Doppelganger

The Beginning
It was Sunday morning, November 10th 2019. I was laying in bed because I had sprained my ankle in a bike accident the day before. My little sister Raina was drawing a crap-ton of pictures for me as get-well-soon gifts. The drawings were actually ok for a 7 year old.

After what felt like an eternity of pain and drawings, Raina said something I was actually interested in doing. “Wanna play Roblox, Ben?” She asked. “Sure, hand me my laptop.” I replied. She handed me my laptop and she got her tablet out from under her bed. “What do you wanna play?” I asked her. “I wanna play whatever you wanna play!” “Are you sure? Arsenal is a pretty hard game for a 7 year old. Especially a 7 year old playing on a tablet.” Raina was an Adopt Me and MeepCity player so obviously Arsenal would be a game she would really hate. “I don’t care! You’re the sick one!” She responded with a much more excited tone. I sighed, preparing for Raina’s never ending rage. “Okay, join my game.” I was right, Raina kept screaming about a guy aim-botting and telling me to do something. I was obviously no match for a hacker so the most I could do was report the guy and hope the Roblox Mods would do their job. Me and Raina left the game.

I looked over at her, she was so angry she looked like a tomato. I chuckled kind of obviously. Raina glared at me calling me rude and all that. I scrolled to my recommendations on Roblox and saw a game titled, “Doppelganger”. The thumbnail was just black. I clicked on it out of curiosity. The description said, “Don’t look at them or speak to them. They aren’t your friends, family, or anyone you know. They aren’t human.” Being the bigger brother I was, I wanted to make Raina angrier so I invited her to the game. “What is this game?” She asked. “Oh it’s just a roleplay game me and my friends play.” Raina was beyond ecstatic after I said it was a “roleplay game”.

The Game
I spawned in after a couple seconds. The game was just a grass baseplate with a free model house. It also had thick black fog that made it impossible to see anything without walking around.

“You in the game yet, Raina?” I asked. “Be patient Ben, I’m still trying to get in!” I felt bad that Raina was stuck with a crappy tablet. Maybe our parents will buy a laptop for her when she’s older. Anyway, she finally loads in and I try to find her. “Where are you?” I asked. “I’m right here, can’t you see me?” “Woah what? I don’t see you.” “I’m right here Ben! Are you blind?!” I Kept insisting that I couldn’t see her until she said something else. “Where are you going? Wait for me!” “I CAN’T SEE YOU RAINA.” “You literally just walked away from me! Where’d you go?” That’s when I saw Raina, or what I thought was Raina. “I’m right here.” I said. “No you’re not! Tell me right now!” “And who was the blind one again?” “Shut it Ben!” I followed Raina before she walked off into the thick black fog where there was an invisible wall that was blocking me from her. Then another Raina walked up to me. “There you are!” She exclaimed. I was really confused. I checked the player list. Only me and Raina showed up. I figured it was just some NPCs that copied our avatars and walked around to scare us. Or maybe some random people impersonating us trying to scare us. “This is lame, let's leave.” I said. “You told me you and your friends played it! How is it lame?” Raina retorted. “I lied, okay? I was trying to scare you.” “Hmph!” Raina got off of Roblox while I played some Arsenal with my friends.

The end of the day quickly came and I was told to go to bed at 9:00 PM. The usual. We were always forced to go to bed really early on school nights. I thought about the game. Why was it recommended to me? Eh, the recommended tab is always broken like that. Maybe it’ll be fixed soon? Yeah. As I thought about it, my eyelids got heavier and heavier. I eventually fell asleep.

Is that you?
I woke up before my alarm even rang. Casual Monday. My ankle was really sore and was in a bit of pain. I was ticked about it but I was too tired to be that angry. I decided to pass the time by turning on my laptop and logging on to Roblox. That’s when I heard one of Raina’s bins full of art supplies being pulled off the shelf. I turned to see Raina grabbing her art stuff and drawing. I looked at the clock on my laptop. It was 4:06 AM. “Raina, go back to sleep.” I said, expecting her to complain how I was awake as well. She didn’t respond. She didn’t even look at me. She just continued drawing. “Raina.” I said a bit louder, trying to get some kind of reaction from her. Again, nothing. She just kept drawing. I decided to give up and ignore her. I played a couple minutes of Arsenal before I saw Raina get up and leave the room. I was going to get up and run after her but I had completely forgotten about my ankle. “Raina get back here!” I shouted.

The door had swung open after a couple minutes. I thought it was Raina but it was actually my mom. “Benjamin, it’s 4:00 AM. Go back to bed.” She scolded me. “But where is Raina? Didn’t she leave the room?” “Ben, she’s asleep where she should be.” I was very confused. I looked under the top bunk where I slept. She was right. Raina was asleep. “But wait-” “Go to bed now Ben, you have to be up at 6:00 to get ready for school.” My mom cut me off. Once my mom left the room, I thought about what just happened. I guess I was just tired. I played some more Arsenal until I had to get up for school.

I went down the bunk beds ladder with one foot and grabbed my crutches as soon as I reached the bottom. As I ate my breakfast, I heard Raina in the kitchen begging me for something. “What do you want, Raina?” I shouted. “Wait what?” She said in confusion. I got up and used my crutches to walk to the kitchen. I saw Raina standing in the kitchen. She looked scared and confused. The thing standing near her was an accurate replica of me. A wave of fear rushed over me. “Raina, run!” I screamed at her. She sprinted out of the kitchen and I moved towards the clone. I was going to stomp this faker into the ground. However, when I got closer and closer to the clone, it started to fade into the air. I went as fast as I could to grab it, but I was too late. The clone was gone. My mom walked into the kitchen. “What are you two screaming about?” She asked in a rather angry tone. “There were two Bens!” Raina blurted. “Please, I didn’t give birth to two Bens. If there were two Bens, they would constantly be trying to make me forget which ones which.” What’s when I remembered. Clones? Two Bens? This was all that dumb games fault.

I rushed back to me and Raina’s room and grabbed my laptop. I searched for the game on Roblox. Nothing. I searched for the game on the dev forum. Nothing. However, when I searched for it on Google, it didn’t give me the game but a word definition. The word Doppelganger meant, “an apparition or double of a living person.” I also found a video by a channel called Snarled on doppelgangers. In the video, the narrator said that seeing your doppelganger is a bad omen and could lead to misfortune or even death. I could see the color drain from my face from the reflection of my laptop screen. Crap, I had just seen mine a few minutes ago. Casual Monday, heheh. I wasn’t so worried about myself, I was more worried about Raina. Raina was in that game with me. I saw her doppelganger. That means that she could see her doppelganger too. No. No, I will run into my doppelganger for the rest of my life if it means Raina being spared. I’ll take the misfortune, I’ll even take death. Just as long as Raina is safe. As I thought about it, I heard Raina scream. “There’s two of me now!”