It was about 4am when I woke up and had to go to the restroom. It had been hard to get my mind quiet enough to finally fall asleep. I only managed to do so a few hours before.
Plus I lived alone in my small apartment and I knew the way more than just well enough blind, so I tried my best to not become too awake. I left all the lights off, went to the bathroom and did my business.
When I was done I went back to my bed, still in the dark. I went to sit down on the border of the mattress to then lie down. But to my horror when I did, I sat down on something. Something hard, it almost felt like a person's leg.
I got back up without even thinking about it, my mind instantly having gone into fight or flight and without any real information it chose flight. I walked a few steps backwards away from my bed until I bumped into my wardrobe. My mind was racing and I was already half at the conclusion that I must have imagined the feeling, maybe my bedcovers were just lying in a weird way or something. I kept facing the bed while my left hand searched for the light switch next to the wardrobe. I found it and flipped it on.
There was someone lying in my bed. My panic rose but I kept quiet. The half naked figure did not seem to have noticed me, it seemed as if it was sleeping, almost like- I finally screamed when I recognised myself lying in my bed.
I fled the room and then kept going, fleeing the apartment itself. I slammed the door close behind me, pressing myself against it. My heart pounded in my chest.
In my panic I fully expected the intruder to chase me. But…nothing happened.
It probably took me a few moments to calm down a bit but I did. I listened through my door for any sound but it was totally silent. I was beginning to realise that I had just locked myself out of my apartment with nothing but my sleeping pants on. Even worse, my phone was still lying inside next to my bed. I debated on what to do and decided that I would have to ask a neighbour for help. Part of me was starting to wonder whether I had actually just dreamt the whole thing. It felt so unreal standing out here leaning against my own door for a few minutes now and having heard nothing. I still had to convince myself to actually move away from the door. I half expected it to suddenly open the second I did but nothing happened. I didn't actually know any of the neighbours on my floor as I had not been living here for that long. So I just moved to the next door on the same side as mine, so I didn't have to fully turn my back to my door. I rang the bell a few times but heard no sound from inside so I moved on to the next door. This time I heard some movement inside after I rang the bell the second time so I covered my chest with one arm and waited.
I heard an older woman's voice through the door. “Hello? What do you want?”
Not wanting to sound insane, I decided to stay vague. “Hello, I'm your neighbour. Can you please call the police? I think there is someone in my apartment.”
I guess I sounded about as scared as I felt as she opened the door and ushered me in after that. It was an older, friendly looking lady, about retirement age if I had to guess.
She led me to her living room and opened a wardrobe. She handed me a shirt and said “This was my husband's, I think it should fit you. Now what happened?”
I took the shirt and pulled it on. “Thank you, but can I use your phone first? I can tell you everything while we wait for the police.”
She showed me her phone and I called the police for the first time in my life. I told them my name and address, and everything that had happened. The only thing that I left out was that I thought the person looked like me. The man on the phone asked what apartment I was in and told me to stay there until the police officers they sent checked out my apartment. The old lady had heard me talking to the police so I did not have to repeat the story but she also apologised saying she had not been sure until she heard my name whether I was a ‘handsome young man or pretty young lady’ and asked me if I wanted one of her blouses instead. I thanked her and said it was alright. But the apology had been so sweet and had come so unexpected that it helped take some of my anxiety away for a moment.
So we waited for the police. While we did I became more and more sure that I must have imagined the whole thing. There was no other explanation. I was probably still half dreaming when I came back from the toilet. Or maybe I had never been on the toilet to begin with and this was all just a nightmare. Maybe I had just sleepwalked out of my flat based on that nightmare? Besides it is not like I had ever seen myself from such an angle, looking down on myself, before, how would I even recognize myself if it was me? This whole story just did not make any sense at all.
By the time it knocked on the door I was sure this would all be a slightly embarrassing but ultimately harmless story about how I locked myself out and called the police because of a nightmare. Maybe it would even be funny looking back in a few days.
I looked through the peephole and there was a police officer with a serious expression on the other side. I opened the door.
“Ma'am I have some…” he paused for a second when he saw me “...some questions for you.”
When the police officers had entered my apartment they had found everything as I had left it. The bathroom door still open, everything dark except for the lights in my living/sleeping room. On my bed they had found a human body. A corpse to be exact. A corpse that looked exactly like me. Down to a small scratch I had on my shin it was an exact copy of me. An autopsy revealed that it had not even really started the decomposition process yet when it was found. Nobody really wanted to point it out but the time of death was estimated to be exactly when I had woken up at 4am to go to the toilet. A DNA test showed an exact match with my DNA.
The cause of death was unknown. The body seemed totally healthy except for the fact that it was dead. The bed covers were still shoved to the side from when I had gotten up.
Nobody knew what was going on. I took no legal consequences because what had I even done? Spontaneously and unexplained cloning yourself was not a crime and neither was being dead but also somehow alive. There were a lot of people involved in trying to find an explanation and I also told some of my close friends about what had happened. Someone must have told a newspaper because the story made local news. It probably seemed too made up to be believed by any bigger news network so it stayed small. I luckily stayed anonymous in the news. I already had enough trouble trying to forget the whole thing, I did not want to be constantly reminded by interview requests or something.
Other than the local newspaper article the story became somewhat of an urban legend online. Some people theorized about explanations, and while some pointed to the news article as proof that it had really happened, most people did not seem to believe the story. Not that I blame them.
One comment I saw under a youtube video about the whole thing stayed in my mind.
“If this is just somehow a mistake god or the universe made. Or a glitch in the simulation or whatever. Then what happens when it gets fixed? Which version disappears, the living or the dead one?”