Tom sat in his car for a moment considering the possibilities. He reached into his pocket and extracted the little note book that he kept his life in. The tiny Journal was his personal rebellion against the current trends of keeping everything in their phones.

“6:30 pm. Called Malone and sat up appointment to discuss poison as a plot device. Told to come by at 7:30 and bring root beer.” Two bottles still sat in the cardboard carrying case where they hadn’t finished them all. Tom could remember smiling at Malone as he lied and said that he loved Hawaiian pizza.

His notes of the Conversation started at eight and ended at nine. They had discussed Tom’s female lead using poison to kill her abusive stepfather. Since she was a teen, they had focused on household chemicals and easy to collect ingredients. They settled on mushrooms and for the story, he intended on her putting them on a homemade pizza.

As he flipped back through the notes, Tom noticed that they were faded. The note to meet up was clear. The ink was crisp and black on the off yellow pages of his journal. The next entry, his notes from the conversation, looked like he had left the journal out in the sun for a few years.

He picked up a second note pad and copied everything over. Then, he started making notes of the other parts of the previous night’s conversations. The other projects Malone was working on. His progress on this third novel. The procedures used by the city coroner’s office from back when Malone had worked for them.

Nothing stood out to Malone as unusual or interesting. The doctor had worked for the city years ago, but at least the last ten were spent doing his own research on agricultural chemicals.

Tom tapped his pencil against his chin. “Maybe this has something to do with that last group of hormones he was working on,” he said as he put the pad back into his backpack. “Maybe he found something that was worth shutting him up over?”

Tom started the car and started toward work. “That still doesn’t explain how I could have talked to him after he had been found? I must be going crazy.”

Tom’s day was a disaster. Even knowing his proposal was due in two days, he couldn’t make himself work on it. He kept making notes and jotting ideas down on post it notes. By the end of the day, his desk was covered in scraps and debris while the documents and spreadsheets remained unchanged.

One note off of his blue pad kept drawing his attention. It only had one word, but the more he considered them, the more he was sure it was the only solution.

“Doppleganger.”