Many years ago, on a Friday night, my roommate and I went downstairs from our 3rd floor apartment, got into his car and were ready to go to a club. The car happened to be parked right below one of the windows of our apartment.
As my roommate was putting the key in the ignition, I looked up and saw the window of our apartment and, for whatever reason, had the thought “what if I looked up and saw two people looking down on us from within our apartment, and they looked exactly like me and my roommate, and the moment they noticed me looking at them, closed the curtains”
I sort of got the chills thinking about it, and I thought that this would be a great beginning to some piece of fiction.
The thing is, I never figured out how the story would end. Any way I could think of for explaining/resolving what happened (i.e. who were those two in my apartment looking down, and why did they look exactly like me and my roommate) ended up being cheesy and did not live up to the ‘gravitas’ of the original thought.
So, my question for writer Dopers
[ul]
[li]Has a story similar to this been written in the past? I assume so, since almost any scenario you can think of has been written about. If yes, how was it resolved[/li][li]How would you finish this story?[/li][/ul]
FYI, I’m not a writer, so I’m never going to turn this into anything. It’s just my “pet story” and I’m curious as to what a great ending to it might be.
Written, I dont know, but filmed, yes. Roman Polanski’s “The Tenant”. And done exactly that way with the “and the moment they noticed me looking at them, closed the curtains” bit.
Time-traveling shape-shifting robot doppelgängers from an alternate universe, obviously. OR ARE THEY?
I think it sounds like a great scenario. I wouldn’t worry that the spark of the story has been used before. Go out and do something different with it. Surely there are loads of possibilities. It sounds cool.
Not time travelers, temporal echoes. With each moment, we leave our present selves behind, abandoning them to the past. They trail along behind us, eternally late to the party, chasing futile goals that are always completed moments before they reach them. Theirs is an empty existence in an empty world, a special kind of hell.
Except that Polerius’s past is catching up to him.
Or, if you went for the sitcom angle the two guys in the car could keep seeing their doubles and eventually catch up with them and convince them to secretly move in and do all of their icky life tasks for the free room and board.
Gotta break up with a bad girl friend or fire someone or have “the talk” with your fatherless nephew? Send in the doubles!