"I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with the nonhuman world and somehow survives...Paradox and bedrock."-Edward Abbey

25 April 2012

Doppelganger

I thought I saw you the other day. The details were all there; the gait, the color of hair and its style, the build, and tone of the flesh. I had to do a double-take, and then another two or three after that, just to be sure.

There were differences, of course. That's the way of it. No tattoos. The scars that you carved into your legs and arms on those neurotic nights weren't there. The eyes, slightly concealed behind spectacles, were different. Not the look of a feral dog, but of someone just trying to get where they were going.

I breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't you, and I don't know how I would've reacted if it was. Hopefully, that unintentional doppelganger is as close I'll ever get.

17 comments:

  1. Robbie. I totally got this fear. This happened to me the other day too - I even went as far to say to the man, 'Ooh! I didn't see you...' Before I realised it wasn't (thankfully) who I thought it was.

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    1. For me, it was more; "you don't see me. Move along."

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  2. I got chills from this one. I've had similar experiences, and I think you're right. You never know what you'll do until it happens.
    Thanks for writing this.

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  3. Perfectly written. I kept my breath while reading this piece so I'm really glad that it's a short one. :)

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  4. Thank you. I initially was going to do it as a 100 Words post, but I found I needed an extra thirty to get my point across.

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  5. Oh how those doubles make our hearts race. The past comes within sniffing range...

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    1. And that phantom scent lingers in the nose for quite a bit after that.

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  6. I saw my dad the other day. He was even driving his old blue pickup truck. My heart was racing so hard I almost wrecked my car, I was so freaked out.

    My dad's been gone for nearly ten years.

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    1. It is freaky! I had an experience like that a few years back, when I stilled lived down below, with my grandmother. She'd been gone nearly two years at the time. But that's another story.

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  7. Excellent writing. I want to know more about who it wasn't, now.

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    1. Thank you. Who it wasn't I have mentioned before. One of the more...wrathful...specters, as it were...

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  8. This was a really great piece of writing.

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  9. I have someone I see, sometimes...

    This made me cry.

    Pearl

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