It all started on a Thursday afternoon. I had left work early, tired of the dullness of office life, and was walking through the crowded sidewalk to my apartment.
     The strangers were the same as ever, even in their endless variety. I watched them pass by: a woman pushing a baby carriage, a man in a suit and tie, a girl wearing a big, yellow hat. I picked individuals out from the crowd, studied them momentarily, but for the most part the strangers blended into and absorbed each other like ants in an ant hill.
     I had almost reached my apartment when I saw something that made me wonder if I was dreaming. I saw a woman, presumably in her mid-twenties, with short, black hair, skin the color of diluted milk, and a dim, unapproachable gaze. There was something astonishingly strange about this woman, something that frightened me, though it was not until I had paused for a few moments to take in her appearance that I realized what was wrong with it. My heart raced, I felt my pulse all throughout my body, and I wished my blood would spread through my body on its own without this bothersome, pounding thing. Once I realized, I gasped, and felt I would faint in surprise, like a lady in an old British novel. I discovered to my horror that the stranger was me, or, at least, her physical appearance was an exact replication of my own.
     A man approached me, and put his hand on my shoulder.
     “Is something wrong?” asked the man, who was about thirty, and dressed in jogging clothes.
     “It’s crazy, it’s completely crazy. You’ll never believe me. You’ll think I’m crazy.”
     “No, I won’t.”
     “Yes, you will, but I’ll tell you anyway. Though you must see her already. Don’t you? Don’t you?”
     “No,” said the man, backing away cautiously. "I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
     “Nevermind,” I said, though the man had already walked away. “It was just my imagination.” The replica had vanished, but her disquieting presence stayed with me as I ran to my apartment as quickly as I could.
     Two weeks later, I was still extremely agitated. The replica continued to appear, unpredictably, seemingly without purpose or consciousness. She made no attempt at direct contact; she was but a vision, and yet she was omnipresent; I felt I was being constantly watched. I made several attempts to speak to her, asking her who she was, what she wanted from me, begging her to leave me alone. She responded only with a blank stare.
     By the third week, I was exhausted. I had slept for twenty hours one night, and sixteen hours another night, but other than that I had not slept at all. My eyes would not stay open, tears fell down my face when I blinked, I had scarcely enough strength to walk up and down the stairs of my apartment building. I spent hours staring at the clock on my bedroom wall, counting every second of every minute of every hour, waiting for the replica to appear. She never appeared when I was waiting for her, however-- it was always unexpected.
     It had been a week since I had been to work. It was a great challenge getting out, even to go to the grocery store-- for some reason the replica seemed safer when contained within my apartment. Throughout this bizarre event, I remained aware of my own irrationality, repeated to myself this is impossible, this is impossible, though it did nothing to ease my agitation, and only worried me that the replica would find these rational incantations provocative and go from seemingly neutral to definitively against me. I had tried to ignore her, to tolerate her, to become her friend, but her eyes, her empty blue eyes, looked at me so peculiarly-- not exactly maliciously, but certainly not pleasantly. I was frightened, confused, unable to differentiate dreams from reality. I decided to make an appointment with a psychiatrist.
     Dr. Bennett’s office was small, formal-looking, and painted green. As a famous architect once said, “never paint anything green.” Despite her office, Dr. Bennett seemed kind enough. She was patient, gentle, and used to dealing with people like me. Even so, she was confused at first.
     “Being followed by another version of you, separate from yourself? Ah, I suppose that is a common feeling-- the past self that won’t go--”
     “No, that’s not what I mean. It isn’t a metaphor. I am quite literally being followed by a doppelganger. She appears when I least expect it and follows me everywhere I go, though she is sometimes invisible, like right now, and she’s here but she’s not here, if that makes any sense.”
     “For how long has this been happening?”
     “Hmm… A few weeks, I suppose. I haven’t slept very much for almost a month, I slept for two days straight and that was it, I suspect this not sleeping began around when she first appeared. She won’t leave me alone, and I don’t think ever, that is, I don’t think she will ever leave me alone, but of course I can’t predict-- I shouldn’t say-- I--”
     “Has this experience-- seeing another version of yourself, you say?-- been accompanied by significant changes in mood? For example, unexplained sadness, excitement, or agitation?”
     “I suppose so,” I said, thinking to myself that I would not exactly call it unexplained.
     The rest of our encounter was similar-- she asked me a few more questions, which I tried to answer as honestly as I could. My testimony was perhaps limited in that I did not know exactly how I felt or what I was experiencing, which made it especially difficult to describe my feelings to someone else, and a stranger at that. I knew I was afraid of the replica, but did I want her to go away? And could anything get rid of her chilling presence, even if she disappeared from sight?
     When I got home, exhausted beyond belief, I went into the bathroom, slipped on a pair of pajamas, and brushed my teeth. When I saw my reflection in the mirror, I jumped. I felt her in the room with me, everywhere and nowhere in particular, in my mind and in all things.