The Gruesome Death of Judge Judy

Chapter Six: Stafine

From the outside, one would assume that the store had been abandoned for years. The windows were boarded up and the sign above, reading "Martell's Hot & Spicy," was so faded it could hardly be read at night. It didn't help that this street was poorly lit. As Staf walked to the door, the single working streetlight flickered.

Staf knew the truth. This store sold a vast assortment of items stolen from the American and Chinese governments, and a limited assortment from the Greek government. Jeremy was not the owner of the establishment, but the true owner was unknown to her. Not that Staf particularly wanted to know either.

The door was locked. Staf was annoyed; it would have been convenient if he had forgotten to lock the door. She just decided to pull out her hairpin and pick the lock.

An hour later, she finally got the door unlocked. Her fingers had gotten clumsier over the hour as the cold air froze them stiff, so she almost didn't believe that it was unlocked. But the door slid open anyway.

It was almost warm in the store. Staf walked to the back room. The lock here would be more difficult. She spent a second to mentally prepare herself for how long the door would take. Then she started towards the door.

Jeremy had left the door unlocked. She walked inside and went straight to the cloning machine. Inside the transparent cover, she looked at half of herself. Her face only had one eye, and her one leg had not yet finished developing beyond the bone. Her torso was mostly intact.

Staf looked at the controls and recalled what Jeremy had done to start the process. She pressed the same buttons and the screen turned on.

"Do you want to continue your current clone?"

Staf pressed yes. The machine began to put some muscles on her legs and give her another eye, making more noise than she was comfortable with.
Staf looked around and noticed a stereo. She walked over and saw that it was already loaded with Michael Buble's Christmas CD. She happily turned it on. It was the right season for it, after all.

Staf returned to the machine and watched herself get put together. There was something mesmerizing about watching her body forming, set to Michael Buble. It must have been creating millions of cells per second, yet from Staf's viewpoint it was agonizingly slow. The CD had time to run all the way through before the machine finished cloning her.

The final body part to be completed was her feet. Staf had never seen her feet from the perspective of someone else, and she was surprised at how nice they looked. She stared for a few seconds before composing herself. She noticed that the CD had started up again, yet it was slowly getting louder.

She turned around and Jeremy was there. He had been singing to himself, but it had sounded so close to Michael that Staf hadn't noticed.

"I can't let you do this," he said quietly. His speaking voice sounded nothing like Michael Buble.

"You'll have to," Staf retorted. She opened the cloning machine, and noticed the inside provided the name of it. It was called The Cloning Machine. Her clone sat up and quickly obscured the name.

"G-- d--- it Staf, now I'm going to have to kill a fully formed clone." Jeremy whined.

Staf gave him a dirty look. "You could just not kill her. There would no harm there."

"The only time clones are made are for nefarious purposes."

"Not this time. I have a pretty good plan for this one."

Staf's clone got out of The Cloning Machine, having paid close attention to the two of them. "This conversation is clearly fruitless. Do I have a say in the matter?"

"No!" snapped Jeremy.

"I think she should."

Staf's clone spoke up. "I want to die. I am in extreme pain at the moment."

"But you have so much to live for!" Staf whined. She was eager to leave with both of her intact, and even more eager to put clothes on the second her. She was very uncomfortable with the fact that Jeremy was seeing her like this. At least she hoped the feeling was discomfort.

Jeremy pulled out a gun and took a step closer to the other Staf. Stafine stepped between them.

"F--- off, Jeremy," Staf snapped and kneed him between the legs. Jeremy squeaked and collapsed to the floor. Staf kicked him in the head a couple times to knock him out. Then she took off his coat and put it around her second self.

"Why was I brought into this world?" Her clone moaned. She was starting to get on Staf's nerves.

"Just follow me. I'll explain everything in the car. You're going to kill Judge Judy."