Part One

   Jim was never really alone. He felt neglected and underappreciated. He felt every good thing he did passed without notice. One good deed followed by a freight train of bad luck was a way of life for Jim. And yet, he was never alone.
   When Jim stumbled into his dimly lit, sparsely furnished apartment above the anique store on Main he was never without company. The Other was always there. He would just be sitting there, rarely speaking. Always smiling. The first half a dozen times Jim encountered his dark companion he had pissed himself.
   Jim shambled into his den, kicking off his sneakers and dropped his tattered messenger bag to the 70's era shag carpet. He ran a shaky hand through his prematurely gray, tangled mess of hair. There he was, in Jim's recliner. Smiling.
   Jim stopped short, half way to the cluttered kitchen. He locked eyes with The Other. He began to tremble. Something about its eyes burned a hole in his skull. Shark eyes. Black, bottomless pits. It felt like maggots were eating tunnels through his brains.
   "We're not doing this tonight." He whimpered. The Other flashed a toothy smile, identical in every was to Jim; save the row of serated teeth and cracked lips. Jim rushed to the kitchen, past the monster sitting in his lay-z-boy. He felt waves of evil throbbing throughout the room as he passed it.
   Jim slammed his freezer door open, splinter the plaster of the wall. He fished a half empty bottle of whiskey from the pile of frozen french fries and t.v. dinners. He gulped the harsh spirit down, feeling his empty stomach heave and catch fire. The burning passed and the calming wave of inebriation set in.
   He turned to head off to bed. He met The Other, face to face under the sickly florescent lights of the kitchen. It gripped his face with hands cloned of Jim and tipped with yellowed talons. It spoke with a voice that made the walls rattle and Jim's bones ache. "Let's go for a ride, Jimmy."
   Jim let out a scream as blood leaked from his eyes and dripped to the cold, cracked linoleum...