“Ere Babylon was dust, / The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, / Met his own image walking in the garden. / That apparition, sole of men, he saw. / For know there are two worlds of life and death: / One that which thou beholdest; but the other / Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit / The shadows of all forms that think and live / Till death unite them and they part no more …”

• Prometheus Unbound, Percy Percy Bysshe Shelley

On the last Thursday of August 2016, I woke up with the feeling that something was deeply wrong. I can recall everything about that day to the last detail. It was August 30th, and the day was unusually cool, so much so that I was wearing a light sweater as I went for my morning walk. Though the sun was already shining bright, a chill was in the air.

I’d spent the past three years deeply isolated, and although it had calmed my normally anxious nature, it was making me wonder about the nature of reality far more than I liked.

All of this is beside the point, though. The point is what I saw when I turned onto Oak Street, taking my usual morning walk. Just ahead, maybe thirty feet, there was a man who was also walking who, at first glance, looked exactly like me.

Like me, he was also wearing a light blue sweater and blue jeans, and even appeared to have the same black-and-white running shoes. He was in the distance ahead, so I couldn’t make out his full appearance, and his back was turned.

Curious about this, but also unnerved, I sped up my pace. There was no one else in the neighborhood, except for a few passing cars. I walked faster, but so did he. My steps grew hurried, almost frantic. But no matter how quickly I moved, the space between us never closed. My usual route was to turn on Green Avenue, and to my surprise, the man made the same turn I would have. 

My thoughts raced. Why was there someone else who appeared just like me walking the same path that I took every morning? Yet, I couldn’t be sure he looked exactly like me, right? He was at a distance, his back turned to me. I wasn’t sure what I would look like from that distance with my back turned. It could have been merely someone who looked similar to me and who also happened to be out walking that morning.

Still, my mind spun. I noticed around that time that a storm began to roll in. This wasn’t unusual, but the speed at which the dark clouds formed felt too abrupt. As I turned the corner to see if the man was still up ahead, I had removed my headphones and heard thunder and felt the first few drops of rain. I glanced ahead and sure enough, I saw the look-alike man had also stopped and was peering at the sky.

I decided to head home. Though the whole incident was highly unusual, I didn’t want to go down some paranoid rabbit hole. By the time I reached my house, the rain was falling hard, and I was drenched. My house was on a cul-de-sac and was at the very end, so the road led directly to it. 

As I opened my front door, I turned to survey the street behind me. Sure enough, the look-alike man was standing there in the rain, glaring at me. Still about thirty feet away, by now I could make out his features better, and it was frightening. He had the same close-cropped brown hair and glasses, a very similar height and build to mine, and he was wearing exactly what I was at the moment.

I moved toward him and yelled out. “Hey! Who are you?”

The rain fell harder as I stepped into the street, beginning to blur the visibility. “Hey!” I yelled again. In an instant, the man turned and walked quickly in the other direction.

I didn’t follow. Instead, I went into the house, my hands slightly shaking. I locked all the doors and windows and closely watched the feed from the cameras around the house for the rest of the afternoon.

To be continued …