By Daniel Melin
(TW: Death/Grief and Depression)
I woke up to the sound of gunslingers and horses. For a moment, I thought I had somehow been transported to another time and place entirely—that my life had inexplicably been a dream all along.
But as it turned out, it was just a film playing through the static of my television. I was still in the house I had chosen for myself, that I had paid for and continue to pay for with all I’m worth. The knotted pine walls and humble interior space had always been more than enough for me. My garden and antique porch chairs surrounded by the woods provided me a perfect solitude. Even so, I had grown used to the silence it provided me all these years alone, so much so that sometimes that television would be all that stood between the silence and myself.
I didn’t recognize the film playing, but I could tell it was one of those old Wild West films. A town of seven or eight buildings lay the scene, an expansive desert adorned with cacti, tumbleweeds, and drought surrounding its inhabitants. The main character, a bearded man with a hunkered face and broad-brimmed hat, exited a saloon to find another man just like him in the town square. The two of them were like masculine mirrors, the perfect image of traditional machismo that made me groan, either out of repulsion or desire, I wasn’t quite sure.
The men sized each other up before drawing their pistols, spooking the horses that remained reigned to the side of the saloon. Puffs of smoke, the ringing of gunfire, and an eerie silence followed.
One man fell.
I turned the television off.
Sometimes, the silence was better, I decided as I yanked the blanket off myself and padded into the kitchen. How had I dozed off on the couch again? The workday I’d had was hardly exhausting—another day of staring at my laptop screen in utter annoyance. My freelance work had been slow to a point of pain. It appeared businesses just didn’t need the services of a writer who charged what he needed to to keep the lights on.
I eyed the digital clock on my stove: 1:56 a.m. At least I had gotten some sleep tonight.
I poured myself a mug of day-old coffee and threw it in the microwave. The sound of the machine was, again, striking to my quieted ears. I was just considering turning the television back on when my phone rang. It was an unknown number, and I checked the clock again before answering.
“Hello?” I said, having to try a few times before the grogginess cleared from my throat.
“Hello. Is this Nicholas Kickley?”
“You can call me Nick. May I ask who’s calling?”
“This is Deputy Rivera with the Rhode Island State Police. I’m afraid there’s been an incident involving your father, George Kickley.”
I didn’t say anything while Deputy Rivera breathed down the line. I thought I could smell the coffee on her breath, until the microwave screamed to let me know where I was, what I was doing in the present.
“What I’m about to tell you might be a bit shocking, but he got involved in a domestic dispute with a patron at The Stonehusk Bar. A weapon was involved, and I’m afraid he didn’t survive.”
When I didn’t say anything to that, she continued to speak. I truly couldn’t say for sure what it was she said after that, because it didn’t quite reach my ears. The smell of firewood filled my nose, the burn of cigar smoke over tenderloin steak dinners and whiskey. Red flannels and bootcut jeans, scuffed boots and leather. The scratch of his beard hairs and the cracked lips of his smile. My mind flooded with everything my father had been.
I hung up the phone while the deputy was mid-sentence.
My coffee was hot, but it seemed I’d gotten good at measuring just how long it takes to perfectly reheat old coffee. I took long, slow sips while staring across my open-concept kitchen and living room.
“Dad’s dead,” I said to remove some of the silence that hung in the air. The words felt thick on my lips, like a late-night secret shared at a child’s sleepover.
I glanced at the calendar on my kitchen wall. A photo of scenic Vermont represented the month of September. Had it really been so long since I’d seen Dad? I took a longer sip of coffee as I remembered our last encounter. Dad was drunk, as usual. I had given him an ultimatum: let me hear the end of his pointless crusade against me and my identity or let me walk out of his life for good.
The walk to my sister’s apartment that night had been cold, colder than I’d ever felt. But Dad had chosen, and so had I chosen to take myself out of a toxic situation. I wondered, now, what all the pain had amounted to.
“Dad’s dead.”
I touched my lips instinctively. I heard myself say the words again but couldn’t feel myself saying them.
Flashing memories of my dad took over my mind. He would’ve loved the stupid Wild West film I’d awoken to. Men being men, he would have said when they drew their guns on one another. Settling things like men. Dad never could quite think of his own son as a man, not after my own late-night revelation to him.
“Dad’s dead.”
I flinched, the words much louder this time. I dropped my coffee mug, dozens of glass shards scattering with a piercing crash. I was sure of it, that I hadn’t said the words that time. But I was also sure that was my own voice. Glued to where I stood by the kitchen sink, I breathed through my nose, the sound of it much like the static of my television. The words continued to ring through my head as my eyes darted from the shattered mug on the floor, to the television, to the window on the far wall of my living room, peering into the darkness beyond.
And there, across the short length of the kitchen, past the living room, through the faded window, among the forest trees that surrounded my lonesome cabin, stood a figure.
My heart raced, and it became ever so much more difficult to control the breaths through my nose. I could barely see the person, only the shape of them, but I knew they were watching me. No one should be out here. When I moved here, it was for the isolation, the quiet, and the surrounding nature. The closest town was about fifteen minutes west.
The figure stood at the edge of my property, so I couldn’t make out what they looked like in full. But they were definitely facing my way, watching me through the pane. They did not move, nor did I—afraid that I would compromise my illusion of confidence.
After a full minute of neither of us moving or breaking our gazes, I took a steadying breath. I had to confront this person on my property. After all, I had prepared for what to do in this scenario. Dad would want (Dad would want you to stop being such a little pansy and act like a real man.) me to be brave. And Dad was dead.
There was no time to go to my bedroom and grab the pistol I kept locked in my safe, if only because I knew I would have to load it. Who knows what this person could do in that time? Break in? Attack me? I opted for the large knife I usually use for slicing vegetables.
Knife in shaking hand, I edged around the shattered mug and slipped on my sneakers. As I grabbed the handle to my front door, I heard my own voice again.
“Dad’s dead.”
I stopped. The voice was just beyond the door.
I imagined the man’s face pressed up against the wooden frame, smiling. He knew, he knew, somehow, how much my knife hand shook.
I steeled my voice. “What do you want? I don’t want any trouble.” I cursed at the high register of my voice, something Dad always told me to stop doing. He never understood that I wasn’t doing it on purpose.
The laugh that sounded from beyond the door sent a shiver down my spine.
“I’ve already called the fucking police, and if you don’t leave you’re gonna be in a lot more trouble than you want to be,” I lied.
The silence returned with a deafening shrill. I could barely hear my own breathing as I slowly raised my eye to the peephole.
The man was not pressed against the door, but rather stood rather patiently a few steps away from it, hands behind his back. He wore dirty brown boots, jeans that ruffled a bit at the bottom, and a flannel shirt much like the ones Dad used to wear. He was the pinnacle of macho fashion.
And he wore my face.
His—my eyes were glued open in a stare that made my stomach drop, a smile split from ear to ear showing perfectly straight white teeth. I watched my clone for another full minute, and again, nothing occurred, only the silence.
It was then that I realized the door wasn’t locked. As quickly as I could, I glanced down and flicked the deadbolt in place. When I returned my gaze, he no longer stood on my porch. He no longer stood anywhere in sight, and all I saw was the dark forest surrounding my property.
I held the knife firmly as I whipped around. Where was my phone? I had to actually call the police…
And tell them what? That someone who looks exactly like me was trespassing on my property and staring creepily at me? I know what Dad would tell me; Dad would say my imagination was being overactive, that I needed to get out more, make friends, meet girls.
Meet girls.
I rushed back to the kitchen and grabbed my phone off the kitchen counter, not caring about the shards of glass I crunched with my sneakers.
I dialed 9-1-1 and listened for the rings to be replaced by an operator’s voice.
“Dad’s dead,” I heard again. I froze.
I was facing the kitchen sink, but I knew the voice had come from behind me. It was in the house. It was in the living room.
Static and gunslingers and horses boomed alive once more as I heard the television turn on behind me.
I turned, somehow knowing what I would see before seeing it.
The man, my clone, sat on the couch in his lumberjack clothing, the same stare and same smile etched into his face. He watched the Wild West film with the same vacant expression, until he slowly turned his head to me.
The 9-1-1 operator finally answered in my ear. “9-1-1, where is the location of your emergency?” a clearly tired voice spoke.
I said nothing, could say absolutely nothing as I watched my doppelgänger rise from the couch in silence. He walked past the television, past the kitchen island, and settled inches from my own face.
“Dad’s dead,” he spoke, his permanent smile twisting around the words, “but it should be you.”
I felt hot tears running down my face as I dropped the phone, joining the shattered mug on the floor.
A gun went off on the television, the gunslinger felling another one of his enemies.
My duplicate demon’s smile faded to a frown. This close, I could smell the whiskey on his breath, the decay of his teeth burning my nose. A ghoulish groan sounded from the guttural back of the clone’s throat, and as he opened his mouth, small points of black peeked from the corners of his lips.
Long-legged, hairy spiders crawled from the clone’s mouth, and I screamed. Dozens of legs and pincers creeped along his face, making their way down the length of his arms.
The clone grabbed my wrist as I went to push him back. His grip was iron.
“It should be you,” he said, his voice like scratched metal.
I screamed again and, without giving myself a moment to think, raised the knife and plunged it into one gooey eye socket. The clone made a soft moan, the wet sound of the wound louder. He backed away and bumped into the kitchen island, scratching at the blade now protruding from his face.
I wasted no time darting around him and to the front door. If I could just make it to town, I could call for help, find a way to—
The door wouldn’t open. Locked, unlocked, nothing made the door budge. I strained against the handle, pushing with the ball of my foot against the wall until I felt a sharp pulling sensation in my arm.
I cursed my weak muscles and opted for the next best option. I nursed the pulled muscle as I ran to my bedroom, more scared that my heart would give out.
I made it down the hall before turning and finding my clone stumbling toward me. Dark blood gushed from his eye, the flannel shirt he wore soaked to the skin underneath. To my horror, his wide smile had returned, this time with a short giggle emitting from beyond it.
The door slammed shut with all my might, and I could tell my arm’s condition was growing worse, perhaps beyond repair. It didn’t matter now, though. I was not going to die tonight.
After locking the door, I punched the code into the closet safe with blood-crusted fingers. My bedroom phased in and out of my hazy vision, the moon outside casting a watery glow through the windows.
As I took the gun from the safe and quickly loaded it, I found myself wishing for Dad to be there. He would know what to do—he could handle this freakish thing with no trouble. Nobody fucked with Dad.
My heart still panged in my chest, not only from fear but from a sorrow I’d never felt before.
A banging, not unlike what I heard at my front door earlier, sounded at my bedroom door: slow, melodic, and with the force of an angry bull.
“Please,” I began, my voice cracking and foreign to my ears. “Please just leave me alone. Go away, please, just go away.” The banging grew louder, more frequent and aggressive. The giggling was also growing louder, like a clown’s cackle. “Go away, go away, go away!”
As suddenly as the banging had started, silence lay thick in the air. For a moment, I thought perhaps that was it, that I had dreamed this whole thing up in an attempt to cope with the fact that Dad—
Dad’s dead.
Through the pasty moonlight, I watched spider after spider creep under the door. I backed away from them slowly, the sweat on my palms making my pistol’s hilt slide down my grip.
As the door exploded, splinters of the wooden frame flying in every direction, I gazed upon my doppelgänger once more, the blood soaking from his ruined eye down to his boots.
“Dad’s dead! Dad’s dead! Dad’s dead!” he screamed like a siren at me.
I closed my eyes and fired.
Though the explosion of gunfire rang through my ears, I could still hear the thud of the clone’s body hitting the floor. I walked slowly to the scene of the crime.
Another gushing wound, this one in the center of his forehead. It made his face—my face—much paler in comparison. I studied the way his blood-soaked flannel held fine tears in it, a couple of Marlboro’s sticking out of the front pocket. His jeans, mud-caked and wet, about a size too big on him. His boots had been weathered by what looked like years of rough work as a landscaper, some profession that required lots of handiwork.
To my surprise, I let out a small laugh. “Dad would’ve loved you,” I said to my beaten corpse. The spiders had begun to crawl all over him, reclaiming the rotten and dead.
I could still hear the faint sounds of gunslingers on the television in the next room as I knelt there and wept in the dark.