The Other One

A lonely man is tired of his ineptitude to help others.

Imagine being me, a young adult with absolutely nothing to do. Living life in a rut, and just accepting whatever obstacles would place themselves. I assured myself at a younger age that my young adult life would be nothing but absolute partying, illegal drinking, and most of all, drugs. There would never be a dull moment, and I’d be surrounded by people which wanted the same. But it never happened. I’m just here, in my apartment, bored. Alone.
But last night was different, and it was the night that all of this started. I work at a local gas station, working from sundown until moments before sunrise. Basically, I see a lot of s**t that goes down in this town. I’ve seen a homeless guy get stabbed to death. I’ve seen a stray being ran over by a car. Even a girl walking out from a bar being abducted into a van. All these instances I could have helped, but, for some reason, they all seemed unreal. But back to my point, this particular night, a stray came to me, right to my feet, it was a kitten, but in all honesty, didn’t look much like a stray. All the other strays seemed to be indifferent to it, leaving it completely alone, barely acknowledging its presence. I felt bad, but, of course, I couldn’t keep this stray. Probably had a couple of diseases, and bringing it to an animal shelter would make its life much worse, I’m sure. But when I turned away from this stray, I heard the sounds of bones twisting and crunching. I turned back, and all the strays were gone. I’m not going to lie, I was a bit freaked out, but I went on my way home.
The next night afterward, was especially strange. But this was the night that would change someone. As I was walking past the same alleyway where the strays wander, I didn’t see any lost animals. But I heard something. Crying. Something was crying. A baby? Usually I’d ignore anything I didn’t truly understand, but, a defenseless baby in an alleyway? I looked around that night, and there it was, a seemingly newborn baby in a pile of newspapers. I couldn’t just leave it there to starve, so I found a nearby cloth, wrapped this unfortunate soul in it, and brought it home. I couldn’t exactly just keep a baby with me of whom I didn’t know it belonged to, but I suppose a night wouldn’t hurt. Thing is, as soon as I laid this baby down on the couch, it stopped crying, and just dozed off. You’d assume it would want something, but, no, it just went off. Still breathing. I put a couple of chairs next to the couch, so it wouldn’t roll off, and I tried to catch some sleep myself, but I just ended up staring at my wall, with the sounds of bones twisting and crunching haunting me once more.
This baby looked older when I checked on it again, a bit weird, but, I guess my perception was off a bit. When it looked onto me, it didn’t exactly show any emotion, it just looked at me, as if studying me, and then dozed back off. I’m not sure if this poor thing was dying, but I was worried, and I wasn’t a doctor. So, that day, I brought it to a hospital, and told them I had just found it. One of the nurses promised to look after it, until she could find someone to take after it,  but she asked for a blood test, just to have it on record. I couldn’t exactly say no to a cute nurse, so I cooperated.
A couple of hours slipped by, and I was called by the same cute nurse, but she urgently needed me. I drove off to the hospital, and there she was, in tears. She explained to me how sorry she was, and I was there, confused, and she began to tell me about how the child that she promised to look after was missing. I tried to reassure her, and get her mind in the right place to try and find this still unfortunate soul, but she told me how she heard the sounds of bones breaking right before she was about to check on it, and she found nothing but an empty bed in the room. I stepped back, and nearly fell, as, of course as you would remember, reader, this sound has been haunting me for nights. Then, she wiped tears from her eyes, and told me something that anyone that would scare anyone,
“We found someone here that showed a 100% chance of being a relative. The same exact blood as yours.”
The nurse showed me to a room where there was a young boy, maybe about 10 years old, just staring at a wall, sitting on the hospital bed. She left me there, and I had this…….pang in my stomach. I inched toward this boy. Shaking.
What kind of twisted f*****g reality is this? How the F**K does something like this happen. This boy just stared at me with dead eyes, as if I/he was observing me. This little f****r wanted to toy with me. This kind of s**t doesn’t just happen for no reason. Satan himself must be f*****g trying to toy with me. Break me down, make me go completely insane.
I grabbed him by the throat, and looked at him/it, and I simply just stared at this monstrosity.
“What are you.” I murmured to myself, literally.
This imposter looked up at the ceiling, then back to me, and mouthed the exact same words.
“WHAT THE F**K ARE YOU.” Now, I was enraged.
It just looked at me, with its cold stare, and mouthed what I just said, but with a bit of outward noises. I let go of its throat, and began to pace around the room, and I found what I was looking for. A pair of scissors, absolutely perfect. I spreaded the scissors, as if to have some kind of makeshift blade, and walked back to this dreaded being, and grabbed its left hand. I began to delicately cut into its palm, as it would just look straight off, and an unexpected trail of blood seeped from the incision. But, in the heat of all that happened, I missed something dire. The dorsal side of its hand was without a single mark.
I fell back, and looked at my left hand. There it was, a burn scar from long before I could remember walking. I looked back up to the being in the bed, and now, he was looking directly at me. Then, its eyes shifted to a color of which I don’t believe has a name, and its face began to morph into the most horrific, fear-inducing nightmare, of which I’ll just let you imagine. This horrific face crept into my conscience, haunting me, I’ve seen it before. In blatant fear, I flashed into a fetal position, covering my eyes as a young child would in the presence of the boogey man. And there it was, that same bone crunching sound I’ve been hearing all my life. Haunted by that as well as that face.
Right now, something is happening. I don’t know exactly what, but it’s happening. Within minutes, the crunching faded, but I was much too shaken to actually move a muscle. My breathing slowed, which you would think it would not in a situation as such. Then, a hand clenched at my shoulder, and I retaliated with a yell and a desperate swing.
“Oh, sorry sir.” A confused nurse was kneeling over.
“Wha….what? What are you?”
“I believe I am a nurse. May I ask why you are still here?”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw you walk out a few moments ago.”

Author's Note

Found this in my old documents. This was based on a nightmare I had. I always thought about turning this into a full fledged story, with the (spoiler) doppelganger essentially trying to murder the protagonist and take over his life.