He’s standing in my room now,
it is 6:59. I know what happens next.
That it was a pocket watch
attached to a chain running from the pocket of his waistcoat. At a certain
point he seemed satisfied and put the timepiece away. He looked at me again,
still smirking. His eyes flicked towards the wing that extended beyond my window.
A finger scratched his brow. Then, as though on cue, I felt a strong compulsion
to look back at my wing along with him, like there was something important that
I couldn’t miss out on; a morbid curiosity of sorts. Stopwatch. His hand
reached up to scratch his brow. Smirking while staring at his ‘identical
stranger’. Bob first saw him on the subway, on his way home from work.
People kept telling him
things he had done, but he never remembered doing them. His wife thanked him
for sending the flowers, saying that it was so unlike him to remember their
anniversary. A bolt of lightening hit just outside my window. One of the engines
erupted into a ball of orange flame, consuming a sizeable portion of the wing.
The tongues of flame licked towards me, a helpless feast. Everyone panicked and
screamed, descending at an exponentially increasing speed, I didn’t go to work.
One day, he didn’t feel the crash. I awoke on the ground, every inch of my body
screaming in agony. Text scrolled across the bottom of the screen, informing
viewers that there is a severe thunderstorm warning and a tornado watch until 7
p.m. Much attention. Just now that annoying alert erupted loudly from the
speakers. I wandered around the city.
“What report?” Bob asked. He had never done any report or received any request. His boss laughed it off, as if it was a joke.
He just
wandering what was happening.
His boss never called. After
a while he called his wife, but something strange happened. His own voice came
on the line. “Hello,” Bob said. “Hello,” His voice echoed.
He heard his wife’s voice in
the background saying, “Bob, who’s on the phone?”
“Nobody, dear,” the echo
said. “Just a sales call.” He hung up the phone. Debris surrounded me. I.
Bob rushed home, but on the
subway there, he caught his reflection in the glass. He looked gaunt and tired.
In fact, he didn’t look himself at all. At his house, he looked inside a caught
a glimpse of the stranger. The stranger looked more like him that he did.
Suddenly, a crushing
realisation hit him. Was he actually Bob? Perhaps he was the stranger. Perhaps
he had got it all wrong and this house didn’t belong the him at all. It almost
seemed like drowning the middle of the ocean.
Was sitting in the corner of
a bar that Bob frequented; at the restaurant Bob took his wife to; even at his
office. Bob thought he caught a glimpse of the stranger.
“Great job on that report,”
his boss told him one morning.
Flames and my vision was a
bit blurry. I began to sweat.
As he looked into the window,
the man outside looked out. They could have been mirror images a week before,
twins. Now the stranger who was Bob looked out the window at smiled at the man
who was nobody. I was on a flight to LA, and could see the dark clouds in the
distance. I was about to doze off when I noticed him. He was two rows ahead of
me and across the aisle. He was staring at me, smirking. I’m afraid of flying,
and he knew it. I could tell by the way he was looking at me, taunting me with
that smile. Then I noticed his odd clothing; a gray jacket hanging open,
exposing his black waistcoat that partially obscured his white dress shirt. And
he had a hat, gray like his jacket and pants, which looked like the kind of hat
reporters in the ‘30’s or ‘40’s might have worn. Or Dick Tracy.
He continued to stare into my eyes, unblinking
He was looking out of the
window, not at anything particular, when his reflection turned his head and
looked at him. Then he realized, quite relieved, that it wasn’t his reflection
but someone standing behind him and he turned. I turned. Managed to turn my
head to the side a little and I saw his silhouette standing over me. I blacked
out again. I’ve been in the hospital for weeks now. The doctors tell me that I
shouldn’t be alive. They also say that this mysterious man is just some kind of
hallucination brought on by the trauma I’ve experienced, and that the mind can
fabricate false memories. I know better. This evening I’ve done nothing but
watch television. Some reality show or other – I’m not really paying away,
looking again out of the window. From where I sat I could see the wing of the
plane, which was some kind of blessing. As it somewhat blocked the view of the
far away ground. Absentmindedly, I glanced back towards the irritating and unnerving
man. To my endless relief, his head was turned in front of him. He was looking
down at something. He moved a bit closer and I could see.
And stopped. Bob’s eyes
widened in disbelief as he looked at this person – they looked like him. Almost
exactly. They had a slightly different suit on, a different colour tie, little
lighter hair colour, but other that that they could have been twins.
Bob had heard of the concept
of an before but he
never believed it until now. He got up to talk the stranger, but the man left
he subway before he could.
Over the next few weeks Bob
kept seeing his double in various places, out of the corner of his eye. He…
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