The letters, the words, appear as I read them. I feel sick, dizzy. I'm seeing into the back of my own head, gazing into a well of mirrors that goes on and on endlessly. The words are my thoughts, my movements, my every action. I think it and it appears on the page, letters forming in black ink, smoothly, with no hand to guide them.

I can't look at it any longer. I shuffle the papers, reach the bottom of the pile going back and back. To find the beginning. Since I walked through that first door, I have been recorded, marked and measured, followed and formed.

I take up the papers in shaking hands and tear them, rip them into confetti that falls around me, paper snow. Only a new piece appears, describing my actions, following the drift of the pieces to the floor. Like it, they, are laughing at me, my futile gestures, my hopeless anger.

I don't know what's happening. This is beyond strange, beyond anything. I can almost hear them laughing. Someone is doing this to me. Someone, something, whatever.

"Whatever you are," I say to the empty room. "Whatever you are, I'll kill you."

I force myself to be calm, ease of long practise. I loosen my back and roll my shoulders, rub at my face. I lift up the gun and turn toward the movement I felt behind me. The change I sensed in the air.

RATE THIS BRANCH!