A Fever

It came with the end of the winter, with the second, and last, peak of the nasty flu that kept me in bed for three straight weeks and, as puny as I was before the illness, I became translucent. My mother later said that the texture and color of my face resembled the chicken broth that I was fed.

The second, and last, fever peak came hard on me. It was one of those events when the walls started to move, tilt and dance. When the ornament on the wallpaper turned into a gigantic hole that wanted to suck you in.  

Then, there is this moment when the air becomes thick and solid, and it jumps in front of your eyes in a form of some roll, or tube. Nothing terrifying in it as it was, but it scared the soul out of you. 

The fever won't go away, it sticks around, until you can't name the parts of your own body, and the name itself becomes a disjointed utterance of sounds coming from the visitor that leans towards you. 

The visitor is your parent, but that's what the flu does - it brings perception back to the state of the newborn. You don't know what is the world around and why you have to stick around.

That all you can bear. At least you have the darkness, the nothingness that lullaby you to sleep and carry you while you sleep.

Visitors keep bringing you medicine, as it could change anything. Only it does is leaving your mouth and throat (or, rather, something that used to be your mouth and throat) tasting bitter. 

Everything is bitter with the hint of sour.

The day, or the week - the eternity - passes, and eventually the fever drops. You are soaking wet. The visitor transforms into being your father - he is smiling, and his face is also wet. You don't get why. He calls you by the name, and now you know it's your name.

You look around the room, and you see there's another visitor sitting by your desk, and that visitor is also your father. Both wear mustache, both have gray temples. How come there are two fathers? 

Then one of them is stretching arms towards you, oh my, he's got long arms! They are stretching to the abnormal size, wanting to hug you. The mustache becomes more voluminous and curls at the ends. Can it stretch and hug you, too?...

You wake up, and then you see another father hiding behind the curtain. He is grinning, and you can see the beastly pricked ears.

You wake up again. There's none in the room. At least, it's definitely a room, your room.

It goes like this for a while.

Your mom does the same trick - she shows up as one, and then she multiplies, and you never can say which is the real her, and which are doppelgängers. Once, the doppelgänger mom brings soup right after the real mom leaves the room with an empty bowl. You eat the second portion, just in case. You never know what the doppelgänger wants from you, and obviously you have nowhere to hide, or escape to.

Once, you feel much better, you eat proper food, you go around the flat and you recognize it. The world becomes familiar again. You see the sunlight, and you hear the telephone ringing, and even though the season had changed outside the flat while you were ill, you know that once you will witness the season change. 

There's one mom and one dad. There's you, only one you, with the nose, the arms and your reflection in the mirror.

Everything is fine, until one evening you have a nasty fight with your mom, and you leave her in the kitchen, and you enter the living room. The mom is watching TV there. How come? You rush back to the kitchen and there's mom, too, wiping the tears from her cheeks. 

"Were you watching TV a second ago?"

"No! I was not! Why are you so mean to me?"

She was a drama queen, my mom. She was a puzzle, literally so, a person looking at the broken mirror. So, in a way, it's no wonder that my mom kept multiplying and disintegrating.

It keeps happening, rarer or more often - the doppelgängers show up. Once you are an adult, you don't have fever as much as you used to in your childhood years, they come with the visit for other reasons.

When you are tired, or angry, or overwhelmed, the doppelgängers, imitating your living beloved ones, or dead beloved ones, sit in the living rooms, look from behind the curtains, bare their teeth. 

My husband was sleeping next to me and, at the same time, taking a bath.

My dead father occasionally sips tea at our kitchen, while simultaneously planting flowers in the garden.

My dead mother hides in closet.

Once I even saw myself lying next to my husband. Then the doppelgänger me raised and said:

"I am here to stay".

Did she want to possess my life? Did she fall from the different dimension? Was she a threaten or a friend?

I blinked and another I - she - was gone. The doppelgänger action now lasts for a second. But what is that second? 

It brings me back to the time when my mother grinned at me with the blood red lips and my father with exaggerated mustache wanted to strangle me.

I miss them dearly but they don't visit.

The doppelgängers are not them. They are not ghosts either. I haven't invited them.

They are reminders, of something that I forgot. My room, my illness, my black loneliness. My parents who struggled to stay with me when they wanted to fall apart and vanish.

I cherish my childhood fever now as I cherish the old printed photos in the album, or my mom's handwritten recipe notebook, or my dad's bow tie.

But what do the doppelgängers want, I wonder? What do they seek from me? Where do they go when I don't see them?