Corner of the Eye

Corner of the eye

One of Darren Fishers first memories was of a tiny wooden glider. It represented much of his childhood. His family was poor, and it was not so much what he had as a child but what he did not have, that he remembered the most. The glider was brightly painted in the widow of the toy shop. When he had asked his mother if he could have it, she looked at him with sympathetic eyes.

“I am sorry, we can’t afford to buy things like that. You need important things like socks and shoes. Perhaps one day.”

He knew instinctively that day would never come, he always had a feeling of being denied the things those other children took for granted, to always feel worthless, never valued for his true self.

Darren walked down Bank Street to his favorite pub. The rain began to pour down as he entered the door.

“Dam rain, he muttered, winter is on its way.”

“You made it just in time,” the bartender said. “It’s looking grim out there.”

Sitting by the window he watched the people shuffling by. The five o’clock crowd heading home after a long day. It was the same faces he saw every day. He never spoke to anyone, and nobody spoke to him, but he still felt he was part of it all.

People were moving faster now trying to dodge the heavy rain and umbrellas were opening like coloured flowers along the streets. The traffic became louder, and the sound of a police siren cut through the noise. It was then his gaze focused on a figure walking past the window. It was only for a second but long enough for Darren to feel there was something familiar about the man and then he was swallowed up by the crowd.

Friday evenings were crazy, an automaton walked by it had the face of Clark Gable, “Frankly Scarlet I don’t give a dam” it said, “but Merlin Insurance does care, here take a card.” Overhead a large Zeppelin like object flashed colourful advertisements, promising endless possibilities. Ah, the 21^st Century and all its wonders.

It was dark when he left the pub and most of the shops were closed. He watched the reflections of the headlights on the wet street and listened to the slush of the cars as they drove past. The rain was beginning to let up now and he fell into the rhythm as he walked with the thinning crowd along the footpath. It was then his attention was diverted to a man walking across the street in front of him. Wasn’t this the same man he had seen before? He was wearing one of those pricey cashmere coats you saw in the windows on upper Bourke Street. Darren felt he knew him, but from where? It was hard to get a good look at him and once again he was gone, swallowed up in the murky night.

The smell of freshly baked bread greeted him in the morning as he opened the door to the bakery. Fresh bread was one of those things he never had as a child. His mother always bought yesterday’s bread and she never found the time to bake, and it seemed now all he had left was the memories. He glanced out at the street as the girl handed him the croissants. A figure stood outside watching him through the window. It was the man from yesterday. There was something about this person that Darren knew too well. Something that frightened him. He quickly moved towards the door and as he opened it the man stood in front of him looking straight into his eyes. Darren froze. It was as if he was looking at himself in a mirror. The face was his. The eyes, the nose the mouth and the hair. The man turned quickly and disappeared into the throng of the morning crowd.

He stayed inside all day, looking out occasionally from his window of the kitchen hoping to catch a glance of the man.

“Something is wrong,” he thought.

“I think somebody is watching me.”

He muttered to himself as he walked up and down the carpet. Everything appeared the same but there was something that did not seem right, somebody had been inside his room. Someone had been through his belongings. He could smell their presence. It was him, the man with his face. He knew it. What was he looking for? Or was he just imagining it all? Darren starred blindly out of the window watching the day progress into night. At least the weekend could offer him some sanctuary from the world out there.

The beer tasted good. The cold glass in his hand brought him back to reality and he found himself watching the rain hit the street outside. He convinced himself he must have been imagining things. Hiding, it felt, in his small apartment in the suburbs, he was becoming delusional. Then suddenly everything changed. A knock at the door brought him back to the moment. Opening it he starred into the same face that had looked back at him before. It was him! The man who wore his face. He was not imagining this. Panic gripped him. The glass fell from his hand and the amber liquid spilled onto the carpet. He slammed the door, bolting it tight. He had to get out of here, but where? After several minutes he walked back to the door, took a deep breath, and opened it, the man had gone. It was then he noticed a button on the step.

“Just a button,” he thought.

This came from a very expensive overcoat. The word ‘Kashi’ was printed on the button. ‘Kashi’, from an exclusive shop uptown. Somebody had been here, there was no doubt about it, he was not imagining things.

Darren could not put his mind at ease and tossed and turned through the night. It was late afternoon the next day before he was back at the bakery.

 “You must like our pastries a lot.” The shop assistant smiled at him.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you were here less than an hour ago. In fact, you are turning into one of our best customers.”

Darren opened his mouth to reply but stopped, grabbed his ‘berliners’ and moved quickly towards the door. Panic gripped him, this was real. He had not been to the shop before. Was he going mad? Had he stepped into an alternate reality? What was going on? He remembered the old film Invasion of the Body Snatchers where there were alien replicas everywhere, people being taken over, replaced. Was this what was happening to him right now? Was he going insane?

The smell of cigarette smoke hit him as soon as he opened the door. Somebody had been here again, and it must have been recently. Phasing back and forwards across the room, Darren tried to make sense of what was happening around him. The more he thought about it the more confused he got. He walked towards the window and looked out and to his astonishment there he was.

“Got you!” Darren murmured.

He ran down the steps jumping over the last ones and threw the door open. The man just rounded the corner, and he quickly ran after him. It was Sunday afternoon; people were flocking down the street towards the city center. He battled his way through the crowd as the man disappeared. People were looking at him as he ploughed past them, pushing them out of the way. Umbrellas and wet coats, cars splashing water over the footpath as they hit the puddles on the road. The noise of the city, car horns and a dog barking. All he could focus on was that coat ahead of him in the crowd. He slipped and grabbed a hold of a woman’s arm as he was about to fall.

“Bag-snatcher!” The woman was yelling after him.

A holographic billboard floated overhead. Lions were roaring in a jungle advertising some drink. An ambulance went screaming by lights flashing red. He looked up as it passed overhead. It was only emergency vehicles and the police that were allowed to occupy the airspace. However, there was always the unmarked black vehicle that could be seen at certain times. That was something you did not think about.

The man was now moving across the road down at the pedestrian crossing. Darren ran, sweat dripping from his forehead mixing with a new onslaught of rain that fogged his eyes. The early winter dusk was setting in making it more difficult to identify people. His breathing was heavy, and he started to feel a rasping pain in his lungs. When he reached the crossing, the lights were turning red. Car breaks shrieked and horns blared out across the turmoil. He still got scared of the driverless cars and paused for a moment. A mechanical voice at the lights told him it was safe to cross and hoped he was having a good day. The man turned his head and starred towards him. It was him! It was his face once again staring back at himself. Now he knew Darren was chasing him. He was ten or fifteen meters in front of him, almost lost in the burgeoning crowd. And then he was gone.

“Dam you,” Darren mumbled. “Where are you?”

He combed the grey shapes around him searching and moved towards an open alley and looked into the darkness. There was a figure at the end, and he could see the orange glow from an e-cigarette. He walked slowly towards him and stopped a couple of meters in front of him where they were facing each other. He was staring at himself. The only sound was his labored breath. The man stood silently waiting without taking his eyes away from Darren’s face.

“Who the hell are you?” Darren’s voice echoed against the walls. “You were in my room, you bastard! You have been following me! What do you want? Who are you?”

The man looked surprisingly calm as he took a step forward.

“Finally, we meet again,” he said.

Darren looked closely at him. He was about the same age as himself, same hair, physique and stance. The face was identical. He noticed the missing button on the cashmere overcoat.

“Why are you following me?” Darren screamed. “What do you want from me? Who are you? What are you?”

“We need to talk. It’s about you! Or perhaps I should say, about us.”

“You have got a lot of explaining to do. For a start you have my face!”

“Indeed”, the man replied. “And your body as well.”

“What on earth do you mean?” said Darren.

“Have you ever heard of the Phoenix Prometheus Corporation?”

There was a silence. All Darren could do was stare in bewilderment.

“No, of course you haven’t. My name is doctor Strulinger. And we have been watching you. You have superseded all of our expectations.”

The man took a last drag of the cigarette before returning it to his pocket. Darren could not say anything. A feeling of ice-cold terror came over him.

“I knew this day would come. You see, we are the same person.”

“You are mad!” Darren starred at him.

“It is rather simple really; you are my clone! This is the business that I am in. You are part of an experiment. I might say an extremely successful experiment.”

“What are you talking about? I am a forty-two-year-old man with a life, I have memories. I was a salesman at Masons Electrical Store. I was married and divorced, and my parents died in a car accident when I was twelve.”

“Darren, tomorrow you will be one year old!”

Suddenly there was only silence.

“You’re’ insane!” Darren was screaming. Then the words stopped in his throat. He was no longer able to speak.

“We made you, memories included.”

Silence permeated the darkness. Their eyes focused on each other.

“If what you say is true then why?”

“I guess you could say the possibilities are endless. But now unfortunately the experiment has come to an end.”

Darren turned to see a black unmarked van blocking the alley way. Two stocky looking figures jumped out and moved towards him.

“You have done well Darren. I thank you.”

The two men gripped him in a firm hold. All will had left him and he felt too weak to fight back as they escorted him towards the van. The rain had stopped. A single star blinked down from a clear night sky.

“Come Darren! It is time to go home.”