Sceptical losers like me are amongst the most easily frightened of folk. I mean, when you don’t immediately “believe” in every little unexplained or unexplored phenomena that you hear about, it is horrifying when it comes and slaps you in the gob…basically, I’m a bit of a wuss. I mean, your mind can play tricks on you. Not nasty, put-a-turd-in-my-car’s-air-conditioner sort of a trick. Annoyingly scary tricks.
Right, let’s get on with it! Submitted for your approval, the case of Mr. C. Phillips and a slit in the fabric of time. I think.
I’m an avid reader of the Fortean Times (a top quality publication, read it!). I’m an enjoyer of all things macabre and outlandish.
I was getting rather drunk in one of my favourite haunts in Swansea. I’d just finished regaling a fellow Fortean with factoids regarding a spooky cluster of events that occurred prior to the 9/11 attacks, (nothing “paranormal”, just statistical anomalies), and listened to tales of his grandmother’s apparent sixth-sense. So the evening had already acquired an air of the bizarre. I departed the bar with thoughts of faces appearing in smoke clouds dramatic peaks in miscarriages of male babies and Mike’s gran whirling around in my impressionable young mind. Then, out of the corner of my now very bleary eye, I spied the strangest of events.
A young lady, ready for a classic night of debauchery on Wind Street, (Swansea’s famed, puke-washed drinking centre) sauntered past me in full French maid’s garb. “Got a light?” she asked. I obliged and she walked off into the distance. Thirty seconds later, an IDENTICAL girl (in the same clothing, same height, face etc), sauntered past. “Got a light?” she asked. “No fucking way!” I exclaimed. She gave me a decidedly disgruntled look, murmured an expletive and walked off.
SHITTING HELL! I was a bit scared. Had I just witnessed a case of inter-dimensional mingling or even seen a real-life doppelganger headed to assassinate the other…or something? I sat aghast in my cab home, wondering how exactly to word my letter to the “It happened to me…” column of the Fortean Times. Surely I could get it into the September Issue?!
Then a thought struck me…well, a one word thought struck me.
Twins.
Fucking twins. Buggering bloody balls!
Eight glasses of Laphroaig and a few tall tales and I became a “believer”. Man, the human mind can be complex.
Or I’m thicker than Chupacabra shit.
by Ceri Phillips