I first met Ishmael’s doppelganger when the financial building blew up on October 15th—not my world’s financial building, as everything here remained calm and mundane, but the other world’s, of which I kept seeing flashes. 

It all began around the end of September. I started experiencing these flashes of things that were neither here nor there, glimpsing alternate states of my everyday familiar environment. This “alternate state” was always worn out and demolished. Initially, I thought I was tripping on some kind of drug without knowing it. So, I checked every prescription I was taking: sleeping pills, migraine, antihistamines and even painkillers for my IBS. None of them listed hallucinations as a possible side effect. I figured it was actually me, myself, that was slowly losing it.

 But I was, strangely enough, having fun. They weren’t anything too upsetting at first. And there was a kind of indescribable beauty in the destruction of familiar places. Besides, I figured if it didn’t interfere with my work or my relationships, it wasn’t something worth worrying about.

On that particular day in October, the 15th, I strolled over to the cafe near my workplace to grab a cup of coffee. I saw a flash of broken windows and fire raging inside the store. It was nothing new to me ,just a regular recurring hallucination. Everything went back to normal two seconds or three blinks later. I didn’t know if the blinking really helped to shorten the episodes or not; I just did it mostly out of instinct. 

However, this time, something felt different. After the chaos passed, I saw someone taking cover behind one of the armchairs, their face bruised and their clothing torn; juxtaposed against the clean environment of the cafe.

 Seeing people in my flashes wasn’t entirely new. I sometimes saw shadows of them running around. But this person remained. A lingering fragment. After staring down at the figure for a couple of seconds he seemed to feel my gaze and slowly raised his head to meet my eyes, with an amazed face that probably mirrored my own. Up to that point nobody from any of my visions had ever acknowledged me. And more significantly, nobody lingered afterwards. 

The figure vanished a few seconds later. It was only after he was gone that I realized I recognized him: Ishmael, my apartment floor neighbor. It was not quite him, but rather how I imagined a different version of him could be. This one had worn a face of pure horror, disgust and anger, all merged into one authentic portrait. 

A couple of days passed. Work, home, numbing myself in front of the TV, sleep and repeat. Yet the image remained in the back of my conscience. I saw a couple of other flashes but no more of Ishmael’s doppelganger. I became absentminded at work, though my distraction went unnoticed by most, save for Julia, my cubicle neighbor. She was quite perceptive. I just told her I had a hard time staying asleep at night. Next day she brought me Chamomile tea bags. Nice gesture I guess but I find home remedies useless. 

The weird thing was seeing Ishmael himself. Not the doppelganger but the one I knew already. My floor neighbor. We saw each other from time to time in the hallway. We rarely spoke and usually just nodded in acknowledgement of each other. I only remembered his name because of how unusual it was. He had introduced himself excitedly when I first moved in there and attempted to engage in small talk a few times until he sensed my lack of interest. 

The next time I saw the other one, I was on my way back to the apartment, my mind foggy from constant arguments and noise at work. A flash came on and I saw the street through heavy smoke, with bullet holes in the walls and windows shattered. Then I saw Ishmael trying to hide behind a wall. His worried gaze was directed down the street. I followed his line of sight to the financial building that I had hallucinated exploding around a week ago. It looked like it really had blown up about a week ago. I hadn’t noticed that my visions had consistency.

The vision vanished and the normal building remained. I’m not going to lie; I preferred the blown-up version more. Ishmael’s clone persisted, just as in our previous encounter. He looked up at me standing right beside him and his face went into shock. But he wasn’t as miserable as last time. Maybe he also remembered me? 

“What…” Ishmael uttered. A shiver went down my spine. He was really seeing me standing there and he was as bewildered as I was. 

“Can you see me?” I blurted out. What a stupid question.  Of Course, he could see me. Look at his face. 

“But…” said Ishmael, looking horrified, “you… died.”

And then, he disappeared just like before.

*

I went into my apartment and threw myself on the couch. What did he mean by saying I died? I wondered if this was really getting out of hand. Maybe it was better to seek help for my mental state. If the visions turned from amusing scenes of destruction to horrible mind games about my own demise…. maybe it was time to get it all figured out. 

I gathered myself and searched online for a mental health provider. Most of them were out of my budget. The affordable ones were heavily booked. I chose a time nearly a month away. 

I put aside my phone and stared at the ceiling. I had an uneasy feeling of having a problem and wanting to solve it, but I’d have to wait a month to see if my solution was the correct one. What might happen till then was up in the air. I don’t know how long I lay there ruminating, but eventually I fell asleep and woke up to the most intense episode yet.

This one started with a cacophony. They usually don’t have a strong auditory presence but this time I was shaken awake in the middle of the night by the jarring sounds of airplanes, sirens, and several explosions reverberating outside my window.

Sitting up in my bed, I knew I must be tripping. After a couple of seconds, I heard someone trying to barge into my apartment. Was that also a part of my episode? The sounds outside were clearly not real, but the door could be a burglar trying to break into my house. I took a kitchen knife, went to stand behind the violently shaking door, and took a look through the peephole.

It was Ishmael. The unreal one. He barged into the apartment, tripped on the small chair beside the kitchen counter and collapsed on the floor with a low grunt. Instinctively I went toward him to help him but froze midway. 

What would happen if I were to touch him? Could I even touch him? And if I did, what would that imply about my sanity? If I could really feel him wouldn’t that mean I was too far gone? 

I extended my shaking hand and grabbed his shoulder. He felt real enough. I helped him sit on a small chair and knelt in front of him.

“What is happening?” he said, with a painful sound. I looked at his face. He was as confused as I was. “How can I see you? And this…” He looked around the house, “looks like before the war but… how?”

“What war? The one I see flashes of?” I said.

“You know, the war. What flashes?”

I realized we couldn’t get anywhere like this. A sense of dread was growing within me. Part of my mind was becoming convinced this was actually real. And the other part was growing increasingly worried that I had gone completely off the deep end. But whatever the case was, I needed to know who or what this Ishmael believed himself to be. There was a chance that he would vanish before we could figure things out, of course, but I had to try at least. So I stood up.

“Do you want a cup of tea?” I offered, trying to sound confident. “You look like you need one.”

*

We talked for an hour before Ishmael vanished. He said he lived in the same apartment as my world’s Ishmael. According to him, there had been a war with our neighboring country for a year, and our city had begun to be bombarded about a month ago. Exactly when my visions started. 

Ishmael also started to see visions when the bombs began to fall. His visions were the reverse of mine. While I saw destruction, he saw restoration. He wasn’t precise with the timing of the episodes, but it appeared that we experienced the visions simultaneously.

I hadn’t forgotten the possibility that he was just a delusion, and our conversation was actually taking place inside my head. But the part of me that believed in all of this was winning. 

It seemed that the other Ishmael and I lived in two separate worlds that were identical, other than the ongoing war. I inquired further about his world. Famous people, historical events and even minute details about the city. Everything appeared identical up until the war. He was unaware of the new advertisement billboard on the main street because it was installed two weeks ago in my world. No one was going to advertise dog food amidst a war. However, it wasn’t important that this alternate Ishmael seemed to live in a world parallel to mine. He was in a bad situation and I had a chance to help him. If he could stay in my world indefinitely, without vanishing, he might leave his dire situation behind. 

*

I woke up early, well before work. I decided to head to the nearby park. Despite not sleeping well I was wide awake, full of adrenaline. Thinking about whether there was any way to make other Ishmael travel to my world, I started jogging. Thus far, the visions and encounters were at random intervals. Nothing to do with my mood or anything else in my world.

Perhaps it had to do with what was happening in the parallel one. Every vision I’d seen was in the middle of a catastrophe or shortly after it. Devastations always felt recent. If that was the case, I couldn’t do anything besides wait for Ishmael to show up. But there was something I could do. If an episode were to occur and Ishmael were to cross to my world, he wouldn’t necessarily be near me. He would likely be in the equivalent of wherever he had been in his own parallel world. Although my place of work was right around the block, I might miss him or he might go to another place if he found my apartment empty. It would be wiser if I didn’t go to work and prayed that he would remain in my apartment until an episode starts.

I was at the entrance of the building when an episode kicked off. The sky darkened with smoke as I saw several planes flying overhead. Then, a skyscraper far away got obliterated, disintegrating in a slow descent that appeared almost divine. A god collapsing into itself, dying. The shockwave arrived in seconds. I didn’t feel it physically, not even a sound, but I saw the huge wave of smoke coming at me like a tsunami. Shrapnel blasted into surrounding buildings like a metallic hailstorm. I ran into the apartment, fearing not for my own life, but for Ishmael’s. 

I found him curled up under my table. Fetal Position. Shaking. He braced himself even tighter when I touched his shoulder. I grabbed him harder and called his name, trying to comfort him. He was in my world; he was safe. For now. 

His panic receded after a while, but he started to sob uncontrollably into a white scarf he was carrying. That’s when he told me, between weeping, that his parents and family were probably dead. The western part of the city had fallen the previous night in a coup de main. After leaving my apartment, he had gone to the rooftop. The power was out and the city had fallen into darkness, only to brighten from the glow of relentless bombings on the west side.

I tried to explain my theory about keeping him in my world. But he was too mentally shattered to follow my reasoning. He wasn’t sure if what was happening was really parallel universes connecting. 

“I think I’m already dead,” he said, looking down, “and this is some kind of afterlife.” 

“Hey listen to me,” I exclaimed, grabbing his shoulders tightly, “I don’t know about you but I know I’m alive and I see you, right here. I was living here before you came. You’re not in the afterlife. This is a real world. I know that much.”

I refrained from sharing my own doubts about his existence and the possibility of this being a figment of my imagination. Instead, I told him from then on, no matter what, to just stay in my apartment so we could easily find each other. To shift his focus, I asked about the white scarf. I recognized it as my own. He told me he’d found it in my apartment in his own world. The scarf had somehow come to my world with him. I checked my drawer and sure enough, I had the very same one. I wasn’t particularly fond of that piece of clothing, now there were two of it. 

I made two cups of the chamomile tea that Julia had given me. Ishmael, visibly exhausted, drifted off after taking a few sips. He started to moan faintly in his sleep. Again, I tried to think of ways he could remain in my world. The only solution I could come up with was to be near him as much as possible on the chance that the connection was being established when we were in proximity of each other. Julia called. She was worried because I hadn’t shown up to work. I assured her that I was fine. I gathered my sheets and slept on the floor near Ishmael.

*

When I woke up, Ishmael was gone. He didn’t show up for the next three days. I remained at home, hoping he’d appear. After that, knowing I couldn’t afford to miss another day of work, I prepared everything he might need—food, water, clothes—and put them on the hall table for him and left for work. 

I found myself miserable that day. My mind was entirely with Ishmael. Was he safe? Could he visit my apartment in my absence? How was the news of the war? My coworkers soon realized I was perpetually distracted. Most of them ignored me, but Julia went out of her way to invite me to a coffee break. She asked if something had happened and if so, said she was there to listen. I had nothing against her of course. She was someone who by all means you could say was “kind-hearted” and actually mean it. However, her questions rubbed my already agitated mood in the wrong way. 

“It’s something you wouldn’t understand,” I snapped, already knowing she didn’t deserve my sharp tone. 

“Try me,” she said. I didn’t know she had it in her, but, as if she’d pushed the right button, it stirred a desire within me to open up and share.

“It’s just… there is war and destruction and it’s affecting me, I feel irritated all the time.” I explained.

“War? What war?” she asked, clearly confused. 

“There is always a war,” I said vaguely.

“Well, there is always misery in different parts of the world,” she reflected. “And it’s noble that you are upset by it. You can channel that energy and try to change…”

“There’s nothing I can do,” I interjected, cutting her off abruptly. “Not for the people already suffering from it.”

What did she know? Getting all high and mighty. She hadn’t seen what I had seen. She lived in her privileged bubble; watching cat videos and soap operas while drinking chamomile tea, all without an inkling about the suffering other people experienced. I downed the remaining coffee and went back to my desk. I had to endure two more hours before I could finally leave.

*

Ishmael was shot. He was bleeding from his leg on my sofa. He had gone to halt the enemy expansion with a resistance group. A final, desperate attempt to salvage whatever they had left. Knowing my world’s Ishmael, it was surreal to think he could take up arms and join a war in the span of a month.

I tried whatever I could to tend his wound and stop the bleeding. Desperate for any help, I even went as far to call a doctor. However, when she arrived, she couldn’t even see the blood Ishmael left on the ground. Upset about what she thought was a silly prank, she left. I called Julia but she didn’t pick up.

I was out of options. Lost. It was crushing that I could just watch someone die and be entirely unable to intervene. The most agonizing part was that I was all alone in my world, as I mourned a dying one. A part of it sat shivering in my apartment. Slowly ebbing away. It existed neither here nor there. Like a displaced fragment of a puzzle piece that didn’t belong to the set. 

I never saw Ishmael again after that. At least not the one from the parallel world. I saw my own world’s smiling whenever he greeted me in the hallway. Sometimes we made small talk. He, trying to be pleasant like always and me, trying and failing to see the other inside him. Different conditions, different person.

My visions also stopped. The only thing remaining was the scarf, which I’d found the morning of his last night in my world. Now I had two of the same: one pristine; the other dirty, bloody, and worn out. I never cleaned it, as if trying to preserve the traces of a living memory, refusing to let go.