October 2021

   Last month my goal was to edit my most recent novel and get it ready for me to spend the month of October prepping it for publication. 

   I edited some of that novel, but I didn't finish the work (See previous month's post about procrastination). As a result, this month was not spent preparing the novel for publication. I will be doing that at some point in the near-ish future... Maybe.

   So this month, I wrote a scary story (kinda scary), edited it, formatted it in an ebook, and I'm sharing it here. 

   You can read it right from here (Keep Scrolling), or if you'd rather, you can download it here:

.mobi (Kindle), .epub (Apple Books), and PDF files

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14g5e8DXr79cZhHmzxg7Dl78omySz8TZw?usp=sharing  (It's not on Amazon)

Imposters

By Shawn Patrick White

Danny lay under the blankets, reading and half watching as his wife, Susan, put on her pajama shorts and tied up her hair before climbing into bed beside him. She had been growing out her curly blonde hair for over a year, and it was long enough to tie up now. Danny thought about his hair for a moment, thinning, mostly dark brown, but the grey was coming in quick. 

"Goodnight, Danny," Susan said and kissed him before rolling over and turning off the light on her bedside table. 

"Goodnight," Danny said and rolled overturned off his light.

He had a bit of a headache since dinner, a light throb on the right side of his head. It was not bad, just present, and he hoped it would not keep him awake. He pulled the blue blanket up over his shoulder and listened to Susan drift off to sleep. Filling the air with her gentle sleeping breaths and the occasional light snore. He smiled and drifted off to sleep after a few more minutes. 

When Danny awoke, the room was bright, and the blue blanket had been replaced with a cream-colored comforter. He figured Susan must have gotten cold during the night and switched them out. That's what he thought at first, but as he woke up a bit more and continued to look around, things in the room were different. His dresser was still on the right side of the room. But the clock on top of the dresser was different. He had a yellow alarm clock that would light up the room before letting loose the annoying rattle. It had a standard clock face that you actually had to read. The clock on his dresser this morning was digital. A black digital box. 

The lamps on the side tables were different as well, not a lot, the shape of the lamp base was more rounded, and the color was a darker shade of blue. 

Danny threw the blankets back and swung his legs over the side of the bed. That felt the same, the same height anyway. What wasn't the same was that he was wearing blue and white striped pajama bottoms and a blue t-shirt. He had gone to bed in his boxer shorts like he had every night since he was sixteen. 'What the fuck is going on' he asked himself.

The hallway was the same green paint, all the doors to the rooms upstairs were in the right spots. Even the stairs going down were exactly as they were before going to bed the night before. He looked back toward his room to see if maybe that had changed back to what he'd remembered, but it had not. It was still bright, the clock was still the wrong clock, and then instead of the blue blanket, it was a cream-colored comforter. 

He heard Susan in the kitchen. It was Tuesday and a school day, so she was likely getting their thirteen-year-old daughter, Kaley's lunch together. 

"Good Morning, Love," he heard her call from the kitchen. 

"Susan, did you change the blanket and some stuff while I was sleeping?" He asked, walking into the kitchen seeing Susan looking down stirring some soup on the stovetop. Her blonde curly hair, no longer tied up, was covering her face. 

"No, the same blanket we went to bed with, and what's different about the room?" Susan said, looking up at him and smiling. 

It wasn't Susan; it wasn't his wife standing at the stove in the kitchen stirring his daughter's soup and talking about going to bed the night before. His wife, Susan, who he had been married to for fifteen years, had a straight nose. This woman's nose was little and upturned just a little at the end. She was pretty, but not like Susan; his Susan was pretty. This woman was the same height, had the same hair, and carried herself like his wife Susan, but this for sure was not her. 

"Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my house?" He asked; feeling short of breath, the adrenaline levels rose in his body. 

"What?" She asked; her voice raised a little from nervousness, but she also found it funny for her husband to ask who the hell she was. 

"Where the hell is my wife," Danny said, his voice louder in an attempt to ward off any attempt of her to approach him. He was scared but still wanted to appear in control, that he had things, like a strange woman in his kitchen making his daughter's soup for her school lunch, under control. 

"I'm your wife Danny, you're not making any sense," She said, pouring the hot soup into a thermos. 

From upstairs her heard Kayley yell down, "Are you guys fighting?"

"Kayley," Danny yelled, stepping back out of the kitchen and looking up the stairs, "There is a strange woman in our kitchen making your lunch."

"Ok, dad," Kayley said, walking down the stairs wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt with a NASA logo on the front. 

Only it wasn't Kayley. It was a teenager, and again, she was the same height as Kayley. She had the same long dark hair that made her look more like him than her mother. Her face was different. She had the same upturned nose as the woman in the kitchen. 

"Who the hell are you?" Danny said, stepping away from the stairs toward the living room.

"Quit being such a weirdo." The girl who was not his daughter Kayley said and walked past him into the kitchen. 

"What the hell's going on with your father?" Fake Susan asked fake Kayley. 

"Dad doesn't know who we are?" Fake, Kayley said. "Are you dropping me off at school this morning? Dad's still in his pajamas." 

"Sure, eat something first." Fake Susan said. 

Danny sat on the blue leather couch in the living room that was dark brown leather before he went to bed last night. He sat and listened to their conversation like any conversation he had listened to his wife and daughter have for years. But that was not his wife and daughter. He was afraid, but not fight or flight level fear. It was more incapacitating than anything he had felt before. His brain was not making the connections he needed to approach and resolve whatever weird situation this was. His wife and daughter were not out in the kitchen but treated him like his wife and daughter would have treated him. 

He stood up and looked around the doorway to the kitchen. Both of them looked at him, and he ducked back. 

"Danny, are you going to work today?" Fake Susan asked. 

"Where the hell is my wife?" Danny yelled from the living room. 

"Maybe you'd better call in." She yelled back from the kitchen. 

"I'm going to drop Kayley off. I'll be right back." Fake Susan said, and he heard the car and house keys rattle by the door. 

"Bye Dad, I love you," Kayley said. "Have a good day off if you take it." 

Danny stood by the window listening to the door close behind them and watching them get into a green Subaru Outback. That was not his car. He had a Forrester, a black one. He waited until the car backed out and drove away from the house before going into the kitchen through the dining room. He stopped at the china cabinet that had never had china before because it was full of dishes and teacups. Yesterday it had pottery and a mix of knickknacks and figurines Susan liked to collect when they were on vacation. 

In the cabinet, along with all the dishes, was a picture of him with fake Susan and fake Kaley taken at the Grand Canyon from their trip a year ago. He remembered the trip, and he remembered this picture. But this was not his family standing with him. It was those two fakers from the kitchen with their tiny lips and slightly upturned noses pretending to be his wife and daughter. 'Where the hell was his wife and daughter?' He wondered and imagined they were ok. 

The kitchen was pretty much the same before he went to bed, but the table was a different style. It was still made of wood, but its shape was more streamlined and looked more modern. He liked it, it looked expensive. 

There was coffee in the coffee pot, and the mugs were in the same place in the cupboard, so he poured himself a cup and drank it black. It was hot but not too hot. He worried momentarily that it might have been poisoned, but he saw another mug on the counter by the stove where fake Susan was heating up fake Kaley's soup. It was half empty, and her lipstick marks were on the side of it. 

'Who puts lipstick on when they wake up' he wondered. His Susan surely would not have. The only person who would is someone getting up and getting ready for work, but fake Susan was just going to drop fake Kaley off at school and coming right back. Danny wasn't sure where this train of thought was going. He drank the rest of the coffee, put his mug in the sink, and went back upstairs to the room that was his room, but different. 

Aside from the pajamas he was wearing, his clothes seemed to be the ones he had before going to sleep the night before. Danny put on a pair of blue jeans, a blue t-shirt from his dresser, and a flannel shirt from the closet he shared with Susan. Not the closet he shared with his fake wife, Susan. Her clothes in the closet were like Susan's but different. Nothing on her side was familiar. 

He wondered how hard he had been sleeping. How could they, whoever 'they' were, get into his house and replace his wife, his daughter, and a weird assortment of their things without him knowing it. He must have been drugged. It was the only explanation he could think of. But why? That was the big question that Danny kept coming back to. Why do this, and what did they do with Susan and Kayley? On his way back downstairs, he decided that he might have to play along for a little bit and try to see what he could get out of this fake family. 

Danny was sitting at the table in the kitchen that was much fancier than his original kitchen table. He was almost done with his fourth cup of coffee when fake Susan returned without fake Kayley. 

"Good," She said, walking through the door and seeing him. "You decided to stay home."

"Yeah, you were right." He said, "I really was not feeling well."

She smiled, and her nose turned up a little more, but her smile was a lot like Susan's

"You were acting a little weird earlier, but you seem to be doing better now." 

"Needed some coffee, I guess," Danny said and finished what was in the mug. 

"Did you eat? Do you need me to make you anything for breakfast." fake Susan asked taking off her grey chunky knit sweater and hanging it over the back of the kitchen chair across from him.  

"I'm ok," Danny said. "Are you going to work today?" 

"What? No. Of course not. And you don't have to be a jerk about it." fake Susan said. 

Susan was laid off from her office job a week ago. She had been at her company for almost five years working in the collections department, and they let her go because they automated some processes and didn't need her to collect. Danny's Susan cried for most of a day and then was pissed for another and just recently had found her groove at home. He would not have asked his Susan if she was going to work, but he was not opposed to testing the fake Susan to see just how good she was at playing his wife. 

"I'm sorry," Danny said, "I forgot. I'm such an asshole." 

"You are not, and I forgive you," fake Susan said and touched him on the shoulder. "You know what, since we are both home, I'm going to make us a big breakfast." 

Then she turned and began pulling things from the refrigerator.

"Full English," She said, holding up a dozen eggs and a package of sausage links. 

'She was good,' he thought. His Susan loved a full English breakfast and had been making them every couple of months since she saw what one looked like in a magazine. Eggs, sausage, toast, tomatoes, and beans was something he could eat, and it turned out he was hungry after all.  

Over breakfast, he had almost forgotten that this fake Susan was not his wife. Their conversations were so similar to the conversation that he'd had with his own Susan. Neighbors, the office, at least before she was let go. How she was doing being home and how was the extra time with Kaley and now with fake Kaley. Every time he looked at her, though, he saw the slight differences in her facial structure and her slightly upturned nose. 

"So what have you done with my family," Danny said just after finishing his last bite of toast.

"You are back on that again?" fake Susan said, looking irritated. 

"I'm not going to forget and just accept all of this stuff is real. It doesn't make any sense. I woke up in what seems like my house, but so many things are different, including you and whoever that fake Kaley person is." 

"You mean your daughter?" fake Susan's said, her face scrunching in anger. 

"Get out," Danny said, picking his plate up from the table and walking it over the counter beside the sink. "You know as well as I do that that is not my daughter Kaley just like you are not my wife, Susan." 

He was trying to remain calm, but the more he acknowledged what he knew as truth, the more upset he became.

"Who are we then? And if this is some big conspiracy of family replacement, what is the point? Why would we be doing this to you? What makes you so special?" fake Susan asked. 

"I don't know," He said. "That's what I have been trying to figure out for myself, so any details you have would be helpful."

Danny then looked at fake Susan and said. "Please tell me they are ok." 

"I don't know what the hell you are talking about." She said and stood up from the table, leaving her plate of a half-eaten full English breakfast, and walked out of the room. 

Danny picked a piece of uneaten sausage off her plate and put the rest in the garbage disposal. He could hear her walking around upstairs. She was in their bedroom. He walked over to the bottom of the stairs and listened. 

"I'm not sure what's going on with him." She said, talking on her phone to someone. 

Then the door shut, and he could not hear anything else that she was saying, but she was clearly talking about him. 'She must be calling in the reinforcements,' he thought and wagered they would have some company soon.  

As Danny expected, a car pulled into the driveway thirty minutes later. Fake Susan had called in some reinforcements because he wasn't falling for the switch. Danny stood up from the couch and looked out the window. 

A man with white hair wearing tan pants and a blue sports coat stepped out of the red Toyota Prius parked behind his Subaru. The man waved in his direction and smiled like he knew him and was happy to see him, but Danny had never seen this man before in his life. This man did not even look like anyone he remembered. This realization hit Danny in the stomach. He was confused and now nervous. 

The doorbell rang, and Danny watched fake Susan run from the bottom of the steps to answer the door. She must have been watching and waiting upstairs for this man to show up. He stepped into the kitchen and watched her open the door.

"Hello Susan, so good to see you." The man said.

"So good to see you Doctor, thank you for coming at such short notice. "fake Susan said and looked back at Danny standing in the doorway of the kitchen. "I'll make some coffee."

"That would be excellent, thank you, Susan." The Doctor said, stepping through the door, then he took off his coat and hung it on the coat rack in the entryway like he might have hundreds of times before. 

"Danny," He said. "So good to see you."

The Doctor was wearing a blue and white striped button-up shirt with crisp starched collar and cuffs. The Shirt looked a lot like the pajama bottoms Danny was wearing when he woke up this morning. He figured there had to of been a connection but had no idea what that was. Anything and everything could be a clue to what was going on. 

"Susan said that you may be having some trouble this morning, Danny. How are you feeling now?" The Doctor asked.

"How am I feeling?" Danny repeated the Doctors question back at him. "I woke up, and the house is not the same as it was when I went to bed and this Susan," 

Danny gestured with his hand to where Susan was making coffee in the kitchen. 

"This is not my wife, and whoever that kid who was here earlier is not my daughter." 

"I see you are having a rough morning Danny." the Doctor said, his voice deep, calming, and sounded caring to the point that Danny almost believed he was here to help him. 

"Let's go in the living room, have a seat, and have a conversation. Maybe we can help you make some sense of what's going on today." the Doctor said. "Does that work for you, Danny?"

"I just want to know that my wife's ok," Danny said and walked into the living room. 

The Doctor followed him and sat in a stuffed chair across from Danny, who had sat down on the couch. 

"Your wife is ok, Danny. She's in the kitchen making coffee for us." The Doctor said. 

"That's not my wife." 

"I know that's what your brain is telling you, Danny, but sometimes our brains are not very nice."

"What does that even mean, our brains are not nice?" Danny said, "Are you telling me that the woman in my kitchen who I don't recognize really is my wife." 

"That's exactly what I am telling you, Danny. That woman in the kitchen making coffee, who dropped off your daughter, who made you breakfast is your wife." The Doctor said, "Now I understand that is hard to believe because your brain is telling you that she is not your wife. But your brain is telling you things that are not true."

The Doctor leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. 

"Do you remember the accident, Danny?" 

The Doctor kept saying his name. It was weird to hear it said so many times in a one-on-one conversation. Danny was sure it was some form of manipulation, still could not help but feel comforted by it. 

"Do you remember, Danny?" He said again with the same relaxing, calming voice. 

"There wasn't an accident, Doctor," Danny said. "I went to bed last night. I was in my house, with my things and my family, and when I woke up this morning, I was in pajamas that I had never worn. I don't sleep in pajamas. My room was different. The comforter was different, the alarm clock, different. Everything was different, Doctor." 

"That must have been very disturbing for you." The Doctor said. 

"You bet it was disturbing," Danny said. "And I want to know where my family is. How my things were switched out and what the hell is going on." 

"There was an accident two months ago, Danny." The Doctor said. "It was just you. The rest of the family was home. You were driving back from the office, and your car was hit from the side."

"There was never an accident," Danny said. "If there was an accident, I would know."

"Danny, this is not your first episode since the accident." The Doctor said, holding out a folded, tattered newspaper to Danny. "See here, that's your car, isn't it?"

It was his car in the picture. His black Subaru Forrester, the entire side was crumpled. According to the headline, Danny was hit by a drunk driver, likely someone leaving the bar by the office.

"You were in the hospital for two weeks, there was damage to the brain, but otherwise, you were not hurt and very lucky. You had the lord with you that day, son."

"If the Lord was with me, he could have stepped in before the accident," Danny said sarcastically. 

"That's fair," The Doctor said. "Are you remembering anything about the accident or your stay at the hospital?" 

"Not at all. I remember that I went to bed last night, and I woke up, and everything was different."

The Doctor nodded. 

"This is exactly like the last episode you experienced a few weeks are you came home from the hospital. Your memory went back to just before the accident, so some of the changes in the house stood out as something that happened overnight. It's been two months now, so if your memory went back before the accident, then more things would have changed."

"And my family changed?" Danny said. "They don't look the way they did yesterday or two months ago. These two fakes are not my wife and daughter."

"I assure you, Danny, they are your wife and daughter. Susan and Kayley. You've seen some of the pictures in the house, the family pictures. You are in those pictures with the very people you claim have been changed."

"I've heard of photoshop, Doctor." 

"Of course you have, but you have to ask yourself, Danny. Why would someone or someones go through the trouble of switching out your family, photoshopping your pictures, and then convince you that this new family is your old family?" The Doctor said, his face severe but soft. 

"Same question I have been asking myself all morning," Danny said. 

"And did you come up with an answer?"

"I didn't."

"And do you know why that is, Danny?" The Doctor leaned back in his chair. "Because there is no reason. The most obvious reason at that point would be that maybe, it's you."

Danny didn't have anything to say to that. He had not come up with an answer all morning. None of what was happening made any sense to him. 

"So you are telling me that fake Susan in the kitchen is actually my wife, and the fact that she looks different from what she did last night is all in my head?" 

"That's exactly what I am telling you." The Doctor said.

Susan came into the living room holding two cups of coffee. 

"It's hot." She said, setting them down on the coffee table. "Be careful."

"Thank you, Susan," The Doctor said.

"Yes, thank you," Danny said, looking at her again from the couch. He hoped the new angle and change in lighting might make her facial feature more familiar to him, but they didn't.

"I'll leave you guys to your talk. I'll be in the kitchen if you need anything." Fake Susan said and left them. 

"Sometimes when the brain experiences a traumatic injury like yours has, it can experience lapses in time forward and back. And sometimes, these injuries can make the familiar unfamiliar. People you have known and loved suddenly appear unfamiliar. It can be scary." The Doctor said, sipping his coffee. 

"So this is just my brain, the house is basically the same, and the changes made to it was over two months and not overnight," Danny said. 

That part was almost making sense to him. All of that seemed possible. 

"The part with my family, though?" 

"That part is a little rarer." The Doctor said. "But not completely unheard of. You appear to be having symptoms similar to Capgras. It's where someone believes their family or people they know have been replaced with imposters. Your symptoms are a little different, however, because your brain has convinced you that these imposters have been replaced by people who don't completely resemble your family."

"And that's it?" Danny said. "Seems convenient."

"Not very. It's still very concerning that this is the second time this has happened to you since the accident." The Doctor said, putting his mug back down on the coffee table. 

"And what happened the first time?" 

"The first time, it was quick, maybe lasted a few hours. Susan and Kayley were very worried, and I came right away. You noticed how calm both of them were this morning when you questioned who they were and where your family was?"

Danny nodded.

"That is because they had already been through the scary unknowing part of this process with you. They expected the episode to have passed just as quickly. Susan only called me when it had gone on for most of the morning." 

Danny stood up and walked over to the window, and looked out into the driveway. 

"And I can just snap out of whatever this is, and everything will be back to normal?"

"Well, your memory will have caught up to the present time, and how you perceive your family will be as you perceived them before." 

Danny turned around and looked back at the Doctor sitting in the chair. 

"And when will that happen?" 

"That I don't know. I don't like that it happened again and that it has gone on for longer than it had the last time." The Doctor said. "I would like to take you into the office for a scan. I'd like to see if there have been any changes to how your brain looks."

"To see if the damage has gotten worse?" Danny said.

"Yes."

Everything the Doctor was saying was plausible, and there wasn't anything Danny could think of to dispute it. It's true his brain was telling him he went to bed last night and woke up with many things different, and his family didn't look like his family. It was also true that there isn't a reason anyone would go through the trouble to do this to him. The only logical explanation was that he was losing his mind or something was broken, making him think he was losing his mind. 

"I'll go," Danny said, walking toward the stairs suddenly feeling exhausted. "I just need to get some socks and my wallet." 

"I'll be waiting, Danny." The Doctor said, picking up the mugs and going into the kitchen while Danny went up the stairs. 

Danny was feeling tired, and his stomach was upset from drinking too much coffee. He was feeling the crash as the caffeine left his body as quickly as it came into it. He sat on the edge of the bed and put his socks on. He leaned back on the comforter that was not on the bed last night when he went to bed and closed his eyes. 

Danny woke up in the passenger side of the Doctors red Toyota Prius in his driveway. Fake Susan was buckling him in, and Danny could not move. He looked at her face hoping to see a sign of the Susan he remembered, but he didn't. It was the same woman he had seen stirring the soup for fake Kaley. He tried to talk, but no words came out of his mouth, not even a sound. He could breathe, and that was it. 

Fake Susan moved his head to the headrest, shut the door, and walked over to the Doctor. Danny's head slid off the headrest and against the passenger side window. He could see them talking but could not hear what they were saying from inside the car. They both looked over at him at the same time, and the Doctor started walking towards the car. He waved, and fake Susan waved back at him. Then she waved to Danny and blew him a kiss. 

Danny tried to tell the Doctor that he could not move, but he could not speak. 

"Are you ready to go now, Danny?" the Doctor asked, and Danny knew he didn't expect a response. 

The car silently rolled backward out of the driveway and into the street. They drove to the end of the street and stopped at the four-way intersection. Danny's head leaned on the passenger side window. There was a car that arrived at the same time as the Doctors red Prius. It was a black Subaru Forrester. It seemed familiar to him because it was his car. His black Subaru Forrester was sitting at the stop sign waiting for the red Prius to go. Danny looked at the driver's side and saw her. He saw his Susan. It was his Susan with her regular nose and the face that he loved. Beside her in the passenger seat was his Kayley. His daughter. They were both looking at him as the Prius slowly rolled past them. Danny saw Kayley's hand raise to wave, but Susan, his Susan, pushed her hand back down. Danny and the Doctor drove on. Danny still could not move or speak but wanted to scream. 

"We'll get you taken care of, Danny. Everything is going to be ok." The Doctor said, and Danny felt the Doctors hand on his shoulder.