Here's a short (600 word) story I rewrote today; a revised version of one I wrote last year. We've done a lot of study on doubles, the uncanny, madness, ghosts, etc in my Gothic Lit course and it inspired me, and I thought to rewrite this piece. I'm really proud of it.
Something Wrong With you
There is something wrong with you.
I can see it in your eyes: a glint of predatory focus. In the sharp corners of your smile: a flash of white in your almost-sneer. I see it in the emptiness of your expression, despite it all.
There is something wrong with you.
You sit opposite me in the sterile gray cotton chair, legs crossed at the ankle, a teacup balanced on your knee. You take a sip, and there’s a taunt in your movements. You don’t look away–perhaps, a challenge, then. I sip my own tea in response.
There is something wrong here.
The floor-to-ceiling mirror behind you stretches from corner to corner of the wall, a vengeful accomplice to the floor-to-ceiling windows that let in the only light. There’s too much fog to see anything outside, but that’s okay. We’re too high up to see anyone else anyway. The mirror reflects on a pair of chairs. No, that’s not right. There’s two people in those chairs. No, they’re empty, and it's just a memory. I tear my eyes away from the lying mirror, blinking out the flickering vision. I look back at you. That’s right, it’s just us. There is no one else to see—
—There is something wrong with you.
Your face is familiar to me; the curl of your eyelashes, the light dusting of freckles, that mole on your right cheekbone–it’s all the same. Your features are the same, and yet, they are all at once too straight, too small, too sharp, too big, too smooth, too graceful. That smile of yours—the way you hold your cup–all of it is too polished, too careful, too delicate.
I want to throw my cup at you. Let the hot liquid distort your expression into something—anything—else. Mar that perfect, serene–taunting–face of yours. Fill the emptiness with pain, or anger, or fear. Something to make you human again.
There is something wrong with you.
No one else seems to notice. But I do.
There is something wrong with you.
There is something wrong with you.
There is something wrong with you.
There is something wrong with you that is also wrong with me.
The shadows creep along the floor as the light flees, but still you do not move. You do not move except to hold my gaze and lift your cup and take a sip. You settle it back in the saucer with a delicate, deafening, clink.
Somewhere, I hear the ticking of a clock. Some part of me registers the impossibility, because there’s no clock in the room. Maybe that’s the clinking of our teacups.
There is something wrong here. With you. With me—you.
The empty room yawns, and there’s the ticking again, like a heartbeat. Is this room alive? Am I? Are we? Do I care?
There is something wrong with me.
Time does not touch me; it slips through my fingers like an errant breeze—unseen, unnoticed, unaffecting but for a gentle, cool sensation. Like the fog outside. No—no, that’s not it. You are the fog: empty and unsubstantial, hiding things from me.
There is something wrong with you.
Your gaze is coy and knowing. You think you’ve won. We haven’t said a word; no words are needed. But you think you’ve won. You don’t know. Oh, if only you knew.
There is something wrong with you.
There is something wrong with me.
There is something wrong with us.
I was meant to be the only one.
I was not meant to be at all.
Why are you here?
We should not be.
We should not be.
We do not belong.
“Go away,” I say.
You vanish.