Doppleganger

Last year I spent six months participating in what I was told was a psychological experiment. I
found an ad in tylonal paper looking for imaginative people looking to make good money, and
since it was the only ad that week that I was remotely for, I gate them a call and we
arranged an interview.
They told me that all I would hate to do is stay in a room, alone, with sensors attached to my head
to read my brain activity, and while I was there I would visualize a double bymyself. They called it
the next day, I began. They brought me to a simple room and gate me a bed, then attached sensors
to myhead and hooked them into a little black box on the table beside rue. They talked me through
the process my double again, and explained that ifl got bored or restless, instead of
mating around, I should visualize my double mating around, or try to interact with him, and so
on. room.
I had trouble with it for the first few days. It was more controlled than any sort I' d
done before. I' d imagine my double for a few minutes, then grow distracted. But by the fourth day,
I could manage to keep him "present" for the entire six hours. They told me I was doing tery
well.
The second week, they gate me a different room, with speakers. They told me they
wanted to see ifl could still keep the my with me in spite redistricting stimuli. The music was
discordant, ugly and unsettling, and it made the process a little more difficult, but I managed
nonetheless. The next week they played men more unsettling music, punctuated with shrieks,
feedback loops, what sounded like an did school modem dialing up, and guttural noices speaking
some foreign language. I just laughed it off- I was a pro by them
After about a month, I started to get bored. To liten things up, I started interacting with my
doppelganger. We' d hate , or play sors, or I' d imagine ,
or , or whatever caught my fancy. I asked the researchers if my foolishness would
adversely affect their study, but they encouraged me.
So we played, and communicated, and that was fun for a while. And then it got a little strange. I was
telling him about my first date one day, and he corrected rue. I' d said my date was wearing a yellow
top, and he told me it was a green one. I thought about it for a second, and realized he was right. It
creased me out, and after my shift that day, I talked to the researchers about it "You' re using the
to access your subconscious," they id "You knew on some lad that you
were wrong, and you subconsciously corrected yourself."
What had been creepy was suddenly cod I was talking to my subconscious! It took some practice,
but I found that I could question my my and access all sorts . I could make it quote
whole pages of books I' d read once, years before, or things I was taught and immediately forgot in
high school It was awesome.
That was around the time I started "calling up" my double outside of the research center. Not
often at first, but I was so used to imagining him by now that it almost seemed odd to not see him.
So whenever I was bored, I' d visualize my double. Eventually I started doing it almost all the time. It
was amusing to take him along like an invisible friend. I imagined him when I was hanging out
with friends, or visiting my mom, I Hen brought him along on a date once. I didn' t need to speak
aloud to him, so I was able to carry out with him and no one was the wiser.
I know that sounds strange, but it was fun. Not only was he a walking repository I
knew and eberything I had forgotten, he also seemed more in touch with me than I did at times. He
had an uncanny grasp ofthe minutiae Mady language that I didn' t Hen realize I was picking up
on. For example, I' d thought the date I brought him along on was going badly, but he pointed out
how she was laughing a little too hard at my jokes, and leaning towards me as I spoke, and a bunch
of other subtle clues I wasn' t consciously picking up on. I listened, and let' sjust say that that date
went Tery well.
By the time I' d been at the research center for four months, he was Asith my constantly. The
researchers approached me one day after my shift, and asked me ifi' d stopped visualizing him. I
denied it, and they seemed pleased. I silently asked my double if he knew what prompted that, but
he just shrugged it off. So did L
I withdrew a little from the world at that paints I was hating trouble relating to people. It seemed to
me that they were so confused and unsure of themselfes, while I had a manifestation of myself to
confer with. It made socializing awkward. Nobody else seemed aware of the reasons behind their
actions, why some things made them mad and others made them laugh. They didn' t know what
mated them. But I did - or at least, I could ask myskyland get an answer.
A friend confronted me one evening. He pounded at the door until I answered it, and came in
fuming and swearing up a storm. "You haren' t answered when I called you in - KKK weeks,
I was about to apologize to him, and probably would hate offered to hit the bars with him that night,
but my My grew suddenly furious. "Hit him," it said, and before I knew what I was doing, I had. I
heard his nose break. He fell to the floor and came up swinging, and we beat each other up and
down my apartment. I was more furious then than I hate Her been, and I was not merciful I
knocked him to the ground and gate him two sauage kicks to the ribs, and that was when he fled,
hunched oter and sobbing.
The police were by a few minutes later, but I told them that he had been the instigator, and since he
wasn' t around to refute me, they let me off with a warning. My my was grinning the entire time.
We spent the night crowing about my victory and sneering oter how badly I' d beaten my friend.
It wasn' t until the next morning, when I was checking out my black eye and cut lip in the mirror,
that I remembered what had set me off. My double was the one who' d grown furious, not rue. I' d
been feeling guilty and a little ashamed, but he' d goaded me into a licious fight with a concerned
friend. He was present, of course, and knew my thoughts. "Ton don' t need him anymore. You don' t
need anyone else," he told me, and I felt my skin crawl
I explained all this to the researchers who employed me, but they just laughed it off. "You can' t be
scared orsomething that you' re imagining," one told rue. My double stood beside him, and nodded
his head, then smirked at me.
I tried to take their words to heart, but oter the next few days I found myself growing more and
more anxious around my tuba, and it seemed that he was changing. He looked taller, and more
menacing. His eyes Md with mischief), and I saw malice in his constant smile. No job was
worth losing meming oter, I decided. lfhk was out of control, I' d put him down. I was so used to
him at that paint that visualising him was an automatic process, sol started trying my damnedest
to not visualize him. It took a few days, but it started to work somewhat. I could get rid far
hours at a time. But Ervery time he came back, he seemed worse. His skin seemed ashen, his teeth
more painted. He hissed and gibbered and threatened and swore. The discordant music I' d been
listening to for months seemed to accompany him everywhere, hen when I was at home - I' d relax
and slip up, no longer concentrating on not seeing him, and there he' d be, and that howling noise
with him.
I was still 'siiting the research center and spending my six hours there. I needed the money, and I
thought they weren' t aware that I was now actively not visualizing my tuba. I was wrong. After my
shift one day, about tire and a halftone's in, two impressively men grabbed and restrained me,
and someone in a lab coat jabbed a hypodermic needle into me.
I woke up from my stupor back in the room, strapped into the bed, music blaring, with my
doppelganger standing oter me cackling. He hardly looked human anymore. His features were
twisted. His eyes were sunken in their sockets and filmed oter like a corpse' s. He was much taller
than me, but hunched oter. His hands were twisted, and the fingernails were like Mons. He was,
in short, ' terrifying. I tried to will him away, but I just couldn' t seem to concentrate. He
giggled, and tapped the IV in my arm. I thrashed in my restraints as best I could, but could hardly
mote at all.
They' re pumping you full ofthe good s** t, I think. How' s the mind? All fuzzy?" He leaned closer
and closer as he spoke. I gagged; his breath smelt like spoiled meat: I tried to focus, but couldn' t
banish him.
The next few weeks were terrible. Every so often, someone in a doctor' s coat would come in and
inject me with something, or forcefield me a pill. They kept me dizzy and unfocused, and
sometimes left me hallucinating or delusional. My thoughtform was still present,
mocking. He interacted with, or perhaps caused, my delusions. I hallucinated that my mother was
there, scolding me, and then he cut her throat and her blood showered rue. It was so real that I
could taste it.
The doctors niter spoke to rue. I begged at times, screamed, hurled intestines, demanded answers.
They niter spike to rue. They may hate talked to my tuba, my personal monster. I' m not sure. I
was so doped and confused that it may hate just been more delusion, but I remember them talking
with him. I grew continued that he was the real one, and I was the thoughtform. He encouraged that
line of thought at times, mocked me at others..
Another thing that I pray was a delusion: he could touch rue. More than that; he could hurt rue.
He' d poke and prod at me if he felt I wasn' t paying enough attention to him. Once he grabbed my
testicles and squeezed until I told him I eared him. Another time, he slashed my forearm with one
onhis mom. I still hate a scar - most days I can continue myself that I injured myself, and just
hallucinated that he was responsible. Most days.
Then one day, while he was telling me a story about how he was going to gut Heme I lated,
starting with my sister, he paused. A look crossed his face, and reached out and
touched my head. Like my mother used to when I was feverish. He stayed still for a long moment,
and then smiled. "All thoughts are creative," he told me. Then he walked out the door.
Three hours later, I was geten an injection, and passed out. I awoke unrestrained. Shaking, I
made my way to the door and found it unlocked. I walked out into the empty hallway, and then ran. I
stairs .
There, I collapsed, weeping like a child. I knew I had to keep mating, but I couldn' t manage it.
I got home eventually - I don' t remember how. I locked the door, and shoted a dresser against it,
took a long shower, and slept for a day and a half. Nobody came for me in the night, and nobody
came the next day, or the one after that. It was oter. I' d spent a week locked in that room, but it had
felt like a century. I' d withdrawn so much from my life beforehand that nobody had Hen known I
was missing.
The police didn' t find anything. The research center was empty when they searched it. The paper
trail fell apart: The names I' d geten them were aliases. Even the money I' d received was apparently
untraceable.
I recovered as much as one can. I don' t lease the house much, and I hate panic attacks when I do. I
cry a lot. I don' t sleep much, and my nightmares are terrible. It' s oter, I tell hisself. I serrated. I
use the concentration those bastards taught me to continue myself. It works, sometimes.
Not today, though. Three days ago, I got a phone call from my mother. There' s been a tragedy. My
sister' s the latest victim in a spree cavillings, the police say. The perpetrator mugs his victims,
then guts them.
The funeral was this afternoon. It was as lately a service as a funeral can be, I suppose. I was a
little distracted, though. All I could hear was music caming from somewhere distant: ,
unsettling stu. ff, that sounds like feedback, and shrieking, and a modem dialing up. I hear it still -
a little louder now.
Alright, so I remembered this story from a long time ago, so yes it is a
repeat, when we were going though a morbid phase, and i asked some fellow
tws if they could help my find it. So i need to give all of the credit to
eutherin, WWW, and, most , Luann who actually found the link.
This is a arise creepy story and i just wanted to share it with f) again.