Small Town America

The man wearing my face was sitting at the bus stop bench, reading a book.


I live in the Midwest United States, in an in-between town. I moved here about 5 years back, which makes me one of the few people to move in and not out in the last decade. We're pretty small, too small for most chain restaurants. The kind of town where you got your McDonald's and all, but no Applebee's. But we're big enough that you don't really know the people around you so well. The girl at the counter of the coffee place knows my name and my usual order, but not much else. We're too out of the way to be a pitstop town on the way to the nearest city, but the county buses run through because people need to get to work.


Was that too much detail about the local food scene? I don’t know. I think it’s important. I want you to understand.


Anyway, I was at the coffee place when I saw him. I work at an auto repair shop a bit out of town, and I'm an insomniac, so on my lunch break I get a coffee just about every day so I can make it to the end of my shift. Jake teases me about it. I'm kind of a big, grimy dude, and I get the girliest drinks. Sue me for being a sweet tooth.


So I'm standing by the window waiting on my order. At first I didn't think anything really, beyond just, oh, that's a new face. But my eyes linger and I get that prickly sensation all over like my brain twigging me that something's wrong. I only ever felt it so strong a couple times before in my life. Once, when I was out deer hunting with my dad and we saw a coyote (who we realized in a minute was rabid) come limping up towards us. The other was at trade school and I saw some fuckhead posted up by my truck, and just knew he was waiting for me.


The first thing I could recognize was the haircut. Then height, the general shape of his face. He was at a distance and hard to make out, and I might not have even noticed if my subconscious hadn’t hooked him. I heard someone say once that you’ve never seen your face, just pictures and reflections. But I have seen it, I guess. It was sort of like the first time you see a video of yourself, distorted compared to what you see in the mirror.


The barista broke my attention to give me my coffee, and I forgot him for about a minute before I walked out to get to my truck. I was just across the street from him, and I looked at him and fuck, those were my eyes. He even dressed like me, not like he was in the exact same clothes, but the kind of nondescript thing that I’d usually wear. Flannel over denim, work boots. His clothes were cleaner than mine usually looked. By this point I was full on staring, coffee hot in my hand.


And he looked up. Made eye contact. He smiled just a bit. He waved, awkwardly. His smile went to his eyes. Like, a really earnest smile that somehow made my stomach seize up.


Just like that, he went back to his book.


Coming out of this, I was woozy, about to stumble every step back to the truck. I never lock the doors. But I did now. It sounds fucking ridiculous in hindsight, especially typing it, but it’s hard to explain how it felt to see him. Practically like I was leaving my own body. My skin was clammy and a little numb.


To my credit, as much of a baby as I was, I pushed through the rest of the day like normal. Had my coffee, went back from my lunch break. Somebody in town’s breaks were wearing thin, somebody else had junked up their transmission. Ordinary day. The whole time though in the back of my head I was still there on the sidewalk staring at the guy with my face.


I slept worse than usual that night. I’ve had sleeping problems since I was a kid, doctors said it was a routines thing. Any big change from my normal day, I can barely get a wink in. When Jake first moved in, I got so ornery from the sleep deprivation that we ended up fighting just about every day until I started sleeping on the couch. I stayed up that whole night just staring at the computer. I’d gone on some childish google rabbit hole on doppelgangers and found nothing that seemed helpful, and at some point I stopped reading and my eyes just glazed over, and it was morning.


First half of my shift was hell until I hit my second wind. I went to the coffee shop and the dizziness started to set in on the drive over. I know I should blame the fact that I was running on empty, but I still can’t help thinking maybe it was because of him.


He was there in the same spot when I pulled up. I wouldn’t look directly at him, just rushed through to get into the store. Even about 10 yards off, he was like a physical presence, like he might as well have been right up in my ear. I could feel his breaths, slow and even, puffing on the back of my neck.


I shook the entire time I was getting my drink. Coffee girl seemed a bit nervy too. She dropped my change on the counter and didn’t smile at me, which just made me more unsettled. She was normally really perky. Even if it was just fake customer-service bullshit, missing it made the atmosphere all that much more alien.


When things get bad, I’m the kind of guy who just fades out into his own head. It’s a skill. Like, a bad one, obviously, but a well fucking practiced skill. I let myself recede back into my skull waiting for my drink. Thought about the work I had to get to at the shop. Sleep deprivation made zoning out even easier. Up until I left the shop, that is.


I didn’t even look at him. Maybe it was because I was moving on autopilot and so deep in my Nothing place, but I was absolutely punched with sensation as I got up to the outdoor bistro seating. The feeling of paper against my fingertips as I turned a page, a foggy half-image of black text on creamy white. I full-body rocked to a stop and caught myself. Coffee spilled on my hand. It was boiling hot and I could barely feel it.


There he was. Reading his fucking book without a care in the world. Smiling with my mouth. He had a shadow of stubble. I hadn’t shaved the night before.


My first thought was that it felt like he’d tried to rip the soul out of my body.


I couldn’t move away. I had to know what was wrong with him, or wrong with me. I sat down and didn’t take a sip of my coffee. Just stared. He didn’t feel me looking at him today, or he pretended not to. But at least when I watched him, I didn’t get any more of… whatever the fuck that had been.


The longer I looked, it was weird. I thought I could see things around him, but not really see them. It was this subtle haze like heat shimmer, all around him, and as I looked I could almost see it forming this membrane stretching out in every direction, this clear web. A thick fucking tendril of it stretched between me and him, almost present and iridescent and real the harder I stared. If I had the balls, I could have reached out and touched it.


After a little while, I realized that other people were starting to notice him. They’d stop, double-take, then stand there gawking at him. It seemed weird at first, until I realized, of course they’d be freaked out. I was sitting right there, across the street. I mean, you’d be startled to see two of your neighbor one day, right? Even comforting myself that way, it didn’t seem quite right. Like, shit, they didn’t know me that well. I could have had a twin or something. But when he lifted his head up out of his book and smiled at them, gave a little wave to whoever he’d caught staring, they’d act like he punched them. From an outsider’s perspective it was somehow, I don’t know, embarrassing. I must have looked that dumb yesterday.


He sat there for almost an hour with his book, and then the bus came. I could see him pay with change, laugh a bit at something the bus driver said. And then he escaped. Down the road and towards civilization.


I went and threw up in a garbage can, and I’d broken out in a cold sweat, so I called into work and said I thought I had food poisoning. I got chewed out for taking off but like, what were they going to do? Bring me in, have me puke on people’s cars? My boss can be such a dick.


I texted Jake on the way home, and crawled into bed. He waited for me to wake up on my own even after he got to the house, and he brought a big thing of baked mac and cheese into bed with him for us to share. Homemade, not that velveeta shit. God, I love him so much.


And he asked, “You feeling better now, Ringo?”


(My parents named me Harrison, after the Beatle. He calls me Ringo when he thinks he’s being cute.)


I told him yes, I was. He teased me for staying up all night online reading scary stories or whatever. I said I stay up all night all the time and never threw up over it. Well, that’s because I must be getting old! My elderly body wasn’t taking kindly to how I treat it no more. I pinched him on the arm. We chatted about other things, god knows what, he can talk for hours without me having to say a word. It’s nice. I’m pretty much quiet and recalcitrant by nature, and so was my dad. It’s nice having someone who can make you laugh and feel like a human being.


But he said something after we’d flicked on the news that made me sick all over again.


“Oh, and I heard the craziest shit from Suzy today when she came into the office. I only just barely heard her the first time, she was up at the nurses’ station, you know, and I’m trying to read some kid’s chart, and I nearly put it down and went over and asked her if she needed to go to a hospital or a fuckin’... fuckin’ psych ward. But I asked nicely later and she said-- baby, guess what she said.”


I was half paying attention at this point, splitting my ears between him and tomorrow’s weather report. “... She’s pregnant?”


He threw his head back and laughed. “That’d be harder to believe than what she actually said, now you mention. But she was like, adamant that some woman was trying to steal her soul.”


Cold rushed over me and I muted the weather. “She what?”


“Yeah, I didn’t think she was religious or anything, but--”


“No.” He stopped and looked at me all bright and concerned. “What did she say?”


“Harry, you okay? You’ve been acting funny all day.”


“Jacob. Please.”


He sighed, kinda frustrated now. “I don’t know, she just said… when she was in town yesterday before her shift, she passed by this woman who tried to rip the soul out of her body. I don’t know what it means, it’s just Suzy being a crackhead.”


I squeezed the remote and almost broke the damn thing. There were more of them. More doppelganger things. Maybe they were feeling the town out slowly, resident by resident until they found what they needed.


“She’s not crazy. I know what she means.”


He squinted at me. This was getting him more agitated.


“Well what the fuck does that mean?”


It dawned on me that I couldn’t possibly explain what I had been seeing without sounding like an insane person to my licensed medical professional spouse. I made a half-assed attempt, mostly vague and avoidant, before I asked him if he’d let me drive him into town before work.


He agreed, probably because he was planning on talking me into seeing the clinic. And maybe he wanted to get a coffee, I don’t know.


So I brought him there. And the stranger was there, familiar as ever, in his same old spot. The moment I laid eyes on him, face buried in his book, I could feel him dig into me. Jake stiffened up like a corpse by my side. His hand tried to grab for me, but I was already out the door and making a beeline for the man with my face. I barely even waited for traffic. I was so hopped up on being right, on being proven, on knowing I wasn’t going crazy. At that point, even all evidence to the contrary I was half sure that Jake wouldn’t see him at all.


The closer I got to the guy, shoulders up and tight, the stronger the pull was. I put everything I had into staying clearheaded and ignoring the ghost images of words on paper; I almost got hit by a car for my troubles. People were already staring at him, but as I approached some of their eyes turned onto me, too. I could feel them. Like claws and arrows, like the way he pulled at me.


I stopped a few feet away and squared my shoulders. “Hey!”


He sat up and looked straight at me. The air around him shimmered. It was that web, all leading back to him like some kind of spider. For a second I could see the cord between me and him, and it was as thick as my wrist, twice what it was yesterday.


“Harry, right?” I asked. Looking down at me, he smiled and shook his head.


“No, son. I think you got me mixed up with someone else.”


He pointed at the book in my hands; my knuckles had gone white, gripping so tight onto it. “Can I see that for a minute?”


Before I could nod- it was his book- or shake my head- hadn’t I been in the middle of reading it?- my hands were empty. One by my side, the other aimed down in a casual point to the book in the stranger’s lap. The next thing I noticed is the air had been pulled right out from my lungs. Breathing in was like breathing fire for that first second, and I grabbed my chest. Before I caught my breath, rocked with dizziness and pain in my chest, I would have sworn I was having a heart attack.


“The fuck?”


“You oughta be more careful, Harrison. You could get real hurt pulling a stunt like that.”


He sounded sincere, was the sickest part of it to me at the time. I was so angry I was shaking with it, sure I would swing on him any moment.


“Don’t you dare give me that.”


He sighed. The whole time, he never got angry or raised his voice.


“Well hey, don’t shoot the messenger. You’re the one going around looking into things that ain’t your business, aren’t you?”


“Not my business? You come into my fucking town, where I live, and you tell me it’s not my business?”


“I haven’t done anything.”


“Whose face are you wearing, then?”


He reached up and touched my face, his own face, at the edge of our stubble. “I… don’t want any trouble.”


“Well tell your friend--”


“I don’t have friends, Harrison. Not in this town, leastways.”


He gave me a long slow blink and looked me up and down. My skin crawled like a ripple tracking with the movement of his gaze. He smiled.


“I’m just passing through,” he said with my voice. “Don’t pay me any mind.”


“What the fuck do you--”


“I just try not to think about it. You can’t go through your life trying to understand everything that happens to you.”


His smile all of a sudden got real damn sad. I felt the ache in it. I remembered the times I’d smiled like that. I couldn’t think of anything to say to him, and he could tell I was struggling because he lifted his book up like he wanted me to leave him to it. Crime and Punishment. I pressed my hand to my chest, where the tightness was turning into a proper knot.


“I’ll be gone after tomorrow,” he assured me, turning his eyes down to the page.


I should have told him to get out of town today if he knew what was good for him. Hell, I should have chased him out myself. But I just ripped myself away. The more I walked, I could feel the hooks under my skin pop off and disappear and the tight feeling started to fade.


I got into the car and turned to Jake. Tears were pouring down his face. His hands were clasped over his mouth to catch the sobs but I’d never seen him cry like that. I started fussing instantly, but he was crying too hard to speak. I asked if he needed to take off the rest of the day and he nodded. We could pretend he’d picked up a stomach bug from me yesterday.


He cried for hours. Just uncontrollable. To this day, he won’t tell me exactly what happened to him while I was talking to the stranger. I kind of have an idea. I don’t like to think about it. The one thing he did tell me was that the man had his face. That’s when I knew.


I went back the next day as early as I could, and sure enough the man with our faces was there. The air was thick like the humidity just before a big storm. He didn’t seem to notice. All the nice people whose routines he had disrupted were stock still, staring at him, and I wanted more than anything to shout for him to get out of there. What the hell kind of game was he playing? Didn’t he know this shit was dangerous, and didn’t he care about-- but anyway. I couldn’t get my voice up over the thick silence sliding down my throat.


I wasn’t the only one; nobody was willing to make the first move. Then Jeff, the old man who runs the liquor store, came up behind the stranger with the driver he keeps behind the counter for security. He sat up a little. He knew the old man was behind him, and he didn’t even turn around. The metal bulb smacked against his shoulder and keeled him over right off the bench. I rolled with the blow. His book fell, and I never saw it again after, because in that moment everything turned into chaos. A little under a dozen people rushed for him.


I’m not oversensitive or hysterical or what the fuck ever. I swear on god that I could feel everything. I haven’t asked anybody else if they felt it too. Steel toed boots to the gut, dirt and asphalt and nice folks’ hate in your mouth. I don’t know if it’s worse if they couldn’t or could.


It was the kind of shit you only see on the real gritty nature docs, or when you spend a long time sitting still in a deer stand. When all the birds descend on one among them and rip its throat out, or a mama fox bashes her kit to death. It’s not malicious. It’s a survival instinct. But I’ve never believed for a second that natural doesn’t mean it can’t be evil.


And he looked up. Made eye contact. His eyes were so big and bloodshot and scared. I could feel him pleading inside my head so loud, and I could feel the bruising and breaking like a phantom sensation under my skin. I just stood there. Somebody brought their foot down on the center of his face and it made this horrible cracking sound and that was when I finally looked away. That was when I stopped feeling it.


There were a few more moments of scuffling before everyone stopped. He’d quit moving and I think it made everyone realize all of a sudden what they were doing and where. After a while someone got a big sheet and draped him in it, staining it red everywhere. I don’t know what they did with him after they wrapped him up and moved him. The coffee shop owner got the hose he used for the flower boxes in his windows, and sprayed down the street until the gore washed away.


I watched my neighbors murder me.


I haven’t disguised myself before posting this. I could have spared the personal details and changed people’s names. It’d be very consistent for a cowardly fuck like me. But I think the least I can do for us both, me and him, is to be honest. I am scared as hell every day. I never stop thinking about the way his bones cracked, and his teeth came out, and his skin sloughed away where they’d beaten it to mashed potato. If you read this, if you’re from my town, you know who I am, and I know who you are, and I think you deserve to be a little scared too.


Yesterday for just a minute, I thought I saw my boss flinch looking at me. He had this look of horror, and rage. And when it happened, I knew him inside-out. I saw myself. And I looked like him.


Maybe sometimes, if you’re that scared of seeing your reflection, that’s your own fucking fault.