The Man Who Turned Into Himself

by David Ambrose

  Maybe.

  Or maybe he was just damned if he would let me not believe him. He knew that half of me was rationalising everything he said and writing him off as deluded, while the other half of me was strangely tempted to believe.

  It was true. I'd had this feeling from the first time I met him that there was something unnervingly plausible about him. I've known cases of logorrhea fantastica that would convince even the most sophisticated casual listener, but which I would spot in a second for what they were.

  Hamilton was different. Don't ask how. Somehow. It was almost as if there was a contest between us. He would win if he could persuade me that he was telling the truth and wasn't just sick. I would win if, in the end, I remained convinced that he was sick.

  So how was he going to persuade me? If he'd had somebody else come to me with a message in their head from him, I'd have dismissed them as 'sick', too. I could have rationalised away just about any method he used to contact me. Except this one.

  This I could not dismiss. He was betting that my sanity was the most important thing I had. After all, I was a psychiatrist. I worked on other people's minds, made judgments about them. What would happen if I had to make a judgment about my own? Surely I would be able to satisfy myself that I was sane; and then, he must have reasoned, I would believe him.

  Do I?

  I don't know. I don't know if I know anything any more.

  For the first time in my life, I am truly in the dark.

  Emma