The Doppleganger

I have changed the names of myself and my brother for identity purposes:	I can’t explain what is was that I saw, but I definitely saw something that day. Maybe I was just a young kid with a big imagination, but to this day, I stake my life on it being real. The day I am speaking of was a normal day in my house, mom and dad both gone at work, it was summer, so my brother Joseph and I were home alone with nothing to do. I was 9 or 10 at the time, which would make Joseph, who is five years older than me, 14 or 15. We lived in a pretty ghetto part of Merced, so there was screams, gunshots, and the usual strange occurrence every once and a while. Joseph and I were bored as hell, apparently we had no new games to indulge in, so we decided to play hide and seek in the house. Our house was fairly small, so there wasn’t much space for all of the stuff we had, which made for some good nooks and cranny’s to hide in. We wouldn’t usually play in the day, we would usually play hide in seek at night either outside or in the house with the lights off, even though it scared the hell out of me. After a few rounds of switching off between him and I hiding and seeking, it was my turn to find Joseph. I counted to 100 in my room, shouted, “Ready or not here I come!” and went on my way searching for him. I looked just about everywhere from the closet, to backyard. Joseph was a little cheating bastard when it came to hide and seek. I would check on place and when I would leave he would go hide somewhere else, so it felt like I was going in circles. The one place I hadn’t checked yet was the garage. Our garage was one of the bigger sections of our house, it consisted of a small game room, with a pool table, a few slot machines, and a pinball machine. We had added on two rooms, one room that was for my uncle who had moved in with us, we built the room for him. The other room was all the way to the garage door, not the one from inside the house, but the door that lead outside. This part of the garage was cramped and the door to get into it was a white, sliding/folding, door that was a little messed up. There were things everywhere, it was mostly where we stored junk. The storage part of the garage was straight ahead, so I thought I would check it out before the guest room. I fully opened the horrible sliding, white, plastic door and saw that Joseph was standing there, just staring at me, although, he was different. He had bleached spiked up hair and was a little more fat, but this was his appearance a few years ago, not now. Now, he was a twig and his hair was long and only brown. I paid no mind at first. I told him that I see him and went to go tag him, but I was too small to get over the junk that was to the right side of me, so I had to make my way around the junk on the left side that I could actually walk over, but he finally moved. I couldn’t reach him in time, he just jumped over the pile of junk that I couldn’t get over and ran out of the room. I went back after him, it took maybe five seconds, and I looked into the game room section, but he wasn’t there. The garage door was closed, I would have heard him open it, even the guest room door was closed, something didn’t make sense. I stood there for a bit, I felt a strange vibe. It had hit me that he looked different, not like he did now. And, as I was standing in the game room by that white door, Joseph came out from the guest room, yes he looked like he should now. He asked me what I was talking about, when I said that I had seen him. I told him what I saw and after a small discussion of if I was lying or not, with me swearing that I wouldn’t lie about that, we both went in the house, in our room, and ended the hide and seek game. To this day, I still have no idea what it was that I saw that day, whether it was a ghost, a hallucination, or something else, but for now, Joseph and I play it off as his Doppleganger.