Had anything with the title The Thing on the Doorstep been written in our times, it doubtless would initially be considered to be a parody...but it's a serious short story written by horror writer H.P. Lovecraft back in 1933. I first read it back around 2005-07...it was the first story by Lovecraft I had ever read. Turns out it was a pretty good one at that, although I admit that his style and genre take getting used to...
While not wanting to give away the story in case you might want to read it for yourself, I'll just give the basic setting. It's presented in the first person by the narrator, Daniel Upton, whose good friend Edward Derby...a shy and unassuming young man...has married a woman, Asenoth, who is a dabbler into the dark arts. Daniel notices from time to time that Edward seems to undergo severe personality changes...the most remarkable is his sudden ability to drive a car, which he sometimes does with reckless abandon whenever he goes into one of those "states". Why this is all happening, what is the "thing on the doorstep"...and why does the story open with the narrator declaring that he just shot his best friend...is something that I leave to anyone interesting in reading it. Instead...leading me to warn any prospective readers of this story of a plot spoiler in the next paragraph... I'll bring up a theme I discovered in it: the undue influence over others that some people feel is their due...even to the point of insisting they control what others think...
In The Thing on the Doorstep (don't read this unless you either have read the story or plan to) the identities of two different people get switched...one moment Edward is Edward...the next he's Asethon and she is Edward. If you've encountered this tired old fictional device before, in movies like Freaky Friday or Trading Places, or in old television series episodes such as Star Trek, The Prisoner, or The Avengers (to mention the ones I remember), rest assured that at least ol' H.P. had a better claim on it in terms of originality...although my ignorance of literature being what it is, he probably himself lifted the idea off someone else. But Lovecraft made it into a better story than all the others, and for this I commend him (or at least his memory). As far as I can tell in this little life of mine, I don't think it's scientifically possible for two people to switch identities, but unfortunately there are some disturbed souls who act as if they have the right to someone else's identity. That's too bad...for them and for those they prey upon...
By the way, you might be able to access an audio version of this story...which I believe is in public domain...through YouTube...
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