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The Double
By Elda Oreto
Dear Editor,
I send you this story hoping it may be of interest to you.
Fear, Anxiety, Horror, Desire, Love, Dream and Reality are all the elements that mixed together makes this story so absurd but still sort of believable. I bet you have never read something like this before. What I am going to tell you here is not my story though, but something that happened to a person very close and very dear to me, my neighbour.
I live in a small town in the North of Norway. It is one of those places where nothing happens all the time and people do a lot of sports and drink every weekend so much that they cannot find the front door of their own houses.
Life, here, for me, is extremely boring, and has been like that for a long time. I am a lonely soul and I like fine things: music, theatre, and art. This little town offer nothing like this. My husband died many years ago leaving me without any kids and with a grumpy, old and sick dog.
One day luck seemed to knock on my door. In fact a young and nice couple moved into the empty house next to mine. Those two houses, mine and theirs, are so near to each other that I could see them making breakfast in their kitchen while I was watching TV sitting in my living room.
Their life was very interesting to me, they seemed almost perfect but also some kind of a mystery.
Thus viewed from a distance were a perfect mix between fiction and endurance. However soon I would have discovered something extremely unusual about this couple. You can believe it or not, and think that I am a poor old deceived woman, ready to get involved with the facts of others, but I believe that this story deserves to be published and absolutely must be written.
In fact, one fine morning, someone knocked at my door. And there she was, my beautiful and mysterious neighbor.
She introduced herself and her two beautiful children to me, Doris and Lukas. She said they just moved from a town in the mainland and that she was there to complete a writing project. Yes, she was a writer. What a funny coincidence!
I invited them in and I made pancakes for the kids while we were talking and sipping coffee.
Her name is Beatrice and she is 39 years old, from Italy . When she was eighteen she moved to London, where she studied Literature and Philosophy and met her husband Michael, a swedish man.They married very young and got two kids.
After some years they moved to Germany where she worked as a translator and editor for a publishing company and her husband works in the IT as a freelance.
She told me about the book she was writing. It was a story of a little girl and her family: mother, father, and her younger brother. They were living in a sunny apartment in Naples, in the South of Italy, where the chaos from the street rose in waves into their daily life made of things unsaid and the fear of feelings.
The little girl's name was Susy. She was a very nice girl always helping her mother with household duties. Once she was in the kitchen to prepare the table for lunch.
The mother was talking to her but she cannot remember exactly what she was saying. Suddenly Susy turned around to pick up some dishes and then the second after her mother was gone. In her place there was another woman. She was identical to her mother in appearance, but much more evil. Susy knew it, she could feel it.
The evil mother ordered Susy to do terrible things. She told her horrible things and Susy was very scared . She ended up doing what her mother wanted.
I asked if there was something autobiographical in it. She seemed perplexed, but in the end she said “No, I would not say so, but there are strange coincidences between a writer’s life and what she may write”.
Since they moved many things have been changed in their lives, she told me.
When they were there, she has been very busy with her work.
Here, I can say now, she was not a conventional woman; even if in appearance it seemed okay, as to say, normal. Apparently she behaved as woman of moderate costumes my personal who could never have captured a particular attention. She was beautiful, that's for sure, active and independent, workaholic, always ready to go somewhere and meet someone and organize things, making things happen. Translations and writings were her mission in life but travel and meet people were her pleasures. I must admit, I liked her a lot.
When she started to work in the editorial fields she was very excited. It had been a dream for her to reach a certain position in such a competitive world.
She loved this job. She felt fulfilled in it.
One day her boss told her, "I have high expectations of you. You are an ambitious person, but to get what you want you have to make sacrifices.
But they are sacrifices for a good purpose. Do it for your family, think about how many benefits they would get. Your image cannot be compromised. And somehow, they, your family, your children, can be a brake on your professional progress. They do not match the idea that one makes of you. In short, think about it. To succeed in this work you must ... sacrifice a piece of yourself. Your image must reflect that of a person running for success, independent. To do this, I don't say that you have to neglect the family, but maybe hide it, put it in the background for sometime. Think about it. After all, you do it for them too”.
Poor Bea I think and think of those words for days and nights.
This torment went on for weeks. Life had given her an impossible choice. How could he make the two coincide?
But in the end he made a decision that he believed was the wisest in the long run.
Her family was everything to her. But she could not give up on herself, on what she liked to do, on her work, on her person.
So he decided to go along with things as they were and follow her boss's suggestions.
With great caution and attention, Bea began a new life.
There was a Bea who went to work, went to book fairs, met writers and agents, traveled and there was another Bea who loved her family, who spent time playing with her children, who went for walks in the woods.
Bea carried out two different lives which never met except during the night in her dreams.
More than dreams were they were real nightmares. In these dreams horrible things happened but she could not remember once she was awake but that left her in a pool of tears and sweat.
Probably someone would have called that mix of anxiety and sadness, a form of guilt, but it was impossible for Bea to define it.
One night she woke up as always since weeks, soaked in sweat, terrified by something vague and remote. She felt exhausted and at the same time restless.
Suddenly she felt a very strong pain in her chest, as if she had just received a straight punch in the middle of her belly, at the level of her heart. She got scared and thought she was getting a heart attack. Then she felt nauseous she quickly stood up from her bed and ran to the bathroom with an extreme urgence to vomit.
She switched on the light and began to breathe heavily, those who seemed to be retching, became sobs. She again felt the strong pressure on her chest. Bea put her hand over her heart. She was bent over in pain when, together with one of these sobs, from her mouth, she regurgitated something into the bathtub that almost nearly choked her.
Stunned by fatigue and pain, Bea sat on the floor near the tub. She didn't even have the strength to get back on her feet and go back to bed. Behind her a strange figure was rising from inside the bathtub: thin white limbs stretched out were hanging along the tall slender figure of a woman who slowly laid a hand on Bea's shoulder. She didn't expect that and spun around. What she saw scared her so much that she screamed: that woman was herself, but in a monstrous version, not out in her external aspect, which was identical to her own, but in her thoughts and in her heart that she could read very well and interpret as a sister can do with her evil twin.
When Bea woke up the next morning it took her a couple of seconds before realizing that everything was in the same place she left it the night before. It almost seemed to her that the dream she had was real. Or rather, for a moment, she was afraid that after last night her present daily life would have never been the same again.
However, all around the room, she saw the chest of drawers with the wardrobe, the large mirror near the table, the chair and also the clothes were there just where she had left them.
She got up from the bed and went into the living room, to be safer she wanted to see if the rest of the house was like it always was. And above all to see if Michael and the children were still there and they were fine.
In fact, just like the day before and the other days before it, Michael got up early and prepared breakfast for the children and for her. Now he was drinking coffee sitting at the kitchen table and reading the newspaper while the children played with food.
“Hello,'' said Bea and went to the coffee machine to pour herself a cup.
“Hello”, replied him
The children ran around her to hug her and kiss her. Just for a moment, a sense of terrible and inexplicable anguish assailed her.
"Today I will stay out all day, I don't think I'll be back for dinner." she said a little sadly.
"Don't worry. We'll be together over the weekend. I'm with the children," he said.
He was so supportive of her work and not a day passed that Bea did not consider herself a lucky woman.
Suddenly Michael told her: "You talked in your sleep tonight".
Taking this by surprise Bea remained frozen for a second to the idea of having said something, something unmentionable.
"And what did I say?"
He looked at her puzzled, and replied:
"Nothing that made sense ... more than you spoke, you stammered …”
"Ah, I had a terrible nightmare ..." just as she was starting to tell Michael her weird experience of the night before he interrupted her to say:
"In my opinion, you should not stress too much", he was laughing so Bea gave up her story and answered:
"I'll try" she said "Now I'm going to get ready"
I will try, she said, but she kept thinking about her nightmare and the unsaid words mumbled the same night to her husband for all day.Like a fixed nail stuck in her head, those thoughts were going on and on and on.s. She thought about it in the morning while correcting the proofs, at lunch and in running in the afternoon. But what was he taking? Fortunately at the end of the day, just as he was getting on the subway to go home, she realized she was not thinking about that anymore.
That obsession was finally dissolved.
But when she got home, she found another surprise: the police were waiting for her. They wanted to interrogate her because, as they told her, she had just committed a crime. The point was that she could not recall it.
They said she had been seen entering an antique store, right next to the building. She used to walk past them every morning when she was going to work..
Although she and the owner did not know each other personally, they greeted and exchanged gestures of courtesy and good neighborliness. Imagine the surprise of the shopkeeper when that morning he saw her stealthily enter the shop that same morning and stretch out a hand on a bird-shaped ornament, a magpie to be precise, made of porcelain, and run away with it.
She knew her too well to have any doubts. She had sneaked to the entrance and reached over and reached for the porcelain bird and escaped.
The police, after having been called by the shopkeeper, had gone to the door of her house without hesitation. They had waited for Michael her husband to come home after picking up the kids at school.
He remained incredulous in front of the police claims, but he did not resist because he was convinced they were wrong.
When they entered the apartment they didn't have to search for long, in fact they didn't have to look for anything: the porcelain magpie stood serene in its gleaming ceramic splendor on the center of the dining table in the living room.
“This is a joke,'' said Michael.
They waited for Bea to return home and ask for the necessary explanations.
She found all three of them waiting for her there, sitting around the dining table in the living room, along with the magpie.
Bea apologized and said she didn't remember doing such a thing.
The husband said "it's not like you".
Then one of the policemen tried to glue the pieces of the puzzle and offer an interpretation of what happened.
"She had woken up that morning and was ready to go to work. That morning she would have not brought the kids to school. Too much to do she had an important meeting. Michael would have done that. But before going to work she had stopped outside the shop, near her home, to wait for her husband and children to come out. Then she stole the object, went home and she had placed quietly on the table and had finally gone to work.
"But I don't remember any of this at all," said Bea, lost and confused.
"Maybe it's a moment of stress and anxiety. You might want to take a few days off. Kleptomania or memory loss can be symptoms of something more serious," the other policeman told her.
“However the shopkeeper has decided not to file any complaint. He has proved to be very tolerant and understanding. But wants the bird back," the first policeman said.
Bea looked at the questioning object: it wasn't even his taste, how could he steal it? and why?
That evening Michael slept on the sofa bed. Bea and he had argued after the police had left.
He thought Bea needed to slow down a little with her work. All that work was driving her out of her mind. It was no longer the same. Bea on the other hand felt he was distant. He wasn't there.
That discussion had gone on for hours and hadn't taken them anywhere. As usual, it was over that Bea spoke to herself and listened to them only because her ears were separated from her head.
Now he was there trying to sleep, and the more he tried the less he could sleep.
It was three o'clock in the morning when he was finally half-sleep when he saw a shadow crossing the arch of the door that led from the corridor where the bedrooms were to the living room. Quick and subtle this shadow went around the table and the television. And although in that shape and in the walk he could not be mistaken at all, there was no doubt it was Beatrice, his wife, yet there was something in that figure of different, unrecognizable. In a moment Bea was at the foot of the sofa.
Michael looked at her but she in a single gesture took off her turquoise silk nightdress and slipped under the blanket of rough wool, a rough remedy, for the night of camping in the living room, her naked body next to his.
At 05.15 the alarm sounded like every morning. Bea was standing there making coffee, like every morning. Michael looked at her, but she looked, indifferent almost irritated by his presence, there in the kitchen to hamper the morning preparation ritual, to disturb her concentration. She looked like a different person from last night. They took leave of each other with a quick kiss, under the door of the entrance, one of those who graze their lips almost in fear of actually touching the other.
Bea had a very long busy day in front of her. She checked the agenda during the trip on the train.
Also that morning Michael would take her children to school. She wouldn't have seen them all day. Meeting after meeting the day went by very fast and tiring until late at night after the last meeting that had taken place during a dinner. Bea had been drinking that night, but she wasn't really drunk. He felt only a little tipsy.
After the dinner, out of the restaurant there were no taxi parked, so she decided to walk a bit to freshen up some ideas.
She walked to the taxi station around the corner, but there wasn't one either. So she had to wait.
She was cold and felt tired and upset. When she saw something that terrified her.
Her boss was just turning the corner, probably to get a cab too, when he was brutally and without any reason assaulted by a woman who had run across the street street holding a stick with which she hit the man several times on her head and stomach until she fell to the ground. But even then the woman caught in a savage wickedness stopped. And she kicked the man until the poor man did not breathe anymore.
Bea was in a wordless schok. Actually, she couldn't say or do anything. She was immobilized by a feeling of deep anguish. It was like being imprisoned in a single block of ice.
The voice had choked in her throat. Then the Fear took over.
The mysterious murderess, who had been up to now, had turned and looked at her.
Bea felt ice streams in her veins, turning to fire. She recognized the murderer instantly. She was herself, or rather her evil twin version, the same one she had seen a few nights earlier in the bathroom of her apartment.
The woman started laughing. She laughed louder and more and more and with the taste of it. As if he had a hilarious comedy show in front of her.
She bent over with laughter. Bea looks at her hands and feet to see why her twin laughed so much. There was nothing wrong. There was only her.
The woman suddenly stopped and started running in the opposite direction from where Bea was. She decided to follow her to understand where she was hiding. But something stopped her. If it was like this, no one would have believed such an absurd story: a diabolical double haunts her and killed her boss. So she decided she had to do something to cover up the evidence of the murder and make sure it couldn't be traced back to her.
She took the walking stick that the murderer had left behind and hide it under her coat. She had to destroy it. Meanwhile she would come home and see what to do. After a long walk she found a taxi and arrived at the door of her apartment house. There was her double waiting for her, always with a hysterical evil grime. As she saw Bea got out of the car, she opened the front door and went in.
Bea chased her. The double things up the stairs, open the door and enter. Bea was just in time to hold the door open and slip into her apartment. Everything was dark. Everyone was asleep. Bea walked in and made her way into the living room and into the kitchen, then into the hallway, looking into all the rooms to find the intruder. But she was gone. She vanished into thin air.
From that day on, she started to feel secretly persecuted by her double.
The violent murder of her boss was never revealed. This did nothing but create a terrible distress in Bea. In fact, this terrible and sudden death had caused an unexpected advancement in her career.
She started to feel secretly suspected by her colleagues and not only guilty because she knew who the killer was and she helped her to hide the evidence.
The most horrible thing was that she couldn't share her secret with anyone, not even with Michael because she knew she would never be believed. Maybe she was really under stress, a little exhausted. So she decided to cut her working time, even if this was something that was costing her a lot, and spend more time with her family.
And this is where the real nightmare for Bea began.
She realized that her cruel twin was taking her place in her life. Maybe she had already started a long time ago. And she noticed it that way.
One Friday morning she decided to go get her youngest child at school. She was almost at the entrance to the Kindergarten when she saw her. The other Bea stepped past her, ignoring her and with a brisk step, reached the glass door, before her.
Bea was astonished. All that naturalness, all that ease, had something uncanny. Her double had done this before, over and over again. It was like a habit.
Finally she saw Doris and Lukas coming out with her.
At that moment, undecided about what to do, she crossed the road and hid behind an ice cream truck parked on the opposite sidewalk. From there she could see what was happening. She saw them walking together and they seemed happy. The children spoke and smiled at her. She felt overcome by loneliness and then a terrible rage assaulted her. An anger against herself.
From that day on, Bea met her double several times, in different situations, always with her family, in her place.
She wasn't always present, though. She appeared and disappeared suddenly. She came forward in the moments of Bea’s absence. For example, on the weekends, it happened that Michael went out with the boys to go to the park or the zoo and Bea stayed at home to tidy up or get ready; at that moment the double came forward and replaced it. So when Bea finally caught up with them, she found her there.
Then when they returned home she vanished and Bea could resume her role within the family.
The same happened at work.
In a moment, if she went to the bathroom or maybe even when she was sitting at her desk, he saw her go into the office, greet colleagues and move around like nothing happened, as if she didn't exist.
Sometimes she even enters her office. She saw her sitting there and laughing, mocking her. She threw paper planes to her. But never a word.
The situation had become unbearable for Bea.
Until one day, when she came home from work, find her sitting there on the sofa while mending her sons clothes. She was in the kitchen and spoke to her. She waded away from the sofa, looking like she had no intent to move.
Bea stopped. She had no idea what was happening. This person did not exist, it was the fruit of her imagination, her disgust, her distress. Yet now she was there, sitting on the couch, cuddling her children, sleeping with her husband and taking the glory for Bea at work.
Bea didn't have the courage to say a word, to take a step. She turned, opened the door, went down the stairs and began to walk aimlessly. A myriad of thoughts crossed her head. A sense of suffocation choked her. Tears ran down her face. That night she slept in the street and so on for many nights.
Many weeks passed.
From that day she was wandering aimlessly in the streets. Now her days were made of places to reach at a certain time but not for interesting business meeting, but to get food, clothes and shelter. Wandering gave her a lot of time to think but she could not find a direct conclusion for what was happening to her.
Meanwhile Bea had returned to her home secretly, from time to time, stealthily, to wash herself, to change, and to eat, but she had always slept in the street.
Everything at home was perfect, the light through the window, the garden with the walnut tree, the scented clothes of his children.
Finally she decided what to do. It took her many weeks and many days, but finally she would face her cruel twin and defeat her, at any cost.
So she thought of a plan: she would hide in the living room and wait for the moment to be alone with her.
One morning after her husband and children went out to play soccer, Bea, n.2, was preparing lunch and finishing to clean up.
Bea n.1 jumped out the sofa by the window. Bea n.2 was a little bit surprised herself, but she didn't do too much, as if he had seen a distant unwanted relative.
Bea n. 1 had a kitchen knife with her and said:
"I don't know who you are and where you come from, but I want you immediately outside my house and my life"
She was trembling all over as she spoke, and that gesture with the dagger felt ridiculous.
Bea No. 2 did not flinch, entered the room and sat on the couch, the same one where Bea had seen her the first time. She crossed her arms and said:
"What do you think you're doing with that knife now? Killing me? You put me here, you wanted me, don't you remember?"
"What do you mean?" answered Bea n.1. She was lost and confused, lowered the knife and looked around, first at the room, the furniture and then to herself. Everything suddenly was foreign to her, even her own hands, her legs and her feet.
"It seems absurd to me to have to tell you, '' said Bea 2, but you created this whole thing. I am your real fear, your hidden desire, your anxiety released. You made your own rules.. You want to be perfect and still being yourself. What did you expect? Accept the reality, as it is now. Live in the shadow. The shadow you have become."
Bea listened in silence, then looked out the window and found the strength to react. She raised her hand with the knife, angry and menacing, and said screaming hysterically:
"I won't let you take my life. I won't let you do this"
She took two steps forward toward the sofa to attack Bea 2, but had to stop immediately and back away a little. Bea 2 had lazed herself off the sofa and slowly her body had changed. It was slowly stretching: in her black trousers the legs had grown and bent at the knee backwards, like the broken branches of a tree. Her arms in the white pullover had become thin legs. Her back and her trunk had lengthened and widened to make room for a huge mouth with rows of teeth. While the little head and face remained where they were, on the neck.
"Now you see you force me to do what I don't want to do. But at least now we are at the end and soon all this will be over. We will return to being one." sayed the monster who was Bea 2.
This huge, thin-legged creature moved over poor Bea n.1 and swallowed her piece by piece until nothing remained but the dagger.
So this monster slowly recomposed itself under the human form of Bea n.2 which was now the only Bea left since he had swallowed the first.
And it began to go on again and again over time, feeding on the lives of other women without ever stopping.
My young friend had finished telling her story and was quite downcast. I seemed to understand that this story touched her very close, but I didn't know where the difference between reality or fiction was.
I watched her go out and reach her house from the window upstairs. When I looked up I was struck by a shudder of horror. I saw her there at the window, her eyes turned towards me, the thousand legs and the two heads. The aline monster was behind the window looking straight at me. Maybe I wouldn't have had a chance either.
THE END
