I woke up in a dark room, bound tightly to a tattered office chair. My mouth was bound roughly with duct tape. I couldn’t remember anything; not where I was, nor how I got there.
I scanned the room for anything. Something to explain the situation. Then, suddenly, a flash of white.
As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw something in front of me. A wall of old CRT monitors, coated in decades of dust. White noise crackled on each until, one by one, they switched over to different scenes.
I searched them for anything familiar, anything that would help me understand what was happening. Then, I realized: they were all familiar. Many showed rooms in my apartment, many showed my neighborhood and places I visited frequently. My eyes widened. Was somebody watching me?
Then, I saw something. Just walking into frame on one of the monitors was my partner, and next to her was… me. It looked like me, except I don’t think it was me. It wore my old clothes, that I haven’t had for years. That I hadn’t had since before moving. This wasn’t a recording.
I tried to cry out, but the sound was muffled by the tape sealing my lips. I watched as they both continued in the apartment, acting like nothing was wrong. Unable to move, the only thing for me to do was watch.
Days had gone by, maybe weeks. I don’t know how I survived. I could not sleep and I did not eat. I just watched. It acted a lot like me, but it was wrong. I saw, acted in front of me by this imposter, my worst moments, performed every moment. Like a broken record, it made the same mistakes over and over again.
I saw it coming home every single night, intoxicated. I saw it breaking under the weight of alcohol and depression, and I saw it yelling at my partner. She needed to sleep, she had work in the morning. But it wouldn’t stop. It needed validation, or comfort, or something it didn’t even understand.
I saw it ignorning every single word my partner said to it. It just talked and talked and talked, so loudly I could almost feel it. So she fell silent.
I saw it avoid everything. She tried and tried and tried but it refused to go anywhere with her, or do anything with her.
I saw it buried in its own interests, shutting her out. I could tell that any moment it stopped distracting itself, that feeling would start creeping in. That creeping, suffocating, darkness. It was more like me than I thought.
She grew to hate it. This monster, living every single moment in self-pity, resigned to crumble under every challenge. It did not care about her.
I did.
I grew to hate it too. It wasn’t me, not truly. It was like an incomplete clone that filled in all of the missing data with me at my worst.
A copy without any true reference.
The rope that bound me loosened. I don’t know how or when. I ripped the tape from my mouth, wincing. I reached into my pocket to retrieve my phone. It still had a charge, somehow.
I looked around the room, but there were no doors to be found. Solid concrete walls entombing me as I watched my doppelganger tear down what remained of my life.
I’m hoping this reaches somebody who can help.