DOPPLEGANGER NEXT DOOR, part 2

Katja seriously thought she was dreaming, because none of it made any sense, none of it could be real. In her life she had met a couple of girls who looked alike her, but there were always visible differences: narrower eyes, a broader nose, thinner lips, shorter hair. In the body comparison, the divergences with her look-alikes were more pronounced, with Katja being taller, thinner and more busty than them. However, the woman in front of her exhibited none of these discrepancies, although Katja told herself that one could never know one hundred percent what a body really looked like underneath the clothes.

The moment of confusion slowly began to give way to something that Katja felt boiling inside her. A powerful sense of irritation began to flood the punk-rocker’s temper, and Katja found herself blaming the frustration built up over days and days instead of accepting that there was something much deeper at the source of her anger.

“Would you get these boxes out of the way?” she grumbled tensely, looking directly into the other girl’s eyes. “Please?”

“Well, no one has complained so far.” The doppelganger’s voice still sounded delicate, but obviously now there was a hint of resentment vibrating in there. “It’s no big deal. I just have to finish getting the boxes into the elevator, and you can have the whole place to yourself.”

“I’m in a hurry,” Katja grunted, moving carefully through the boxes as the other young woman bent down to pick up one of them. “Let me go up to my floor. Then you’ll have all the time in the world to keep bothering the rest of the neighbors.”

A groan of frustration rose from the other blonde’s throat in response. How quickly they had both gone from some shyness to confrontation set off several alarms in Katja, but feeling that she had had enough made her ignore any warnings from her own head. Ignoring the new neighbor, she walked past her without even looking at her but, as she entered the elevator, she couldn’t help but turn around to give her one last glance. To her surprise, she found that that fake twin was leaving a box against the elevator door, preventing it from closing.

“I’m in a hurry too. A few more boxes and we can go up together,” the girl said, ignoring Katja’s murderous look.

Shit! The idea of getting in the elevator with that annoying blonde wasn’t amusing to Katja but, unfortunately, she also couldn’t see how to avoid it without starting an acrimonious argument. This is looking more and more like my fucking job, she ruminated as she watched the other girl fill the elevator with her belongings. Uncomfortable at feeling cornered by the boxes, she pressed herself against a wall, but found herself taking the opportunity to check and study the new neighbor’s ass every time she turned her back to her and bent over a box. Katja had to admit that her butt looked amazing in those black pants, the tightness of the leather proudly displaying the roundness of the ass, but again she wasn’t sure who was bigger or firmer there. However, she didn’t dare to throw the same analysis on the other breasts, because it implied looking too shamelessly to a young woman who was constantly casting almost defiant glances at her.

“I don’t have all day,” Katja found herself snorting at a moment when their blue gazes met.

“I don’t care,” her doppelganger replied with disdain. “It’s not my problem.”

“It may end up being your problem,” Katja hissed.

The other girl dropped the box she was carrying—the last one—and the noise reverberated off the walls like a warning of something to come. Katja’s heart skipped a beat as her tongue moved across her increasingly dry lips.

“Are you…?” the new neighbor whispered before pausing for a second. “Are you looking for a catfight?”

The feeling of unreality came flooding back to Katja completely, drowning her soul, her mind and her body. All her white skin bristled, and she thought she felt some static electricity running through her blonde hair. She was no stranger to violence, having been involved in a few fights at different music festivals—the last one, a year ago. She had even had a pair of after-class brawls in her high school days with a loud-mouthed posh girl named Beth Hillman, and yet she had never gotten into trouble so quickly, so frantically, without a drop of alcohol in her blood or animosity watered by hatred for months.

“I think you are the one looking for it,” she replied. “But I have to warn you, this would not be my first rodeo.”

“It wouldn’t be my first either,” the other blonde grunted back.

Do we have to be the same even in that? Katja complained in her thoughts as she now unabashedly glanced up and down the body of her newfound rival. Being one meter seventy tall, she had easily overwhelmed her shorter opponents in the past, but now she found herself wondering what it would be like to measure herself against a woman who matched her in height and, from what appeared to be, in weight.

Just as she was about to open her mouth to brag some more about her fighting experience, she heard footsteps on the stairs. Seconds later, an old man appeared carrying a basket of laundry.

“Oh, hello, Katja, my dear, I thought I recognized your voice on the way down. How are you?” the man greeted…wrongly. With his eyes on the new neighbor, it took him a moment to realize that in the elevator was another Katja. “Wait, you…and you…Do you have a twin?” he said, actually asking both of them. Katja found herself gritting her teeth as she watched the man doubting about who the girl she had met four days earlier was.

“I amKatja, Mister Nielsen,” she declared, her anger held in check. “And she’s not my twin at all. She’s a new neighbor…”

“My name is Tanja,” the other blonde introduced herself, not looking at the man, but at Katja. “Tanja Horn.”

“Katja Thorn,” she introduced herself to her doppleganger spontaneously, as if she needed her to have full confirmation of her name.

“And I’m Henrik Nielsen,” the old man added, looking at the blonde who looked identical to her neighbor. “Are you really not…?”

“No,” Tanja quickly denied. “We are not related.”

“By no means,” Katja felt compelled to say.

“Well, if you say so. Nice to meet you, Tanja, and nice to meet you again, Katja.” With a confused face, the old man crossed between the two blondes and started down the next flight of stairs. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go down to the laundry room, or my wife will kill me.”

For a few long seconds, nothing could be heard but Mister Nielsen’s slow footsteps. Katja didn’t dare to continue the argument in public, and Tanja didn’t utter a single word. In the end, the new neighbor simply picked up the last box again and, with a determined look on her face, stepped into the elevator. Katja felt the tension growing exponentially, and almost lost her temper when Tanja dropped the box noisily on top of the others. The two were so close to each other that the threats from earlier filled Katja’s head with possibilities and desires.

Then Tanja pressed a button on the elevator. Katja grunted under her breath, drawing a defiant look from her elevator partner as the elevator doors closed.

“Oh, I’m really sorry,” Tanja spat out with hostility in her eyes and a lie in her voice. “I didn’t ask you which floor you were going to. My bad.”

“I was going to the penthouse,” Katja replied, matching her antagonist’s arrogance and venom. Immediately, she perceived how the pupils of the other blonde flickered, letting her know that her words had somehow affected her fake twin.

“I’m going to the penthouse, too.”

The answer gave Katja a sort of vertigo-like sensation. Her heart jumped under her chest when she knew that she was going to live next door to that young blonde who looked so much like her. Of all the empty floors in the fifteen-story building, Katja had had to move into the penthouse, where there were only two apartments. In front of her, however, she noticed that she was not the only one upset by that fact. Her nemesis—Katja already felt her as such—was showing a disturbed expression on her beautiful face, noticeably affected by the sudden news. A sort of sick bond was beginning to bind them together, or so Katja thought, for whatever influenced the one, influenced the other.

“Neighbor,” Katja palpated the word, finding it toxic.

“Neighbor,” Tanja repeated, her voice slightly hoarse. “If at any time you need anything, don’t hesitate to knock on my door. For anything: salt, help opening a jar…that catfight you want so badly.”

“Same to you, Tanja,” Katja replied. “My door is open to you at any time, day or night. Especially if you’re looking for what you deserve.”

“What I deserve is to put you in your place,” Tanja groaned.

“You don’t even have the guts to try,” Katja grunted.

“Any time, any place, just ask me, and I’ll be there,” the new girl on the block threatened. “Then you’ll know you’ve got the wrong woman to mess with.”

“You’re only making everything more delicious once I show you who’s boss here,” Katja menaced.

“Let’s just accept that we have a score to settle, you and I. And we’re going to work it out as soon as you dare to come after me,” Tanja claimed.

“Or you dare to knock on my door,” Katja groaned.

“We have a deal,” the other blonde said, offering her hand.

Swallowing saliva, Katja accepted, and found herself squeezing hands with her foe. That first contact between cloned rivals made Katja’s whole skin bristle, with both girls squeezing tighter than usual. Neither said anything else as the elevator rose slowly, interminably to the fifteenth floor, and it wasn’t until then that both blondes reluctantly separated their hands from each other.

“I hope to see you soon,” Katja grunted, leaving without offering Tanja help with the boxes.

“Sooner than you expect,” she heard Tanja enigmatically say.

Without looking back, Katja opened her door and, with a slam, left her enemy behind. Without wasting any time, she reached for her sound system, and played one of Bad Brain’s most adrenaline-pumping songs at full volume.

You, you better get ready!

You better hold steady!

They can’t control this angry mob!

They’ll have to call the riot squad!

Riot squad, they'll have to call the riot!

They’ll have to call the riot squad!