet and naked Sherry was on the floor at the foot of a smashed tube. “Bay three’s closest!” She picked up the Sherry, the tubes and hose snapping out of her face as the Cora robot ran to an empty tube.

The Dawson robot hurried by me, bumping me with the leg of a Sherry robot, rushing toward the tube where the nude Sherry was currently having fresh tubes and a hose inserted. I stumbled forward on unsteady legs, looking at the tubes. Many of the faces I’d seen earlier were there, but they hardly mattered because the ninth floating body in the row was my naked form.

“No…it can’t be,” I said and spun away, trying to run.

The steel of the gun was hot against my cheek…but was this sensation real? Was I real? The universe barreled toward the forefront of my mind in a kaleidoscope of broken memories—fragmented recollections—corrupted files—

“No! It’s not possible!

“Shamus! You’re malfunctioning again, let us debug you!” Dawson’s voice said, but I did not stop, because that was not Dawson; the real Dawson was in a tube right next to the real Cora. “Dig into your databanks! Something’s corrupted! We can’t keep running this scenario!”

My feet played a tune of escape, up the stairs, past the dozens of set of gawking, pitying eyes.

—

Sitting on my bed, in my ratty apartment, I’ve been trying like hell to ignore the thoughts Dawson’s words have triggered, the things seeing my suspended form has conjured. I am a robot, physically.

I’d been sick from…something. Dawson and Cora saved me, halting my failing, human parts by replacing my body and backing up my mind. I know if I open my fridge, it will be empty because I run on solar. I know if I check the shower it’ll be loaded with joint oil and silicone smart patches.

“No.”

I shake my head.

My phone buzzes, announcing a text message.

I lie back.

My phone pings: an email.

I close my eyes.

My phone rings and rings and rings, and I huff.

I read the screen and sigh. “Hey, Dawson.” I reach for the remote and turn on the TV. Robert Stack. Unsolved Mysteries. “I’m kind of busy.”

XX