John sat at the kitchen table, eating toast with peanut butter. He occasionally added to a notebook filled with diagrams and scribbled equations. Then he heard Sheila's car come in the driveway. There was some commotion. He got up to see what she was doing.
Out in the driveway, there were two cars. With two Sheilas.
"Who are YOU?" asked the Sheilas to each other in unison.
"Sheila?" asked John, looking between the two. They looked at him, afraid, then at each other. The Sheilas began yelling at each other.
John went back in the house, then reappeared with a handgun. The Sheilas stopped arguing, and looked at him, appalled.
"I'm Sheila," said Sheila.
"You're ... you know I'm me, right John?" asked Sheila.
"John," they said in heartfelt unison, "I love you!"
John looked embarrassed. He should know his wife, right? He was married to her, for crying out loud! But for the life of him he couldn't tell. They both looked and acted like Sheila.
"I don't know what's going on," said John. "But you can't both really be Sheila."
"I'm the real Sheila!" cried Sheila. "Who are you and why are you wearing my clothes?"
"You're wearing MY clothes!" snapped Sheila. She paused. "Do a spin," she said.
"Mm, why?" asked the other Sheila nervously, watching her, spinning.
"I never get to see my back. Oh yeah, I nailed that outfit."
"Yeah, that one too," said the other Sheila.
"Look," said John, waving the pistol dismissively. "You two come in. We'll figure this out. Then I'll have the police haul away whoever the impostor is."
The Sheilas looked apprehensive.
"You're going to win, right? You're the real Sheila, right?" John asked them both.
"Yes," said the Sheilas together.
"Well I love you too," said John. The Sheilas started looking offended. "Whichever one of you is the real Sheila of course," he clarified quickly. "The other is an evil impostor. Of course. I can make tea!" The Sheilas looked at each other, then filed into the kitchen.
"OK, let's figure this out," said John, turning on the teakettle. "Um, do you remember when we went upstate, stargazing?"
"Yes," said the Sheilas in unison.
"Where was it, exactly?"
They looked at him, nervous.
"You first," said John.
"Out in the boondocks somewhere."
"OK, you," said John.
"Um, north? It was friggin cold."
"It was west," said John.
"Froze my butt off," said Sheila. "And not a shooting star to be seen."
"Just a bunch of cows ..." said Sheila.
John shook his head. "Sorry, you both responded exactly like Sheila. Let's try another one ..."
Several hours later, John and the two Sheilas were frazzled.
"I give up," said John. "You're both Sheila. I can't tell you apart. I love you. Do YOU know which is which?"
They looked at each other. "It's me?" they said.
"Ah," said John. "Yes, that might work." He looked back and forth between the two. "Why can't there be two of you? We could all just live together. It's late. Why don't we all go to bed?"
"WHAT!?" screamed the Sheilas in unison. "Philanderer!" "Cheat!" "Cad!" "How DARE you!" "HOW could you CONSIDER sleeping with HER!?" "You sleep with ME and ONLY ME!"
"Um," said John. "Well how about just one of you at time, then? Maybe if we have sex, I can tell which is the real one?"
"That's it. I'm out. She's the real Sheila. I'm the evil impostor," said Sheila.
"No I'm the impostor," said Sheila. "He's all yours. Monster!"
John covered his eyes, then stared at the table. "This all reminds me of a Peter Sellers and Goldie Hawn movie ..."
"You've told me this story before," said Sheila.
"I did?" asked John.
"Three times," said Sheila.
"You always forget," said Sheila.
"You know," said John, "on second thought, I've got this weird headache. I'm really not in the mood. Maybe you two could just work out who's the evil impostor? I'm going to go to bed."
"I can't believe he proposed that," Sheila confided in Sheila.
"OMG, what a JERK!" responded Sheila.
"Didn't even remember put away the peanut butter," said Sheila.
John went in the bedroom, sloughed off his clothes, got in bed, pulled the covers over his head. He tried not to listen to the Sheilas excitedly gabbing with each other in the kitchen. They seemed to have latched onto raving about their shared favorite band, singing the choruses in harmony, laughing.
In the morning, John found a letter slipped under his door.
"Dear John. We have decided to leave you and run off together. I've never met anyone like Sheila. We have so much in common! I'm sorry to have to do this to you, but it's way better this way. Love, Sheila & Sheila."
John read the letter. He palmed his face. He looked at the handgun on his nightstand. He stared out the window at the green trees, the blue sky. He stared for a long time. Finally, he sighed.
"Well, this is good," he said. "This will leave me with a lot more time for doing mathematics."
This was in response to a prompt on reddit.com r/WritingPrompts, "A common scenario one has seen many times in media. Evil clones, spouse with a gun. The whole cliche, but each clone is trying to convince the person with the gun they are the 'bad' one."