(This is a direct sequel to my short "What's with the Torch?")

At this point, I'd never hated Cal more than I did now. He was the one who dragged me down into the basement to investigate the weird sound only to find out it was a portal to another fucking dimension. Now here we were but five minutes into this fucked up mirror dimension and we had Cal and...myself chasing us through our new house, only it wasn't our house. Both of them armed with those fancy steak knives that you find at fancy stores. Steak knives that we didn't own in our dimension.

"Cal! Throw the fucking torch at them!" I screamed as we ran.

"We're in the house too Ian! If it goes up in flames how are we going to get out?" Cal shot back through shuttered breaths.

"I don't give a shit! We jump out a window? Torch the Fucking Place!" I screamed at the top of my lungs.

We shot through the hall towards the living room. Mirror Cal and Mirror Ian are hot on our tails. I could hear them talking to one another. Clearly coordinating their next attack to kill us…or themselves.

Cal and I entered the living room with ourselves hot on our tails, both of them holding those damn steak knives like serial killers. Cal looked at the torch in his hands, gave a groan of hesitation, and hurled the torch at our vengeful clones. The torch went soaring through the air like a flaming frisbee. Mirror Cal stepped off to the right as the torch sailed past him and out the window.

"Sons of bitches broke our window!" Shouted Mirror Ian.

Cal ran first, snatching my arm and pulling me towards the front door. My initial idea was to book it for the basement and hurl ourselves through that portal. But our clones were more or less standing in the way.

Cal had yanked my arm with such ferocity that I damn near thought he was going to yank it out of the socket. We made a frantic break for the front door, zipping past furniture, articles of clothing on a coat rack, and shoes that we didn't own. Cal busted through the front door...

"What the hell is going on?" I whispered. My voice sounded hollow against the tiles of our upstairs bathroom.

What was going on here? None of this made a lick of sense. We ran through the front door, I could feel the summer heat graze across my face. Yet...here we were, standing in our upstairs bathroom. Again, it was furnished differently. Their bathroom was far more organized, there was also a pair of "His" and "Her" towels hanging from the shower door. One of us was clearly in a relationship. As embarrassing as it seemed, our parallel universe counterparts seemed to be doing better than us.

Cal pushed past me and peered out of the bathroom door. I could hear us on the front porch. We were shouting about something, but both of us were shouting over one another and it was difficult to figure out what was going on.

"Fire." Cal said quietly as he closed the door to a sliver. "The torch, I think it set fire to their backyard."

"You mean our backyard?" I said with a hint of sarcasm.

Cal sneered at me and closed the bathroom door, flipping the lock into place.

"Good thinking Cal, I don't think we have the key for that." I muttered.

"Will you knock it off? We need to figure out how we're going to get out of here." Cal snapped.

"How the hell did we end up in the upstairs bathroom?" I questioned.

Cal shrugged his shoulders. "No fucking idea. We need to find our way back to the basement."

From beyond the door, I could still hear frantic shouting. From the sound of it, the fire was either bad or escalating at an alarming rate.

"I mean...I guess we can try random rooms until we end up in the basement?" It was a flimsy idea, but an idea nonetheless.

Cal nodded his head. "Let's get the hell out of here."

Cal pulled the bathroom door open...

To see Mirror Ian standing directly in front of us.

I couldn't get over this. I don't think I ever will. Standing on the other side of the bathroom door was me. Me to the very core, yes the house was furnished differently, but the residents were myself and Cal to the most minute detail. The only deviation was that we were wearing different clothes.

Mirror Ian went to raise his knife. Without thinking I pushed Cal to the side and drove my fist into my face. Mirror Ian pinwheeled backward. I continued with another punch, this one drawing blood from his nose, the following causing his upper lip to gush open.

"Cal!! Run!" I screamed as I drove Mirror Ian along the banister and to the flight of stairs. I drove another fist into his face sending him spiraling down the flight of stairs.

I returned my attention to Cal as he made a break for his bedroom. I watched as he shoulder-checked through the door and disappeared. Vanished into thin air. Without thinking I ran into Cal's bedroom and into the kitchen.

I could see the fire in the backyard, and it was a beast in its own right. Rapidly sprawling across the grass, decimating the backyard without mercy. Mirror Cal was doing what he could with the hose, spraying a ray of water into the fire.

"Come on. Before you pick yourself up from the bottom of the stairs." Cal said.

"Should we try the basement?" I questioned.

Cal shrugged. "May as well...not like we know where the hell we're going in this house anyway."

We pulled the basement door open and cautiously stepped inside and onto the furnished steps. We waited for our surroundings to alter, waited for us to appear in an entirely different room. But everything remained the same.

I could see the portal up ahead, just as we'd entered. Cal and I picked up speed as we ran down the flight of stairs. From behind me in the kitchen, I could hear Mirror Ian screaming for us to stop. He sounded like he was in pain, and a part of me felt bad. Genuinely bad if I had to be completely honest.

I could hear his shoes on the kitchen tiles, but by the time he got to the stairs, we were through the portal and back to our dimension.

When we got back home, we ensured the wall was in place that had the hidden portal in it. Beyond that, we moved a few boxes and shelves in front of it. It wasn't the best security measure, but it was the best we could do. We also moved the dinner table in front of the basement door as an extra level of shoddy security.

We didn't get any invasions from our mirror counterparts that night. We thankfully had a good night's rest following that wild scenario. The next day Cal was outside in the backyard, I didn't know what he was doing, but he told me to come outside. He sounded worried.

I went outside to see what the concern was, and when I saw what was bothering Cal I damn near shit myself.

The back of our house was burned.