A Cardboard Catastrophe
I’m beginning to doubt whether I know what I know. It feels as if something is intercepting my psyche at a deep level. All I do know is that it’s coming from someone who appears to be me: a doppelgänger. I see this individual all the time, in the mirror. He does what I do for the short time I’m near him — mimicking my every move, while I’m in front of reflective surfaces. I don’t relate to him any more than I do a wet mop. I ask myself who this imposter is, and what he’s doing by tracking my movements. When I try to question him he refuses to answer.
He has cardboard for skin, like a prop at a fair. I assume he’s my Pinocchio, because he’s inherently dishonest. I’m supposed to be able to control him. Nobody seems concerned about the fact I’m being followed, except me. I can see his life unfolding before my very eyes. I see him go about his day, eat meals, and prepare for bed at night. But I can’t communicate with him in the way I would a regular person. And there’s not just one out there, I’m noticing more and more of them show up unannounced.
This whole debacle causes me a great deal of distress. I’m too afraid to warn others about it because I know already that they just won’t understand. Nobody else seems bothered by the presence of their doppelgänger — but I just don’t think they can see what I see unfolding day by day. I’m deeply concerned about the fraud that may be involved. At times the view I have of my doppelgänger is obstructed, and this is where I suspect the impersonation happens.
He’s everything I am, but he’s snipped the puppeteer’s strings, going about life largely unchecked. I want my life back. But my doppelgänger is living it for me instead. The only thing left to do is a ritual to destroy my own reflection. I begin by scrying. What I find alarms me! Part of my life force is being redirected his way. I was never born with a twin: he must go.
Every part of my being wants to crumple up his miserable frame, and throw it in the trash. Or better yet, tear him into little pieces. I’ve been through enough in my life, I don’t need a clone to possess my signature style and exploit it to others who have never been acquainted with the real me. I begin to devise a plan, slowly and methodically. I cover mirrors and reflective surfaces in efforts to disconnect this cardboard cut out from me.
For a while it works, until one day, out in public I see him again. I don’t go out often, so I was able to avoid reflective surfaces in my immediate environment. Then something peculiar happens. I start recognising a dark figure swirling around my doppelgänger from the back. An afreet is shadowing me…well not me, but this version of me I see everywhere I go. I talk to my psychiatrist about the doppelgänger, and she doesn’t understand. She writes it off as an hallucination
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The next thing I know I’m being visited by the afreet in my dreams, and the doppelgänger disappears from view. There’s nothing in the reflective surfaces. Nothing. I wonder if the afreet has something to do with it. So in a hypnogogic state one pre-dawn I question this terrifying creature. It tries to convince me I’ve lost my soul. It hisses back at me as I question it further. When I awake, I see the menacing cardboard clone torn up in a pile on the floor.
I tell nobody about the perceived status my doppelgänger — and regret dearly that I mentioned it to my doctor. Now I’m on more drugs, and I can’t tell whether they’re the reason for my night time terrors or elaborate backstory of the doppelgänger. I try broach the subject at coffee with my wife, but decide against it. Guilt eats me up from the inside because I usually keep nothing from her. I change my mind again, and can barely get the words out before her boss calls. I’m saved by the bell.
Months pass and I accept the nature of this personal beast. Ever since those torn up cardboard bits lay on the floor of my bedroom I’m less preoccupied with what it could all mean. Then one evening when I’m up late, sewing myself a new talisman a figure appears before me. It looks just like me, but this time it’s translucent as opposed to just cardboard. This doppelgänger has a message for me, but it conveys what it needs to telepathically.
I’m told of the growing phenomena of doubles among the populace. Apparently it has something to do with eschatology. I’m told the rapture is coming, and the Antichrist has an assembly line of non-human beings posing as if they’re people. I see the holes in the story, but when I go to ask more of this doppelgänger he disappears into thin air. At this point I’m wondering if I have a serious case of psychosis. But the devil has a way of making us doubt what’s true.
I’m having lunch with a friend a couple weeks later and our waitress seems reticent to approach our table. It seems as if something is frightening her off. So eventually, when we’re done with lunch and I can’t in good conscience leave without paying the bill I ask her what the deal is. She claims there was a person standing behind me that looked exactly like me, and it was flipping her off and making other obscene gestures.
I apologise profusely, making an excuse that the doppelgänger was in fact my twin brother who has special needs. A flimsy excuse I know, but I wasn’t about to get into it any further with a complete stranger. One thing I learnt was that it isn’t only me who’s seeing these people (er, things). Once lunch was wrapped up I made my way home, and nothing unusual happened for the next month.
I breathed a sigh of relief, and wrote it off as some kind of folie a deux. Sure, I saw it — but I see a lot of strange things. And when you can see in the spirit, afreet will attempt to trip you up. What is the nature of this mirror of mine? I’ll never know.
