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Zannick

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    WCT - [COMPETITION OVERHAUL - NEED IDEAS] The Writing Competition Thread

    in Competitions

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    Had this idea earlier in March, just never got around to getting it down until this past weekend. Enjoy. (:

    The Replacement

    I want to start by dispelling some common myths about psychologists. First, not every patient we get is crazy or clinically insane like in the movies. Mental disorders are generally treated by psychiatrists, not psychologists. Occasionally I will refer a patient to a psychiatrist, but it's not really the norm around here.

    I admit, though, it does happen on occasion. I have had one middle-aged man come in every five or six months, registering as a new patient, and firmly believing that he had never come in before. This by itself wasn't the most intriguing thing about his case--the memory issue alone could have been treated fairly easily, and his family would have known how to deal with his memory loss.

    The man believed that he was being followed by someone who looked exactly like him. A clone. A clone that intended to kidnap him and take his place.

    Now, it could be that he was taking some medication which is giving him hallucinations, or that he was bad at recognizing people, or maybe he had a twin that he doesn't know about (or has Alzheimer's and doesn't remember). The Alzheimer's idea didn't really appeal to me until the second time he showed, but the first time he came to my office I was not quite sure what to think. I just let him talk, for the most part.

    "Why are you telling me this?" I asked him when he paused.

    He shrugged. "You seem like a trustworthy guy. I... I picked you at random from the phonebook. I needed to find someone not connected to me...I can't trust anyone my family or friends recommend."

    "Well," I said, closing my notebook. "I'm going to recommend a different doctor for you, as I don't think I'll be able to help you. A friend of mine, Dr. Martin." I handed him a card. It read "Ambrose Martin Psychiatric Services".

    He looked at it for a moment, then turned it over and looked at the blank back of the card. He seemed a little sad when he looked up. "I guess you don't believe me."

    "I don't believe I can help you."

    He shook his head and left.

    He had paid cash, and refused to give us any emergency contact information. Of course, we couldn't contact anyone anyway due to patient privacy laws.

    The second time he visited, several months later, he became agitated when I told him he had visited before.

    "What do you mean?" he shouted. "I picked this place at random from a phone book just this morning! Wait..." He grew silent. "Then *he's* been here."

    "Huh?"

    "The clone!" He hissed at me. He left immediately, claiming he couldn't trust us, now that we've done business with his clone.

    Worried, I called Ambrose to ask if he had spoken to this man, whom I now suspected might be suffering from Alzheimer's. But he hadn't seen him. The man had chosen to ignore my reference.

    Of course, I didn't worry about it too much. It had been several months since the first visit and I spoke to the man for all of half an hour the first time, and not even five minutes the second time. There was simply too much else that needed to be done that I quickly forgot about the patient.

    The third visit was about six months later, and the fourth another six later. I avoided telling him that he had visited before. The conversation was very similar to the first visit. He said he felt like he could trust me, even though he had chosen my office at random from the phone book.

    The fifth visit he brought in a tape.

    "I had this idea, Dr. Ross, that maybe I should bug my own room, you know, in case anything were to happen, I could have evidence." He handed me the cassette. "But really strangely, the place I went to hide it... there was already a recorder there. With this.

    "I don't know what to think anymore. I don't remember the conversation there. I certainly don't remember... agreeing to anything. I'm really scared, Dr. Ross. Scared for my life."

    I examined the tape later that night. I'm no audio expert (I only have a pair of headphones and a cassette player to listen on), but as far as I could tell, he was having a conversation with himself. I can't say for sure that he was faking it, but...

    The conversation was strange, too. There were lines like "I'm not going to go easy" and "You agreed to this, just like the rest of us. Or have you forgotten?"

    It wasn't great audio. Perhaps he should have used a hidden video camera. I'm not sure that would have been any better. Maybe a little harder to fake, if he really wanted to.

    The sixth visit was a couple of weeks ago. Again, it was his first time in the office. There was no tape, no mention of any sort of recording devices he had hidden.

    So why am I writing you about all this? I've actually started to believe him, and I'm worried that I've caught something infectious. I just want to make sure someone knows, just in case. I saw someone following me two days ago, and he looked just like me.

    Just like me.

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