Opposite Man

1

Leo Turner, a quiet sheepish man who lacked in self-confidence, always pushed around by his colleagues at work and pretty much anyone else who noticed his passive personality. It was as if they could smell it off him and decide to take advantage whether it was in the supermarket or at his job. He worked for a top secret government agency who specialize in the science behind generating wormholes to other universes. His team had recently taken groundbreaking strides in the field, connecting two separate points in space time using Einstein’s field equations in General Relativity and had actually found the Einstein-Rosen bridge with enough energy comparable to a Jupiter size star.

He was a quiet man, very passive, but extremely cleaver. You could say he was a pushover. He went to work each day but failed to engage in much of the conversations in the workplace, he pretty much was invisible unless someone needed him to do something for them, like stay behind late to do something that person didn’t bother to do and wanted to go home early. He couldn’t tell people no, he struggled with assertiveness and would do anything to help people. However, this didn’t earn him respect. People took his softness for a weakness and routinely took advantage of his kind, awkward personality.

He finished up on Friday evening and went out to his car to drive home. He got into his black BMW and fastened his seatbelt and pulled out of the car park of his organizations secret facility which was disguised to put off the scent of terrorists or enemy countries trying to catch wind of their work which only the army had known about. The general public were unaware of what was going on within the compound which was situated on the outskirts of Braevarn.

He had a pretty typical normal life, living with his wife Lucy who would often get bored of his boring straight forward personality. She was known for telling her girlfriends about how she longed for some excitement in her life and wished her man was more confident and outgoing. She loved Leo, she would never cheat on him but she would complain about his boring sheepish approach to their relationship and boring sex life.

He pulled into the driveway of his bought house in the quiet suburb of Drumloch Gardens, a well off part of town. His job paid well and his mortgage was nearly paid off. Lucy worked as a primary school teacher and with both incomes they lived comfortably. They had no kids but that wasn’t for the lack of trying. It just didn’t seem to happen. Lucy would lie awake at night thinking in her mind that maybe if he was a bit more confident and not so awkward and boring, maybe his testosterone levels would boost. But she would never mention it to him on the count of how such a thing would probably only make him introvert further.

Leo looked young for his age, looking like he was in his mid to late twenties when he was in fact coming up for thirty-six. He had a slender build with dirty blond hair and was clean shaven. Not a tall man, he was around the same height as his wife. He was often mistaken for his age. Lucy on the other hand was an attractive busty blond with the filler in her lips and would regularly be eyed up with wolf whistles and what not. Even if Leo is with her, which made her a little embarrassed and ashamed that Leo didn’t stand up for her, or have the self-respect to stand up for his woman in public.

Leo got home on Friday evening and met Lucy in the kitchen with a peck on the cheek, he then went upstairs for a shower and to get himself ready for dinner, knowing full well he was off the next morning, the workplace was usually empty over the weekends, the only man being there was the security guard. So he had planned a quiet weekend of putting the feet up and watching the cricket. He didn’t follow football or any other sport really. Lucy made their dinner in the kitchen and then afterwards she had some tests to grade. They had dinner and Leo watched a bit TV while Lucy went over the schoolwork.

She had always went for bad boys in her younger years but it didn’t get her anywhere. It was just heartache after heartache going round in circles and that is why she went for something different, she found Leo who was good to her and was sensitive and never in any kind of trouble. She loved him but she was bored and often fantasized about having her husband take control and be rough and show her a good time. She had tried to initiate it in the bedroom in the past but he would get too embarrassed and shy, even with her. It just seemed to not be within him. She hoped that someday he would gain confidence.

They went to bed early that night and they’d have been as well to sleep in separate beds, Leo lay and read a bit of a science book as Lucy lay on her side facing the other direction to try get to sleep. He sat up for an hour thinking about this breakthrough at work hoping that this theory would work. He couldn’t wait to get back to work on Monday to be there for their triumph. It was thought to be impossible, but him and his team had made the impossible possible. It was all set up and ready to go, in a hangar deep within the compound and if this wormhole opens up, there could be infinite possibilities. This was going to be massive. He eventually switched off the light and turned to his side and closed his eyes.

The next morning Leo awoke at ten o’clock which was a long lie for him but it had been a busy week and he thought he must have tired himself out. He checked his phone and had two missed calls from his boss from work, with a text telling him to contact him immediately. He got up and put on his slippers and called his boss. Gary Bushwell was a nice enough guy to work for, but if he has a problem with you, he wouldn’t think twice about letting you have it. ‘What the hell are you playing at Turner?’ was the words he used as soon as he answered the phone. ‘What’s wrong boss?’ Leo asked timidly. ‘You know damn well what I’m on about, you came into work this morning and messed with the portal and then beat up the security guard, the portal has now malfunctioned and its set our work back god-knows how long’ Gary shouted down the phone with venom in his voice.

‘Sir I’ve been in the house all morning; I haven’t been in to work.’ He tried to explain before being cut off ‘You have been caught on the cameras beating the shit out of Davie the security guard, you are now suspended until further notice, I don’t want to see you at work on Monday until a proper investigation has been done.’ He then cut the phone off before Leo even had the chance to say another word. Leo sat on the edge of his bed confused and shaking, like a kid who just got a telling off for doing something bad. He sat there thinking in his mind about what had went on at work and why they had blamed him. He then walked around the house talking to himself in a bad mood, knowing full well he hadn’t done anything wrong, saying out loud what he should have said to Gary on the phone but these were the things that would never come out his mouth to anyone. In his mind he could be a bad ass, but in the heat of the moment he was sheepish and mousy in reality.

Lucy wasn’t home, she usually went to the supermarket on a Saturday morning so Leo walked around the house mumbling obscenities to himself and couldn’t wait to complain to her when she got home about this disgraceful accusation about him. He was getting clothes on when his best friend Thad had called him on his phone. ‘What’s going on mate? I heard you battered Davie the security guard this morning.’ He laughed, probably because it was so out of character for Leo to do such a thing. ‘Listen man, I don’t know what’s happened, but it wasn’t me, can you come pick me up? I need to talk to you about this.’ Leo asked with a bit of emotion in his voice. ‘Sure, I’ll be there in ten.’ Thad laughed before hanging up.

He arrived shortly after and honked his horn outside and waited for Leo to come out. He jumped in the passenger side and they took off for a drive and a chat. ‘Look, I don’t know if this is some kind of joke or if everyone is playing a prank on me, but it’s not funny.’ Leo pleaded with him, hoping that he would turn around and tell him that the guys at work were playing a prank on him. ‘Listen man, all I know is that you have been caught messing with the portal which alerted Davie who then came to see what you were doing and you kicked the shit out of him. Gary said it was you on the cameras and Davie said it was you.’

‘I was in bed, it wasn’t me, honest.’ Leo offered, ‘You’re just lucky Davie isn’t going to press charges.’ Thad laughed as Leo turned and looked out the door window of the car with tears in his eyes. All that kept going round his head was ‘this has got to be a joke, it’s all a conspiracy against me’ thinking about all his hard work he put into the project and now he isn’t going to get to see it working first hand. The Government would kick him off the project and find a new contractor in a second if they thought he had done anything untoward in the facility.

The pair drove around for a while, talking about if it wasn’t him, then who done it. Thad had thought in his own mind that Leo had taken enough stick from the guys at work and finally snapped. But Leo kept ensuring him that it wasn’t him, he denied it completely. After around thirty minutes Thad dropped Leo back off at his house, not really knowing what else to say about the situation. Leo got out of the car and turned to see Lucy was back from the supermarket, so he started off inside to tell her of the news. He walked into the kitchen and noticed the bags of shopping were lying on the kitchen floor with all the groceries still inside. ‘Lucy?’ He called out but there was no answer. He heard a loud bang from upstairs and started to ascend the stairs.

As he got to the top of the stairs he noticed the bedroom door was closed and he could hear the bed rocking and the springs of the mattress and then followed by the moaning of his wife and her crying out ‘yes, yes, just like that.’ His heart sank to the pit of his stomach, he always feared that Lucy would cheat on him, but now he knew that this was a reality, he had an apple in his throat. His heart thumping in his chest and his palms sweating. He walked over and pushed the bedroom door open and stood in the doorway watching his wife on top of an unknown man, riding him like a cow girl, the whole bed rocking.

‘What the fuck is going on?’ He shouted in despair. She turned around in fright thinking there was an intruder and jumped off the man lying in the bed. ‘Leo? But I thought…’ She said in sheer confusion as she kneeled on the side of the bed with her arms crossed over her breasts. Leo stood there with rage bubbling through his veins but was more scared of this man beating him up in front of his wife after catching them in bed together. He had no idea what to do next. He looked intensely at the man lying in his marital bed with his wife as the man slowly sat up to face him. He felt a chill go through his heart when he noticed that the man who was having sex with his wife was actually…him. This doppelganger must have been the one who had gotten him fired from his job and now he’s in bed with Lucy, Leo froze as the double stood up on the bed and ran at him naked and attacked him, throwing him into the wall behind him and smashing his head repeatedly into the wall before throwing a combination of punches which sent Leo crashing to the ground before his double ran out of the house without his clothes before even uttering a single word to him.

Lucy ran over to see to Leo who was lying on the floor in the hallway battered and bloodied. ‘What’s going on? That was you’ she shouted to him utterly confused at what had just went on. ‘I don’t know, but you must have known that wasn’t me!’ He shouted at her in a fit of rage. ‘So how was he?’ ‘You’ she answered ‘You were confident and pretty much the exact opposite of what you are always like.’ She went on. ‘Aw so you liked it did you?’ He asked her in a fit of jealousy. ‘Well it’s not cheating, it was you.’ She screamed back at him before storming back into the bedroom. ‘It is cheating! You had wild sex with another man!’ His voice beginning to crack as he was flooded with emotion.

Lucy stormed away to put some clothes on as Leo went to the bathroom to clean the blood from his nose which was running down his chin onto his shirt. Leo then called Thad again and asked if he could crash on his couch for a few nights which Thad agreed and Leo immediately left, slamming the door behind him. He jumped into the black BMW and slowly pulled out of the driveway and headed for Thad’s house.

At his friend’s house, he went on to tell him that a man who looks exactly like him has set out to destroy his life, he made him lose his job, had sex with his wife and then beat seven shades of shit out of him when he walked in on them. Thad sat there in disbelief, not really understanding himself what was going on. But Leo seemed pretty damn certain and even had the bruises to show for it. They sat and spoke about all the possibilities of what was going on, but nothing clicked until Leo’s phone begin to ring, it was his boss Gary. ‘Come back to my house and fight like a man you little bastard.’ Gary shouted down the phone. ‘That is it, you are kicked off the contract, you think you can walk into my house and attack me while I’m taking a shit and there not be any repercussions?’

‘Sir, you don’t understand, this guy is trying to ruin my life, it wasn’t me.’ Leo pleaded. ‘it bloody well was you, you came in and attacked me while I was on the toilet, I’m calling the police and if I get my hands on you before they do, I’m going to kick your balls ya wee liberty taking prick’ Gary shouted before abruptly hanging up. Leo looked at Thad as if trying to fight back the tears. ‘What am I going to do?’ He asked. ‘You’re going to need to find this guy and call the police and tell them that he has stolen your identity.’

Thad sat for a second before realizing about the portal. ‘Wait a minute, they said the portal had malfunctioned, what if this is you from another universe and he crossed through the portal?’ Thad offered. ‘So the question is…what is he going to do next?’ Leo asked. He jumped back in the car and drove back to his house, noticing that Lucy’s car was still in the driveway. The sun was beginning to go down over the back of the houses and the shadows of the houses and the trees in the street made it look darker as the sun set. He ran up the path and tried the door handle but the door was locked. He slammed his hand off the door in three loud thuds and shouted for Lucy to answer the door through the letterbox.

He stood and beat his hand off the door until he seen a shadow coming to the other side of the door before he heard the lock snap and the door swung open to see himself standing in the doorway of his house. He didn’t have a second to plan what to do, his doppelganger jumped him again, dragging his shirt over his head and throwing haymakers at his head, relentlessly beating him with punches to the head and ribs before he crumpled to the ground in agony for a second time. He pulled his shirt back off his head and looked up to see his wife in her housecoat pulling his double back in the house and closing the door, leaving him outside in the garden beaten to a pulp for the second time in the same day.

It was clear to him that his wife had left him for this new version of him. Defeated he climbed back to his feet and got back in the car, looking over at the living room window he seen his double wave at him with a smug grin across his face then flipped him the finger and walked away from the window. Leo felt the rage build inside him. He didn’t know what to do, he had never been in a fight in his life, he always avoided confrontation but this time he knew that he had to do something or this guy is going to take everything from him. He knew in his gut he couldn’t let this happen and set off in his car to make a plan on how to get rid of this other version of him.

He drove to his old place where he used to take Lucy when they were dating, a car park high on the edge of a cliff on the outskirts of town where you can look over the entire town of Braevarn. The place where he had proposed to her and used to go after each date to look at the beautiful view. He felt as though a thousand thoughts were going through his head at once. He got out of the car and walked to the front and leaned back against the front of the car, resting on it, looking into the distance with his face swollen and grazed.

‘If my copy is better than me…then what am I?’ He asked himself. He thought about how polar opposite he was to his doppelganger, it was as if he was everything he wasn’t. Confident, aggressive, assertive. He was deep in thought trying to think of ways he can beat him until the penny dropped and he realized that no one is unbeatable and he had to look within himself for his own weaknesses and build his own confidence. He had been beaten up twice that day but realized that there is nothing to be afraid of, he is not made of glass and bruises heal, they don’t hurt at the time of the fight, only after for a short time. He realized that he had to face him head on and give it everything he has got to win his wife back. He balled his fists tight and then turned and jumped back in the car and looked out into the distance as the sun was going down and said to himself ‘If I’m going to get beat, I might as well fight back because I’ll be getting smashed either way.’

It was in that moment he decided that no more will he take shit from anyone, he was going to face his copy head on and if he wanted a fight, he would be getting the fight of his life. For the first time in his life he had a fire in his belly, the adrenaline was building within him and he set off to plan his next move. He headed back to Thad’s house through the heart of the town headed for the suburbs in which his friend lived. As he stopped at a red light he had noticed a young woman being harassed by a couple of drunken thugs, pulling at her and forcing themselves on her. Leo immediately jumped out the car and stormed towards them, yelling for them to leave her alone.

‘What are you going to do about it?’ Asked the taller man in a sarcastic manner, looking round at his friend with a grin as the two men turned their attention away from the young woman and now focusing firmly on Leo. ‘What’s up? Do you want some?’ The second man asked as they both swaggered over to him. Leo immediately head-butted the smaller one sending him crashing to the floor on his back with his legs in the air before throwing a flurry of punches at the taller man. The taller man tried to throw punches back but missed by a large margin as Leo gripped the man’s shirt and threw his fist into his face with four thundering right crosses, putting the drunken thug down before kicking him in the ribs for good measure. The young woman thanked him before going about her business. ‘You bastard, you broke my nose’ the smaller man cried as he staggered to his feet trying to pull his taller friend back to his feet. Leo felt like a new man, he felt a massive triumph. He had never been in a fight in his life, he had always avoided confrontation and never had the confidence to even confront someone with words, never mind his fists and it was at that moment he knew that he was going to fight for his wife and his career and was going to stop at nothing to get back at his other self and gain his life back.

After virtually his first ever triumph he was now buzzing and ready to take on his copy, he decided to go straight to his house he shared with his wife and confront the doppelganger and force him out of his home and take back what had been taken from him. Now with his confidence soaring, there was no fear within him, he headed to the house with purpose and he wasn’t going to go down without throwing everything he had at him. He put the pedal to the metal, driving erratically as he pulled into his street, smashing the front of his car into the wooden fence outside his home. Jumping out of the car leaving the car door open before grabbing a piece of wood from the smashed fence and running up the path.

Leo smashed his fist into the door, banging and kicking the door. There was a pause before Lucy answered the door. ‘What do you want, Leo?’ She asked. ‘Get him out here.’ He shouted fiercely ‘Get him out’ He followed before the door swung open and his copy immediately rushed him and took him to the ground pummeling him with both fists before putting his both hands on the plank of wood he had in his hands and pushing it down across his neck to choke him with it. There was a struggle to force the piece of wood from his neck and in Leo’s mind he thought ‘this is it; this is where it ends.’ But instead of giving up he reached his had around the garden beside him feeling for something to grab frantically before he passed out, finding a large stone in the grass. He put it firmly in his hand and swung it, crashing it into his copies head, sending him tumbling off of him as he scrambled to his feet and dived on top of him throwing rights and lefts in rapid succession.

The pair threw punches at each other sending the sounds of dull thudding as the vicious punches landing on both men echoed around the street. Leo picked up the piece of fence and started to strike his enemy on the back as he tried to get to his feet from a kneeling position before scrambling to his feet and running to Leo’s car and jumping inside, locking the doors. ‘Come on, we end this now!’ He shouted at the other ‘him’ as the doppelganger reversed out of the garden and sped away down the street, wheels spinning with a loud screech leaving smoke and the smell of burning rubber across the street.

Lucy had never seen her husband act like that before, never had she seen this side to him, she liked what she had seen. It wasn’t the old him who would stand quiet as random men tried to flirt with her while he stood beside her. This new side to him was what she had always wanted to see, which was what had attracted her to the doppelganger because he was confident and a little unhinged. It was the exciting side to Leo that she had never seen before but she had always longed to bring out in him. She was attracted to him in a completely new way and she felt wanted because he was now fighting for her. She maintained that she wasn’t cheating because it was him and in her mind she was married to him, no matter what universe he had come from. Leo tried to think of where his double would have gone and it came to him that he would be going to the compound. His double knew if he got him to the workplace he could try send him through the portal to get rid of him forever or he would try and destroy a secret government project to ensure that he would be put away in prison so that he can take over his life. He knew what his double was doing and he knew that the final battle for his life was about to take place.

He called his boss and told him to get to the compound as he jumped into Lucy’s car before hanging up and driving at speed down the street with the engine roaring as the moonlight glimmered on the shiny panels of her black Range Rover. He made it across town and neared the front barrier of his workplace and didn’t slow down for the security guard, crashing through the barrier and into the facility where he seen his car abandoned outside the hangar. The front of the grill on his car smashed from hitting the garden fence.

He ran inside the door which was propped open by a metal pale and made his way through the large hangar towards the portal, passing the controls and picking up a large spanner which was leaning on the podium where the controls were to open the portal creating the window to the universe his copy had crossed from. His eyes darted around the dark hangar trying to see where his double was hiding. He gripped the spanner tight in his right hand and called him out. ‘Let’s go! I’m here’ he shouted as his double stepped out of the shadows in front of him and pulled his shirt off from over his head, standing there stripped from the waist up. Still not uttering a single word to him.

Leo pulled his shirt off and threw it down at his side, raised the spanner and ran towards his double as they clashed in front of the portal. Leo swinging the spanner at his double’s head, missing him by a matter of inches. As the fight ensued, Gary had arrived at the hangar and ran inside, stopping dead in his tracks in shock witnessing the violent brawl going on with Leo and…Leo. ‘What the hell?’ He uttered to himself as he watched the two men both fighting for their lives in the middle of his top secret facility. It was at that moment he knew that Leo was right all along, but what one was the Leo from this universe? There was no way to tell, all he could do was watch and hope the Leo from this world succeeds in the fight and sends the wrong one back to where he came from.

In the chaos of the fight Gary heard the loud clang of the spanner hitting the ground, watching the two men throw punches at each other with every blow thrown with bad intentions. He looked on as one of the man was on the ground with the other standing over him. ‘Gary, open the portal’ the one on the ground shouted as he grabbed on to a metal table bolted into the ground. ‘Open the portal’ he shouted again. Gary hesitated for a second thinking in his mind, the Leo I know wouldn’t call me by my name.’ but then thought ’but he wouldn’t usually be involved in a brutal fight like this either. With no way to know for sure, he trusted him and hit the controls on the podium sending the portal to go into a reverse mode which would suck anything not fixed down back through the window before shutting down.

Leo grabbed on to the table as the portal opened up with so much force it lifted him off the ground nearly sucking him into the window. He held on with all his might as the Leo standing over him about to land the final vicious blow with the spanner was sucked off his feet and into the portal, sucking in other objects from inside the hangar which was in front of it. He hung on for what felt like an eternity before the machine switched off and he fell to the ground. The portal now destroyed probably putting the whole project back months or perhaps years. Gary approached Leo as he lay on his back on the concrete floor, bloodied and battered. ‘Are you okay?’ Gary asked him sympathetically. ‘I’m alright’ he muttered before climbing to his feet. ‘The portal is broken, he won’t be able to get back through, it comes through from his side and then it can only go back the opposite direction, but the amount of energy used couldn’t stabilize another window.’ Gary went on. ‘I apologize, man…I didn’t know that he had come through, it must have malfunctioned somehow, opening a window for him to climb through.’ Gary offering his hand for Leo to shake.

‘Are you coming to work on Monday? We need to try and explain this to the government and the Army and we are probably all going to get our balls kicked for this.’ Gary asked.

‘I’ll be here’ Leo answered before saying ‘I’m going home.’ Picking up his shirt and putting it back on over his head and walking out. Leaving Gary standing there with his hands on his head looking at the project they had spent so much time and effort into, all for nothing.

Leo went home to Lucy who was happy to see him and over the moon to see this new side to him, more confident and passionate than he’d ever been, he had awoken the fire of their relationship and found a new lease on life. Although she would never be able to tell for a fact if this Leo was her Leo, or the one from the other world. But I guess no one would be able to tell for sure…

He didn’t stop being afraid, he just stopped letting fear decide who he could become.