z

Young Writers Society


E - Everyone

Doppelganger

by cupcakenx


It was a dark and rainy night when I was walking home. It was pretty quiet for living in the city, and my horror-filled-mind darted to conclusions and ideas for what could happen to me. Things like the Bong Chong ghost finding me, maybe a sudden zombie apocalypse or me 'accidentally' walking into a ghost town.

I almost didn't notice the girl walking far in front of me.

She didn't look like a ghost or a zombie or an evil spirit of any kind. She looked kind of like me, with short black hair and black converse and a blue backpack with stripes...in fact, she looked exactly like me.

Weird, I thought. Maybe I have a doppelganger. I tried to run to catch up with her, darting across puddles but almost as soon as I took off, she took off too. When I darted across the puddles, she also copied me. Even when there weren't any puddles in her way, she seemed to pretend like there were, and simply just copied where I went. I started to get a little suspicious. Was she making fun of me? Was this one of those TV shows where they scared the living crap out of random people?

Well, this wasn’t funny. Not one bit.

To see if she would try and copy me, I cleared my throat. After I clear my throat, I wipe the corners of my mouth out of a weird habit. I’m not kidding when I say she copied the exact same thing at the same time that I did. This was getting really creepy. She couldn't even see me, either. How was she copying my exact moves without even looking at me? I'd never seen her around before, and I don't have any stalkers, so...how?

"Hey-" I said, but then I stopped.

Somebody was in front of the girl.

And they looked…just like me. There were three duplicate sounds now.

"Hey, you can stop now." Again, the same copying. I heard another person. Sweat accumulated on my hands, and I wiped it on my jeans. They did the exact same.

"Who the hell are you?"

They didn't copy that. I stopped in my tracks.

They stopped and turned around.

Their faces were terrifyingly tired looking, their features droopy and their eyes miserable. They looked as if they had been walking on like this forever.

I felt sweat trickle down my forehead.

"We're you."

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Points: 17243
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Sun Feb 02, 2014 5:00 am
deleted30 wrote a review...



Hi there! Lucrezia here for a review.

Are you seriously eleven? I know I'm not supposed to say this, and I don't mean to offend you, but seriously: WOW. I couldn't write nearly this good when I was eleven. I'm so impressed/shocked!

Okay, on with the review.

This was really good! I love the premise, with the doppelgängers. How very creepy and original. That ending, too, with just them saying "we're you" was subtle and understated horror at its finest. ;)

There was really nothing wrong with it, technically. I saw no big misspellings or grammar issues or punctuation problems, nothing. Sureal already covered some of the little fixes.

My only other advice would maybe to make this longer. You know, build up some more suspense, really terrify the reader. It's definitely creepy as is, but it could be even creepier.

Other than that, just one nitpick:

and black converse


The C in "Converse" should be capitalized, I believe.

Otherwise, awesome. Keep up the good work! :D




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Sat Feb 01, 2014 7:12 pm
Sureal wrote a review...



Hi there.

I like this. It reminds me very much of Edgar Allen Poe's short story 'William Wilson.' (If you're interested, here's a link to its Wikipedia page, and here's a link to the short story itself.)

Some quick thoughts:

-> I'd say get rid of 'it was a dark and rainy night.' That's basically a slight rewording of 'it was a dark and stormy night,' and playing off that much-used cliche makes the opening line sound like this is going to be a satire, rather than a serious piece.

I think you'd actually be better starting with just: 'It was pretty quiet for living in the city, and my horror-filled-mind darted to conclusions and ideas for what could happen to me.'

I'd personally delete the 'pretty,' though. Any sort of wishy-washy language - it was pretty quiet - she was quite tall - the pig was kind of smelly - reduces the quality of your prose. Deleting language like this is an easy way to strengthen your writing.


-> I'd personally say don't have your character think, 'Maybe I have a doppelganger.'

Whenever a character speculates something far-fetched like this, and then it turns out to be 100% true, I find it affects the believability of the story.

The line also isn't needed, as the reader can deduce from the story that it's a doppleganger; not spelling it out like this for your reader will also make for a more satisfying reading experience.


-> Regardless, this is a good story, and I enjoyed reading it. So be sure to keep on writing. ;)




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Sat Feb 01, 2014 6:34 pm
LordXerro wrote a review...



Well, first things things first, very creepy story. I enjoyed how fast pased it is, yet how much information is in included in it. You should most definatly continue this onto a large scale story. It is well thouht out, well written, and well developed. I look forward to seeing another chapter for this.





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