It all began with the universe exploding out of nothingness in a phenomenon known as the Big Bang. 13.8 billion years later, I was walking to the post office to mail my pet giraffe to the vet. It seemed to have broken its neck as I folded it into the crate so the vet seemed a pertinent destination for it. Yes, it’s because I wrestle with these type of big type questions that they pay me the medium bucks.

As I was hammering one of the giraffe’s horns down so it would fit in the mail slot, I saw a man carrying a package and running towards me in a rapid sort of run, followed closely by several uniformed policemen. Either they were all growing at an alarming rate, or they were heading straight for me.

I quickly conducted a series of scientific experiments, published them in peer-reviewed journals, and gathered criticism and suggestions for further study from my fellow intellectual giants. The conclusion was inescapable: they were running right at me!

Seeing men run towards you is enough reason to circle the day on your Date-O Brand Calendar of Well-Known Days, but imagine my shock when I saw that the chas-ed man looked exactly like me! Are you imagining it? If you are, draw it on a postcard, put it through an industrial-strength combination shredder and paint mixer, and email the scraps to imaginemy@shock.gov to enter a drawing for a drawing of a drawing room with a drawbridge and a chest of drawers drawn by Long Drawn Milliner.

Anyway.

As I stood stunned from this revelation, the mysterious lookalike looked back at the police. Not seeing where he was going, he ran into me and our parcels fell to the ground. At this point he got a good look at me and shared my surprise. With the police closing in, we did a mirror routine. When I touched my nose, he touched his ear! When he rubbed my stomach, I fell on my sit-upon in ticklish mirth. He helped me up as the police applauded our antics. He dusted me off and we picked up our packages, shook hands, and went our separate ways, him to the back of a police car with his box and me to the post office with mine.

I was pondering the strange sudden appearance of my apparent twin (things had been rather strange lately; why, just the previous week I had found an onion ring in my french fries!) when the post office clerk said the postage would be $3.86 and it should arrive by Thursday. This seemed awfully cheap for a package containing an entire giraffe, so I took the box back and opened it. Not a single hoof sprang out. Nary a brown spot nor blue tongue was ejected from the box with a force that would make Isaac Newton blush, no! In fact, the box was completely devoid of giraffes!

Bum bum buuuuuuummmm!

Oh! Oh, yeah! We must have switched packages. Ha! I thought perhaps he was a wizard. Oh, what a day. Hey! Is it Friday yet? Ha! So yeah.

Bum bum buuuuuuummmm!

I hied immediately to the local library, looked up “police” in the encyclopedia, and learned all sorts of fascinating facts, such as where the police take you when you’re arrested. I rehied in a jailward direction and confidently strolled up to the sergeant’s desk to explain that they’d arrested my apparent twin and our packages had gotten switched and could I please have my 13oz box of Giraffe-Os in exchange for the mysterious parcel my seeming doppelgänger had left?

I’d gotten as far as “Hello, I” when they tased me, shot me, jumped up and down on me, threw me off the roof, set me on fire, and force-fed me glass shards laced with uranium-235. The sergeant then swept the pieces of me into a dustpan, dumped them in a solitary trash can, and said, “Can I help you, sir?”

I reconstituted my molecules — I minored in it at Seventh Diminished College — and explained the situation to him. You already know that part, so I’ll skip ahead. The sergeant wasn’t convinced. He said I had escaped earlier that morning disguised as a crumpled up copy of the Big City Tribune Gazette Times Post News Sun Journal and that I must have changed clothes and come back to the jail.

“That’s absurd!” I protested. “If I were the prisoner, why would I return to jail?”

“Because it’s karaoke night and you didn’t want to miss Officer Krampus’ electrifying rendition of ‘O Canada’!” he said.

With that, he slammed the door shut and walked away, cunningly avoiding the pit I’d surreptitiously dug, filled with pointy sticks, and covered with palm leaves as he led me in.

I was trapped! Framed! Imprisoned! All past participles that accurately described my loathsome situation. As I bemoaned my befate, I found myself knocked unconscious by a sudden blow on the head. When I awoke I discovered someone had thrown an anchor with a note tied to it through the window. I read the note.

Oh, did you want to know what it said? I’m sorry. Ahem!

It said, “I have your giraffe. I shall break you out at midnight and we can trade. Have no fear!”

“But that’s illegal,” I said.

“Just shut up and be ready,” the note replied.

Midnight came. It left a cup of chamomile tea to help me get some sleep. How thoughtful! I took a sip and immediately felt something wriggling around in my mouth. I spit it out and zounds! Egad! Gadzooks! It was my double!

“Thank goodness you’re here,” I said. “Now we can escape and get to the bottom of this identical twin mystery.”

“You stay away from my mysterious identical twin bottom!” he said.

We disguised ourselves as a breeze and blew out the window. From there it was a quick 40-foot plummet to the ground and then a mere three miles of hobbling on broken legs to the nearest Civil War doctor’s tent. We were given ether, had our legs sawn off, and died of infection.

The End

EPILOGUE

The next morning, a guard found one of the jail cells empty except for a couple of packages. He opened one, unfolded the giraffe he found inside it, and stared at it for some time, quite puzzled. He opened the other one, found the jewels the missing prisoner had stolen, and took his lunch break. He was never seen again. The end.

The Actual End