Doppelgänger

The first time I saw her, she was just another shadow haunting my dreams. I had usually forgotten about her by the time I woke up. Her words never stuck with me, if she even said anything at all. Her visage never left a mark on my waking mind. No imprint of her features was burned into the inside of my eyeballs, like a television left on for too long. At least not at first…

My dreams were more magical back then, when she still lived there. Dragons flew freely through the skies. Knights in shining armor rode on horseback. Bearded sorcerers cast spells and bent the laws of reality. Sculptors and architects built temples devoted to unknown gods. Sages prayed to the stars, the waters, and chaos. I wanted to be like all of them.

Then, she left my dreamscape, choosing instead to skulk in the corners of my waking mind. Sometimes I heard her speak to me. Her whispers told me I could never be her, that I wasn’t good enough to be her. I still couldn’t see her, but I always knew she was there.

Once I started listening to her, she crawled out from the shadows and put herself in the real world. She stood in my peripheral vision, the perfect image of a young girl. Almost just out of sigh, even though I already knew what she looked like. I felt it in my bones, in my heart, in my flesh. She had my glasses, my dimples, my smile (braces and all), and the sadness in my eyes. Her lips spoke my words. Her legs walked in my shoes. She donned my clothes and knew my friends. She was just like me, but I couldn’t recognize myself in her. She still had my long hair even after I cut it.

When we were about to start puberty, she moved to the mirror, staring back at me with disdain whenever I checked on her. We bled into the toilet for the first time and started growing breasts. I started to become her. (Or is it that she started to replace me…?) That scared me more than anything. I wasn’t her; I never had been, and I couldn’t become.

I tentatively introduced myself to her as Danny. She screamed that she would cease to exist, that I would mutilate myself and therefore her. She tormented me as a phantom, taking my breath away even when I wasn’t binding my chest. Her screams continued to echo even when I wasn’t in the bathroom, that if I wouldn’t let her become me, I should just die.

I couldn’t look her in the eyes. I tried, so I could make amends, but she wouldn’t let me. I tried to explain why I was doing this, but she couldn’t hear me. She managed to reach out from where she lurked to take over.

“If you’re going to kill me, I’ll kill you first.” She hissed, dragging me under the waves of despair she had flooded my mind with.

I only let her hurt me once…

She was right, though. I drowned her several years ago. I silenced her cries by living my life, something to which she has never laid claim, something she had no hand in building. Every now and then, I think catch her eye in the corner of the mirror or hear her wailing on the wind. Mostly, her torturous cries remain only as echoes reverberating in the caverns and canyons she left behind. The shadows she left behind offer the same comforts as any other darkness. Nobody haunts me now, threatening to take my place.

In the mirror, I am an inverted version of her, but I am still me. After all, a girl who never was cannot be the doppelgänger of a man who is.