Doppelgänger

Doppelganger: German for double-goer, a copy. They leave no trace as they move through space and time, not even a shadow cast by the dim, flickering glow of a fading street lamp. Malicious by nature, the doppelganger with haunt and torment the innocent counterpart, planting fear and dread into the pit of the innocent's stomach. Thoughts can be tormented, twisted, manipulated, mixing reality and imagination, until both are so warped it is no longer clear which is the truth. Many minds are consumed by the belief that to see the doppelganger of a friend or loved one is a forewarning of illness or danger. But to see the double of oneself, that is an omen of death.

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I recall one particular memory from when I was nine. The sun was shining brilliantly above me as I ran across the grass, weaving between the towering trees, the greenery swaying in the light summer breeze. The young girl I had met was almost within my grasp, her golden hair soaring behind her in waves as she attempted to evade me. My hand had just made contact with her oddly cold back, my mouth stretched wide ready to announce my victory, when I felt a squeeze from a pair of hands wrapped around my own shoulders. Before I could protest, I had been dragged away by my father, his face stricken with a look of deep worry. I glanced back at my new friend but she seemed completely indifferent as she stared back at me. She wasn't blinking. I wasn't allowed to go back to the park anymore, though I could never understand why.

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I never liked to be alone. I could feel shadows following me through the darkened halls. I could sense a thousand eyes gazing upon me as I stared into the mirror. The mirrors in this house tricked my eyes. As I walked past I could catch my reflection, but it wasn't me. The image was twisted and distorted to the point of being almost inhuman. Upon returning to the mirror for a closer inspection, however, I could distinguish nothing out of the ordinary. My movements were mirrored and I appeared the same, but something about the image of myself reflected in the glass always left me inexplicably disturbed.

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Sometimes the walls would call to me. Some days it was a gentle whisper, a soft breath of wind caressing my face and chilling my spine. Others, it was a deafening scream, piercing the silence and assaulting my ears. I hear my name bouncing through the rooms, over and over, louder and louder. An incessant murmur growing and warping into a great crescendo, tormented screams echoing through the halls. Then they were gone, as if they were never there at all, and nothing remained but the silence hanging in the air.

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I could not bear it anymore. My own house had me frightened out of my skin, the mere image of myself reflected in the mirror was enough to send disturbed chills through my body.  I snatched up the ancient broom leaning against the cupboard, the splintering handle digging into my skin, and stared into the mirror one final time.  The image reflected was, once again, just me, though I could sense there was something not quite right. The dim lights above me flickered, throwing dramatic shadows across the walls but the instant I glanced up, the flicker ceased. When I turned my head back to the mirror, my heart stopped. Ice ran through my veins and my breath caught in my throat. The image reflected before me was a vision from the past, a child with long golden hair flowing past her shoulders. This child was me at age nine. This child was the girl I chased in the park. This child was two separate entities, with but one body.

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I regained control over my trembling body and lifted the broom handle high above my head, bringing it crashing down into the face of the young girl in the mirror. Glass shards bounced across the floor, dancing around my feet, shattering into hundreds upon hundreds of miniscule fragments. The walls shrieked and howled with an ear-splitting resonance. A desperate pounding came from behind, as if something were trying to force its way out. Before I was conscious of my own movements, the broom handle had smashed through the plaster, leaving a gaping dark hole in its wake. The shrieking came to a stop, once more leaving silence hanging all around me. I took a shaking step forward and I felt a sharp pain in the bottom of my bare foot as a large shard of glass penetrated my skin. I leapt forward, crying out in pain, and tumbled  through the gap in the wall. I could hear delicate footsteps manoeuvring between the shards of glass and crumbled plaster, but I found myself paralysed, unable to lift myself to see beyond the wall. The hole seemingly began to repair itself as my whole world faded into darkness.

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The air was thin and dry. The putrid smell of decay filled my nostrils as my burning lungs begged for air. The skin on my hands was torn and bleeding and my throat was raw, the result of hours upon hours of banging and clawing and shrieking and shouting. But it was all in vain. There were no ears upon which my cries for help would fall. I don’t remember the last time I saw a light, or anything at all. I could discern nothing in the darkness which had consumed me. There was no brilliant shining day and no peaceful starry night. In fact, time itself was no longer presented to me. There was no measure of how long I had been entrapped in this pitiful black tomb nor was there any foreseeable end to my torment.

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I slowly drag my hands across the wooden beams, rotting away just as I am, carefully searching for any way out. I find nothing but the same wooden structures supporting the dry plaster built up on either side. There is no salvation. The weariness overtakes my body and I weakly wrap my arms around my legs, now stiff after being frozen in one position for such an endless amount of time. As a final act of defeat I lean my aching back against the crumbling plaster on the interior of the wall and wait for death to come. But it never does.

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Doppelganger: German for double-goer, a copy. A clone dedicated to the pursuit of the innocent counterpart. They follow the innocent, leaving no trace, not even a reflection of their own. They never really see themselves, only the innocent. To see the double of oneself is supposedly an omen of death, but the reality of such a situation far worse. To live a life of never ending entrapment. To suffer the torment of an infinite life, locked in the dark for eternity. That is the greatest curse.