Dome War
Chuck

He stood by the edge of the room, so close to the freshly scrubbed pane he could see his good-day’s-work sigh manifest into a condensed vapour right under his slender nose and in the true art of an entrepreneurship and wine connoisseur, watched the buzzing city ecosystem from the top of his hierarchal monument through the transparent manifestation of himself in the glass he so frantically tried to avoid eye contact with. The spark in his fiery eyes apart from the reflected glimmer of city lights of course, was going to be snuffed and rekindled repeatedly in a series of bizarre events following his acceptance of his father’s company Harrison Enterprises the next day. But this night was a wrap, so he showered, put some pyjamas on and tied the knot on the night with his social media- fanning the flames of his grand upstage due to hit front page of the New York Times in seven hours. Leaving the lamp at his side on, he descended to a typically unattainable level of consciousness that anyone who had ever killed their loved ones knows their sleep paralysis demons would never allow. The new morning sunshine softly graced his face and with the help of the typical staleness of polyester sheets in the morning, the seven hour free trial of death called slumber was abruptly stopped by the circadian rhythm that was substituting the alarm he had forgotten to set. He rolled out of the bed and fell to the floor with his sheets and crawled half way across the room towards the bathroom before picking himself up to help himself to his state of the art ablution facilities. The television was on as protocol for every morning and lying dormant on the kitchen counter were the toaster and coffee machine, to which he owed no luxury of using on his first late day as CEO of his lineage’s long running but equally prestigious company. Coming out of the shower after 5 minutes was the wettest, tardiest lavender scented man on Earth about to see the shock of the century on television- the runner up being the time he found out the letter ‘a’ is not in the spelling of any number until a thousand. He saw his reflection once again. Corporeal, not mimicking his every action like some voodoo doll, not dripping diluted overpriced hair gel all over the floor and accepting the keys to Harrison Enterprises after some heart felt speech about hard work and originality!

And in that moment of utter bafflement was the realisation that Chuck Harrison’s good looks weren’t legally patented like everything else in his life; not that plagiarising bodies had a mainstream arrest warrant. In a second, from shock emerged anger, from anger came raucous laughter, which led to more confusion and ultimately a dress up just as unorganised as it was emotionally ambiguous. He bolted to his luxury apartment’s door just to turn back to the lamp stand to swipe his keys and scurry back to the hallway. As he locked his door, the sweet post rush hour melody of rowdy neighbours thudding and slamming into their bedroom walls, ninety percent of everyone in the hallway either yelling at their apparently illiterate, potty untrained cats and dogs for ‘unforgivably’ confusing the floor with their non-existent litter boxes or having distinct phone call conversations while files, purses, laptop bags and occasionally babies fill their arms with their phones in the surprisingly effective age-old ‘tucked-in-between-the-tilted-head-and-shoulder’ position all brought together by the universal car key jingle of A-list cars would usually have taken over for his heart in pumping excitement around the body hidden under his melanised skin. Elevator doors seemingly not separating as fast as Chuck needed them to, let him into the world he knew all too well; one that had already gotten the pleasure of meeting the evidently more charismatic Chuck capable of helping a fellow neighbour with the garden and having a perfect copy of his doppelganger’s car keys. ‘Back so soon Mr Harrison?’ a passer-by inquired. ‘Yes … um I was a bit out of it earlier. Do you mind showing me where I went after I saw you in the morning?’ How subtle, he sarcastically thought. After being directed to a coffee shop, he cut to the front of line by tipping the owner of this caffeine tavern, who was quite accustomed to small talk as he was to delaying the whole queue while he was at it. After trying three undisputed and indirect farewell remarks now nullified by a café owner’s failure to read a room and treating asking random people to retrace his steps like a normal question, Chuck was beginning to consider private investigating as freelance with the imposter ruining his company or worse, changing his relationship status with his attractive PA, Susan to anything but platonic by violating his tragic celibacy vow. After of course, he followed through on the coffee shop lead all the way to a downtown garage the fraud had gone to in hopes of fixing the Lexus he so shamelessly defiled somehow. In a more serious note, a stranger had usurped his will, held him hostage the worst way possible and was probably flaunting someone else’s recently and rightfully acquired fortune by the looks of all the unnecessary detours. Only once had he ever felt this restless and this gratuitous sequel to that said weariness was about to rip this band aid right off the pathetic reassembly of broken pieces Chuck called a heart. This game, either a well-executed live action reboot of a round of broken telephone by competent players or an intentional Hansel and Gretel style bread crumb path had the antagonist leaving a trail even a blind man could follow. This hide and seek seemed to be reeling Chuck right into the fiend’s deliberate attempt at getting caught and that wasn’t the scary part. It was facing his literal self about the baby son he intentionally killed.