In a modern retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's William Wilson by the author of The Old Drift, a young black man's paranoia escalates as he is followed, challenged, and terrorized by a doppelgänger bent on sabotaging his life.
Ever since high school, somebody's been playing the echo game on Will Williams. A look-alike with the same tattoos and the same name has been following him. Starting by implicating Will in petty crimes, and escalating to offenses with serious prison terms, he's undermined every attempt Will has made to get his life on track. Now, drifting from city to city, Will's doing everything in his power to outrun his shadow.
Will Williams is part of Disorder, a collection of six short stories of living nightmares, chilling visions, and uncanny imagination that explore a world losing its balance in terrifying ways. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single disorienting sitting.
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[Williams. Will Williams. Yeah, you can call me that]***
(Amazon Original Stories, 27 June 2019, ebook, 20 pages, borrowed from @AmazonKindle, Prime Reading)
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This is another dud in the Disorder series for me. I haven't read the Poe story, William Wilson before so maybe I would have enjoyed this more if I had? Who knows? I liked the premise of the story but it just doesn't work for me. The story is narrated in the first person and I usually enjoy this POV but it doesn't work for me here. Will is paranoid and clearly an unreliable narrator. I found myself unable to believe that someone else using his name and copying him committed the crimes he went to prison for. The writer didn't make me believe this. I would have believed his version of events if there had been some proof of the doppelganger rather than the sole word of a paranoid prisoner.
