This will be my last entry. My story ends here, and I’m sorry to say that it’s not a happy ending.
The police came by to visit me in the ward, two officers wearing high-vis jackets and grim expressions. They gave me some news that first rebuilt my hope and then shattered it.
They told me that Sophie was alive. Sophie was alive, and she was elsewhere in the same hospital as me. Far from the secure psychiatric wing, she was recovering from severe physical trauma. They explained that she had been injured in what appeared to have been an interrupted burglary, where the perpetrator had broken through the locked garage door to escape with our car. Sophie had been run over, caught under the vehicle, and dragged along the road.
I couldn’t breathe. I stared aghast, shaking my head. All this time, I had been sure. I was certain it was her doppelganger I had run over. It was not-Sophie. But I was wrong. I had left my love for dead, and worse still, I had felt satisfaction when I saw her broken body receding in the rear-view. The revelation sat like a mountain on my chest, and I was powerless under its weight.
Not content with crushing me so, the officers continued. Sophie was hospitalised in critical condition with breaks in both her arms, her wrist, her leg and her collarbone. Four ribs had been snapped, one of which had lacerated her liver. Her skull had fractured, and a severe bleed on her brain gave doctors no option but to induce a coma while they stabilised her. Now, four weeks later, she was conscious and able to speak, though hazy from medication. She had no sensation or control from the waist down, either from the swelling around her spine or the damage to her brain. It was unclear whether or not she would be able to walk again.
They thanked me for my testimony after the incident, and expressed sympathy for my present condition. “Trauma can do some real damage,” one officer said, gesturing around at my compact, clinical room. “It’s okay to struggle.”
I felt something slip out of place. The mountain on my chest cracked and crumbled, breaking me from my guilty daze.
“What testimony did I give?”
They told me how I had been assaulted by the burglar, who I claimed had drugged me. That I regained consciousness in the garage minutes after the incident, and that I had called for the ambulance. They told me how I had stayed by Sophie’s side throughout her recovery, and how they could have sworn I was still there with her.
I was still there with her. My head span, a high-pitched ringing sound growing in my ears. Sophie was alive, after all this time, but she was not alone. Whatever had been there when she woke was not me.
One officer’s brow furrowed. I realised that his eyes had been burning into me for some time. He expressed how strange it was that some of my interactions with the police from her bedside appeared to overlap with the time I had been resident in the psych ward. He said they had already checked with the staff, who confirmed I had not left since my admittance. And then, he asked me outright how I managed to be in two places at once.
Perhaps I should have been smarter. Maybe insisted that I speak with a solicitor, or played dumb; I didn’t. I told them everything. The bugs, the worms, the imitation people. I admitted to trespassing in Harriet’s house. I admitted to abandoning the overdue rental car. And I admitted to hospitalising my wife.
The police couldn’t quite piece everything together from my account. My story was comprehensive and thorough, but it seemed my unbridled honesty was indistinguishable from madness. I don’t know if I’d been seeking belief or sympathy, but what little they offered of either were pleasantries alone.
No longer was I a voluntary admission. In that moment, I handed over my freedoms, and I made myself a suspect in Sophie’s assault. The police spoke to the medical staff, who agreed to keep me securely from then onwards. I had my phone and other personal affects taken from me, and my door was kept locked from then on.
The days passed like a kidney stone.
I was interviewed no less than five times over the ensuing week by a sequence of increasingly perplexed uniforms. My story was doubted and dissected, probed and reiterated. My identity was checked, double checked, and checked again. My sanity was called into question, and ultimately dismissed. The only constant was the horde of bugs gathering at my window each night.
Just as I had grown used to ignoring the moths and their uncanny impressions of my wife, the congregation grew. They were joined by dozens of other bugs - spiders, millipedes, and all manner of many-legged little monsters. I kept my window shut in spite of the summer heat, preferring the sweltering heat to the threat of invasion.
The orderlies and other medical staff who had been so friendly since my arrival now regarded me with hesitance and due suspicion. My delusions were no longer able to be dismissed as fantasy and fiction. Word had spread that there was a carbon copy of me walking around elsewhere in the hospital. I overheard staff chattering nervously about bugs by the windows. More than once, I heard another patient screaming hysterically about worms in their food.
For one porter, it had all become too much. My door creaked open in the dead of night, the clinical light of the corridor cutting like a scalpel through the thick straps of sleep that held me. A plastic tray slid across the floor towards me, on which sat my phone and the rest of my personal property.
“I’ve turned off the cameras,” the porter said, “and deactivated the locks.” The fear was plain on his face as he explained that he believed every word of my story. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a year, the skin under his eyes dragged down by the weight of what he’d witnessed. He spoke of seeing the hordes of bugs with his own eyes. He claimed that some of the staff were no longer themselves, that it was no longer safe on the ward. “Find your wife,” he urged me. “At least get out of here.”
As if I needed any encouragement.
I was out of the secure psychiatric wing as quickly as my sleep-burdened limbs would allow, bursting through swing-doors and hauling myself up flights of stairs on my way to the ward holding my wife. These parts of the hospital were quiet at night, save for the squeak of my soles on the polished floors. Their shrill echoes went unanswered.
Six beds sat on the ward. Five were empty, the sixth had its curtains partially drawn. I stepped closer to peer around the fabric. Though the bed was lit dimly by the screens of machines and monitoring devices, I recognised my Sophie immediately. She was sleeping soundly, her chest rising and falling with soft breaths. A tube descended from her nose, an IV drip led to her arm. Her head was bandaged, and her blankets hid casts. Her glasses sat on the bedside table next to a jug of water, reflecting the display of her steady pulse.
And sitting beside her bed, was me.
He raised his head from his hands to look back at me, mirroring my disbelief as our gazes met. It was incredible. His unkempt hair was mine, his narrow eyes uncanny. His lips parted in my own expression of surprise. He wore my skin, and wore it as well as I ever did.
In my haste to get to Sophie, I had neglected to form a plan for this occasion, but it seemed my doppelganger was caught similarly off-guard. We stared at one another, at ourselves, open-mouthed, each waiting for the other to make the first move. I was paralysed. Should I talk first? Should I go in swinging? Should I look for a weapon, for a peace offering? My chest fluttered. It felt as if my organs intended to be free of me. My limbs ached to mutiny, to carry me from this confrontation. I was faced with a twin, and with the truth that I was no longer the master of myself.
A subtle movement cut through the stillness between us, and we both looked towards the bedside table. A brown moth sat atop Sophie’s glasses, the largest I’d seen, easily the size of both lenses combined. Its wings rippled, a bold shade of pink shining through their motion. I felt my abdomen churn as if in response.
A breeze from an open window shot down the back of my neck; brought by the wind, a whisper, low and soft. Come to us.
The moth held its wings wide, its substance shimmering in the low light. Images flooded my head, memories barely half my own. I saw Sophie that night - her imposter, rather. I saw the worms she fed to me. The water she tried to make me drink, shining and unnatural. Then I was in the car, locked in the garage, nauseous and barely awake. I was out of myself, watching as I drifted in and out of consciousness, my head rolling. The Sophie replacement had placed a note on the windscreen and left, but I was oblivious. I saw myself heave, felt the weight and force of my stomach purging its contents into the footwell. I opened the door, and collapsed out of it, onto the floor of the garage. As I lay slumped there, detached from my perspective, my attention was drawn to a stirring in the pool by the pedals. Were those worms, writhing in the bile? No, they were more numerous and varied. There were legs, wings. The motion became more violent, the puddle undulating and expanding, overtaking itself in froth, an unwatched pot left to over-boil. The shapes within formed more clearly into centipedes, spiders. Moths. Hundreds, thousands. This foaming marriage of vomit and bugs swelled exponentially, pushing itself upwards to occupy the driver’s seat of the car.
As quickly as the stirring had begun, the reaction settled, the products cooling, coalescing. A shape became clearer. A carbon copy of the body beside the vehicle. Me.
The replacement emptied the pockets of the original, moving slowly and deliberately. It settled back into the driver’s seat, blinked, and sharply inhaled. Its eyes shot around as if it had just become aware of its own surroundings, and then the vision was gone from me.
My consciousness snapped back to the
hospital in an instant. The revelation hit me like a cannonball to the chest. All along, Sophie had been here, and I - the real me - had been beside her while she recovered. I had believed her companion to be the copy, the bug-made imitation, while all this time, it had been me. I stared down at my hands, my skin crawling. I could distinctly see the shapes of spiders and beetles jostling for position within the fraudulent flesh.
The giant moth sat on the rim of the water jug, its wings shining in the half-light. Particles drifted like glitter from its fluttering, lacing the water. The liquid shimmered. An image returned to me, a still-frame snapshot of the kitchen confrontation with the fake Sophie. This concoction before me was the drink I had refused, and I now understood its significance. Somehow, this was an integral part of the process. The worms and their incubation were only the first steps. This glitter-laced water, this moth-dust cocktail was the binding point. This was the link to whatever controlled the swarm.
By refusing the drink, I had cursed myself, a bug-born replacement, with independence.
Come to us.
I communed with the moth at length. To my surprise, it was eager to avoid violence, and open to negotiation. I was asked what it would take for me to drink the water willingly. With apprehension, I set out my terms.
Firstly, I was to be permitted to finish and publish this account in my own words. It was something I needed to do, to give my brief independence a sense of purpose and completion, and I assured the hivemind that this tale would be unbelievable enough to prove no existential threat to its expansion. Second, I ensured that both Sophie and her real husband would be unharmed and granted safe passage from the clutches of this growing phenomenon. I was told that a transfer to another hospital would be arranged, and that they would be given the funds and resources necessary to start a new life together.
If you’re reading this, Sophie… I hope the imitations stayed true to their word, and that you’re safe.
I don’t know how far this hivemind reaches, or how far its influence has grown. I don’t know its intentions. All these mysteries wallow within the water. Once I drink this, I will see it all clearly, but I will be unable to share my discoveries.
Take care. Watch out for the bugs.