Untimely #18 – Pursuit

I heard him come in. Listen. You can’t tell me I didn’t. I heard it. I was sitting there and looking at the ceiling and I heard a noise and it was the door opening and in he came. I heard it. He just sat there and for a long time I didn’t look at him. I just kept looking at the ceiling. It was a white ceiling, but boy could you see a lot. You can see a lot when you put your mind to it. Really look. All the cracks and everything. Shadows. I saw a lot, boy. I sure did. Like with clouds, but different. If I can’t sleep, I don’t count sheep, I just look at things. Look and look. Well so I was looking at the ceiling and I almost forgot he’d come in. Because I hadn’t looked at him yet, you see. But then, as I was looking up, all of a sudden I smelled him. He was just sitting there, been sitting there a while. But I smelled him. Like that! One minute I was just looking at the ceiling and I practically forgot he was there and the next there was this smell and I just knew it was him. I mean I thought it was him before when he came in but I didn’t look. But then I smelled him and I knew. He smelled like sweat and a pipe. It kind of made me sick but kind of it was a good smell. You know? Kind of sweet. But a little too sweet. Too sweet and it becomes sick. Sweet, sweet smell of pipe, like polished wood and dried fruits and it’s evening and it’s fall. But then, just when you’re starting to think like maybe this is a really good smell and you can enjoy it and keep looking at the ceiling, then there’s this sour note that runs right through it and makes it shrivel all up. Sours it all to hell. And I knew it was him. So now I didn’t look at him because I didn’t have to. I knew it was him. I’d smelled him before. Smelling just like that, sweet and sour like a fucking plum duck. Oh it was him all right. It was him. Boy that smell it started to drive me crazy. He just sat there, not moving. I could just barely hear him breathe, that’s if I really concentrated. I stared at the ceiling but I couldn’t see anything anymore, the smell was too much. It was taking over. And that’s when I knew what I had to do. I reached under my pillow. Just like that I aimed the revolver and he didn’t move, he didn’t speak, he didn’t do nothing. I didn’t even look at him when I pulled the trigger. The smell disappeared almost instantly. There was the powder like incense to clean the air and then it was gone. I looked over and the chair was empty and then I looked back at the ceiling and then I fell asleep.

Untimely #18 - Twenty-Two-Zero-Eight-Two-Thousand-and-Ten. Twenty-Seven. Fifty-Three. Eighty-Two. Twenty-Seven.

On the verge of leaving, returning home,

silent after chatter. Mum, your daughter,

on the bench by the wall, clears her throat. You

sat there once but sit on the folding chair

now, on the grass. At an angle, I too

sit, also on the grass, on the wooden

chair you brought from the bedroom. Helena,

also on the bench by mum, makes the square.

Rising we break the unsnapped moment in

a clatter of cups, dredging up a knot

of discarded jackets and cardigans

which mum untangles and hands out as we

pass back through the back bedroom returning

the wooden chair back by the wall, all square.

Untimely #18 - Minder

“I had been trying to explain to my wife just what it means that I have been seeing her doppelganger about the place. ‘Don’t you see,’ I asked, ‘that this can only mean that our minds exist as one? That our love has survived it all, and so rewards us with this next step in human evolution, that we can now share both our conscious and conscious minds? That I can see into your mind so very deeply that I am even capable of sharing in your most personal mania?’

‘But I am not the one suffering any mania,’ she argued. ‘Don’t you see my darling, that the only logical explanation here is that you, and not I, are the one suffering from some malady, and that you suffer it alone?’

I tried to explain more thoroughly, though it seems clear to me now that she was not listening: ‘But I have spent time with this other you! We have been out to lunch, and to the theatre; my dear we have even made love! Can you tell me that you felt nothing in all of this? And still you tell me that you suffer no malady!’

It was around that point when my wife went to fetch you. Yes, around the time that I locked myself in this closet. I’m not sure how long it was before my wife’s other self joined me. What? Could I ask her? Well of course I could! But we might be better served if you went ahead and asked her yourself mightn’t we? Well, go on.”

Untimely Stimulus #18

The Doppelganger

'Ms B, a retired schoolteacher whose case was reported by a doctor in Bristol (... described how) she did not just see (her doppelganger) - she felt it as well. Just as normal people are aware of two legs, two arms and so on, she was aware of four. 'It is me,' she explained, 'split and divided.''

From Rita Carter's brilliant book 'Mapping the Mind'.