One-Shot Wednesdays -Doppelgänger (Patreon)

Sorry tis a day late... Thank you to patron Lauren for this prompt:

For this one-shot I immediately thought of that movie ‘Us’ that was recently released this year! So if you haven’t seen it (and want no spoilers), stop reading now and wait for the next scheduled One-Shot Wednesday on June 19th :)

If you’re reading this sentence that means you don’t care about spoilers or you’ve already seen the movie. Great! Welcome to my explanation of my inspiration for this one-shot! 

SPOILERS AHEAD  

When I saw the movie I had guessed at one of the ‘twists’ that Lupita’s character had been switched out with her double when she was a kid. And in thinking about it I liked the concept but I sorta wondered what would happen if someone older had experienced the same traumatic experience!? What if instead of being switched out, one killed the other?

ENJOY!

My German grandmother always put the fear of God in my head. And the fear of phantoms and fairies and loads of other supernatural and scary stuff out there in the world! She was superstitious straight up! She told my cousins and I loads of stories mostly folktales about various creatures and spirits and forces beyond our comprehension and control out there in the big-bad-world! 

You ever see that Disney movie Tangled that came out late last year in 2010? Yeah that scene with Mother Gothel talking about all the bad shit Rapunzel could encounter that’s pretty much ‘Storytime with Grandma’ in my family except loads worse. By my twenties the Russian ‘Baba Yaga’ seemed like a friendly concept, honestly!

Anyhow as an adult I’ve tried not to pay much mind to Oma’s superstitions. In fact I’d say they made me desensitized to fear. So much so that my friends know I’m the one to dare to go into the dark without a flashlight and I’ll totally do it without blinking an eye.

Which is what I did tonight. Look, I’ve seen The Blair Witch Project okay and when I saw the abandoned ranger’s station or whatever the hell I thought to myself I had an opportunity for a real-life walkthrough experience. I said to myself “Mindy you’ve got this. This is gonna be a great story to tell your pussy friends who didn’t dare follow you away from the campsite!”

I entered the place (why are doors always open in horrors? I had to reef pretty hard on the old wood of the door) and I looked around. It smelt musty and earthy. Luckily by this point I had night-vision from being without light for so long so I followed along carefully through the first room and tried the door at the back. It wasn’t locked but the rust on the handle and latch made the thing a little hard to move.

There were shelves in here to store various supplies and I moved cautiously through not wanting the things to tip and fall over on me. It was pretty fucking dark in here so I decided to cheat and use my palm-sized flashlight to look around. My friends had robbed me of my phone not wanting me to cheat with it but I’m too experienced of a camper to go without extra supplies on me and around me (superstitious grandmother remember?) 

It didn’t take me long to spot the door against the adjacent wall hiding behind a shelving unit. A quick glance with the flashlight showed me the thing was on fricken wheels on a track like some Scooby Doo Nancy Drew shit and I all at once got excited as I pushed the thing out of my way. It moved pretty smoothly after all these years of sitting dormant. Then I tried the door. It took a bit of energy to get the damn thing to move but I was determined and so it eventually gave way to my shoves and kicks and other manoeuvres to try and loosen it up on its hinges.

Behind the door was a stairwell. Most people by this point would say a large hell no! but my mind was saying an even larger HELL YES!

Down I went.

Imagine my surprise when I found light coming from behind another door some several meters down! Now I was curious and curious I went forward and slowly put my head to the door to listen first –hand on the handle. I couldn’t really make anything discernible out and yet I could tell there was something on the other side. So slowly, I turned the door handle until it stopped and I knew I could pull open when I was ready.

I was ready and moving myself into position I eased the door silently open and peered through the small crack I made. It was a large corridor or maybe even foyer or something. And there were people in it: some dressed in raggedy clothing while others were in deep red. “What the fuck?” I whispered to myself in confusion. They all seemed to be doing something but none of their movements (or lack of in some cases) made any sense.

I watched for awhile longer, mesmerized, until one of them came close and tripped and fell into the door causing it to open wide and me to cry out and move out of the way. The young man seemed in a daze as he picked himself up and brushed himself off and turned around and ran back towards a group of others. He didn’t pay any attention to me.

In fact, no one seemed to have paid attention to the incident or the now wide open door.

I took my opportunity again and entered the room. It became clear as I tread carefully through that everyone seemed to be on their own agenda. One person was dancing, one was miming sewing, one looked like they were laid out to sleep except their eyes were still open, one group of children were jumping up and down like they were on a bed only there was no bed...

Was I in some sort of looney bin? Some holding area for the mentally unstable? For not the first time I was whispering “what the fuck?” under my breath.

As I made my way into an adjacent corridor I noted that some were in jumpsuits of that deep crimson while others were not. Some of them with the jumpsuits seemed to notice me but thankfully no one did anything about it. I was unnerved but not enough to leave –yet.

There were rooms in these corridors and I peered into a few as I passed. A ‘mess-hall’ cafeteria, some sort of other empty space, a classroom and then what looked like accommodation rooms with bunk beds. Some were occupied and some were not.

“This is seriously fucked,” I whispered as I turned to go back the way I came. Whatever asylum this was I wanted no part anymore.

Someone stood in my way. I wanted to duck past them but they moved the same direction I went to go. I was forced to bring my downcast eyes up (I hadn’t wanted eye contact with any of these ‘crazies’ just in case) to now make that dreaded eye contact and the sight in front of me made my blood feel like it was running cold.

My own eyes stared back at me. My own face stood before me. I was not a twin and there was no mirror here... 

‘Doppelgänger’ I heard my Oma’s voice pronounce. An omen of evil and death...

My mouth was dry and I felt I couldn’t swallow as she and I stared at one another. I finally got the courage to touch the spirit; to try and put my hand through her and prove what I already knew except that I found out I was wrong. My hand touched solid flesh and I nearly fainted from shock and surprise.

She grabbed my wrist. She twisted it away from her with a twisted smile not like my own.

This was it: I was going to die. The doppelgänger’s appearance signified oncoming death. And now with her hand around my wrist in a vice grip I felt that knowledge settle in my brain. I was about to die.

She dragged me towards one of the empty rooms and I cried out for help but none of the other... well what were they? Other spirits? Demons? Creatures of folklore? None of them glanced my direction as my own personal agent of death dragged me into the privacy of another room no doubt to kill me.

I was terrified. Oma’s stories were actually based in truth. It was hard to come to grips with but somewhere inside me I also knew I only had a minute or two left to do that before things were all over for me. As the doppelgänger went for my throat I decided in that split second that I was not going to die. Na-ah.

The two of us fought and struggled. A few times I thought she might have the upper hand but my will to live kept me fighting her off. Besides that, I wanted to give my Oma the last word. I wanted to tell her that although her story about the doppelgänger was correct; that the spirit did exist she was wrong about it in the fact that this spirit; this omen of death did not signify your death was soon to come it actually meant that the spirit was there to take you out!

Adrenaline kept me alive; heightening my senses. We were both panting but I wasn’t ready to give up my last breath just yet.

She tugged my unzipped sweater off and somehow I wrestled myself behind her and grabbed both sleeves of my garment. Breathless I quickly doubled one over her head and back towards me so the sweater was wrapped around her neck and I pulled.

She fought me and got out of it but I slammed her to the ground and sat on top of her and did it again. She hit me and scratched me and I paused my attempts at suffocation to manoeuvre myself so that my knees pinned her arms down and then I tried again with tears of grief and fear streaming down my cheeks I pulled my sweater as tight as I could and I tried to choke the life out of myself; this twin image come to dispose of me.

She kept trying to fight and in fear I did what I had to do and pulled her head up and slammed it down a few times which stunned her and gave me the opportunity to finish what she’d started. I couldn’t look. I heard the shaky breaths and then I didn’t but I couldn’t look. I sat panting and crying for what seemed like hours as I held that sweater in a vice grip with my eyes squeezed shut and my body trembling.

When I finally got up I averted my eyes and numbly left that terrifying place leaving behind the spirit and my sweater and my innocence towards my Oma’s stories.

I didn’t realize I’d also left behind a twin who was still breathing...