problems with home-ownership. a thread.

my doppelgänger keeps getting in the house. it looks exactly like me and dresses like me, but it doesn't know how to behave like a person yet. karen usually catches it quickly and chases it outside. 1/7

2/7 - like, last night she saw it in the kitchen taking all the food out of the fridge (even a whole carton of milk) and running it through the garbage disposal. we think it likes the noise the disposal makes? it's hard to say.

3/7 - the thing that bothers me is that it knew to use the switch to turn on the garbage disposal. that shows abstract reasoning i didn't think it possessed. trust me, it's impressive given what we've seen before.

4/7 - it got tangled in the fence a month or two ago. i was playing games and heard yelling outside. it sounded like a kid speaking gibberish as he tries to imitate his parents, the approximation of language, but not proper speech.

5/7 - i was the only one home and i didn't want my doppelgänger to annoy my neighbors, so i freed him from the fence using the end of a broom handle. that sounds callous, but there's no way i'm getting close to that thing if i can avoid it.

6/7 - he hasn't done anything hostile, but there are times at night when i can hear him throwing his body against the side of my house like a moth against a lightbulb.

7/7 - i see his head peeking out from the arroyo some days, as though he is studying my routine. slowly but surely it is learning to emulate me. karen and i can never keep it away for long. it makes me wonder.