Door Number Eight - Door Number Five Splintered Self

Stories

The thing about the human mind is that it trains itself to be very efficient, so it automatically eliminates the events that have an extremely low probability of happening so that the brain doesn’t get burdened with useless information to the detriment of day to day activity. When these very rare events happen, the mind gets confused and resentful, trying in vain to reconcile what it thought it knew about the world with the new image that simply doesn’t fit into that knowledge. Stepping into the hall of doppelgängers without warning definitely fit into this category for Taylor, so she wrapped her arms around the first reasonable justification that came to her mind in order to discount whatever it was that she was seeing with her own eyes.

“I must be drunk, I never should have had that beer,” she closed her eyes to make the image go away.

“Oh, don’t worry, they don’t really look like you, I just altered your perception of them to make it easier for you to notice,” her neighbor whispered behind her.