If The Price Sounds Too Good To Be True, Then It Is Too Good To Be True. I Learned That The Hard Way.

Update

I don’t feel safe in my condo anymore. Things are starting to escalate in a very strange and frightening way. Shit, let me explain.

I was feeling pretty haggard coming in from the rain earlier, and not to mention the mental roller coaster that going up there gave me. Seeing the dark girl with the knife. Inviting me into her apartment like a black widow spider luring her doomed mate. But she did look different. Her hair couldn’t have grown that much in a night. And she didn’t seem too thrown by seeing a guy she killed rise from the dead and knock on his own door. And what about the old lady and her horrid stench cloud. She knew my name. She said I’d looked better, or something to that effect. What the fuck did that mean? My head ached with questions.

I stayed up late, mostly scouring the internet for information on the condo across the street and seeing if this sort of thing has happened to other people. Both searches came up with a whole lot of nothing. Nothing useful, anyway. I also spent about a half hour researching forms of dementia and schizophrenia. Just to be sure. I’ve always heard crazy people don’t think they’re crazy. I kept telling myself that, as though suspecting I was crazy was in some weird way affirming that I wasn’t.

It was just before 3 AM when a light shimmered on from the window across the street. It was so instant that I couldn’t help but glance over, and then it was too late to not stare. There I was again, slamming the front door to my other condo across the way. I had a long grey scarf and a goatee. I ran my gloved fingers through my hair in a state of frustration. I was cursing to myself over there. I knew that I shouldn’t be watching myself again, but how could I not? How could you turn away from watching another you? Whether it was real or delusions of an ever fracturing mind, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t look away.

The other me marched through his apartment, turning on every light as he continued to shout at himself. It looked like he was running his own name through the mud. Pounding his chest and slapping the side of this head. He started to go through his bedroom and pack things into a suitcase. That’s when I started to look around his well lit condo and realize it was a lot like mine. I hadn’t gotten a great look the night before, but this was definitely a different apartment tonight. Different furniture and decorations. To be specific, a lot of my furniture and decorations. It wasn’t exact, but goddamn it, there were a lot of striking similarities. I even recognized my Keurig in the exact same spot on the counter where I keep mine. I glanced back at mine, half expecting it not to be there. Like this son of a bitch across the street was stealing more than just my likeness.

I turned back and the other me started to load stacks of cash from a metal briefcase to his luggage. Just as he was trying to zip the suitcase closed, my phone rang. Not just the other me’s phone, but my fucking phone rang. I nearly jumped out of my own skin. I spun around and snatched it off the kitchen counter. It was an unknown number. I looked back across the street, and the other me was answering his phone. As he did, mine just connected on its own. I didn’t even touch the screen.

“Fuck,” I murmured, muffling myself as I did.

I put a hand over the receiver end and pulled the phone slowly up to my ear. I could hear my own voice on the line, but I wasn’t speaking.

“Hello, who’s this?” the other me asked as I watched him from my window. Stopping what he was doing to take the call.

“You know who this is,” answered a deep and raspy voice with a slavic accent.