The DoppleGanger

Isolation

Jackie threw her legs over the side of her bed and pressed her feet against the cold hardwood flooring of her house. She doubled over and clutched her face with one palm, grimacing in torment. She'd been forcefully awoken to a piercing headache that had awoken her from the nightmare she was suffering. Jackie focused as desperately as she could through the misery to hold onto any quickly fading scenes or images she'd just seen, but she fought a futile battle. Jackie only found a small success and recalled a single word. Jackie frantically pulled the chain to turn on her lamp.

She pulled out one of her many bookmarked journals strewn about the household off the nightstand and struggled to record that singular word. Jackie mouthed the word several times, even trying to sound it out, and after a disheartening moment made worse by the throbbing headache, she couldn't figure out a single letter to record it with. She flung the notebook down on the nightstand and grabbed several medications that were set beside it.

She'd counted out several medications while murmuring to herself the dosages with bitter mockery. 'Two for pain every 4 hours... as needed. One, twice a day with food. Can't consume alcohol with this one... or any of them actually....' Until eventually counting out the requisite eight. With a purse of her lips, she added another one to the pile in her hand, 'Three for pain.'

Jackie hesitated instead of gulping them. 'What time is it? Am I supposed to take them now? Did I take them before bed?' She scanned around the room, dazed, while her headache worsened. 'I'll need to take them eventually, may as well do it now, so I don't forget again.' Jackie thought as she took them.

Jackie stood up with one hand still held to the side of her face. Covering one eye helped with the headache considerably, and besides that, it seemed to help ease the nausea from standing upright all at once. She wandered through the house and flipped on the lights as she went. Jackie looked for something to do. It was still late, and she recently stopped participating in any of her old recreational habits that had passed these quiet evenings. She typically had a lot of free time, and in addition to that she found herself with more than she was used to. Jackie had recently lost her job as they deemed her incapable to instruct with her declining condition.

Jackie glanced over the books and movies that furnished the shelves in her living room and shook her head at them. They used to entertain her and took up a significant chunk of her down time. But now they were nothing better than a sentimental reminder of a world she'd left behind. Jackie had more meaningful matters to concentrate on now. Besides that, she figured watching actual stories and real people was more compelling than fiction could promise. A testament to that belief were the growing piles of unorganized notebooks left scattered across the household.

All she'd accomplished in recent history was watching people from afar, collect observations, and try her best to set up for the final days. Waiting for when she ultimately had the full picture that the presence was seeking to teach her. She continued to attempt to vocalize the word from the dream. It had a singsong quality to it. She knew it fit into a larger chant or cadence. In addition to the newest word, the other ones she'd learned thusfar also had a place in a complete melody. Like pieces of a puzzle, Jackie had to figure out where they all fit in.

'It's a reward. The words are a reward.' Jackie told herself, 'The better I watch others, the further I write, the happier he'll be. Maybe he needs to see the world through my eyes. Does he have his own, or does he need one of mine?'

Admittedly, Jackie never got a proper sense of emotion from whoever was constantly following her. Not from her dreams, not from the brief hallucinations he'd reward her with, and absolutely not when he would idly watch her as she fret about all of this. She didn't even know if he could feel anything besides the interest he'd shown by following her and Isabelle. That the presence could understand human emotions may have just been wishful thinking on her part.