Door No. 8

Door Number Two - Time (1)

"I have to ponder this rationally," Taylor thought and quickly put together a plan to address the current situation. Whether it was real or not, she figured all of this weird stuff kept happening to her around four o'clock, and if she managed to avoid her haunting ghost, hallucination, prankster or whatever he was around that time of day she should be fine. Since the thought of locking herself in the women's restroom for an hour sounded a little bit like overkill, she moved to the next best option, which was spending every single second in Christine's company.

First, she wanted to assess whether Christine could see her "ghost", or if he was a hallucination of her stressed out mind, and second, she was kind of hoping that a public setting would deter future kidnapping attempts.

She decided to skip the cafeteria for the day and packed a sandwich to eat on the campus green, a place that always seemed to be very busy around four in the afternoon. So, between Christine's company, being out in a very crowded space and having a method to verify whether or not she was seeing things, she felt better about herself and proceeded with her day.

Four o'clock came and went, exactly as planned, and despite some trepidation about being approached, which set her on edge and drew slight suspicion from her friend, nobody showed up to disturb their late lunch.

"Well," she thought, "that's one way to return to sanity. Nothing to see here, moving on," she joked to herself, as she and Christine walked to the campus bookstore to pick up supplies for her biology class. It was still early, so Taylor figured maybe she and Christine could go for a pizza later on; the pizzeria was the unofficial hub of social activity on campus and she suddenly thought that maybe hanging out with some of the people in her class wasn't such a bad idea. Christine replied, a little embarrassed.

"Sorry, Taylor, but I kind of...hhm...have plans for the evening," she blushed to the root of her hair. Since Taylor looked at her, still confused, she felt obligated to clarify. "I have a date. He's meeting me at eight, in fact I have to hurry, I'm already late."

"What on earth do you mean? It can't be more than five, you've got three hours!"

"No, it's not," Christine said, "it's seven forty five, see?" She showed her friend the wall clock. "I've got to run! Sorry!" She turned around to exit the bookstore, almost knocking over a person in the process; she stumbled, confused, executed a left-right-left maneuver to go around him, said sorry again several times, blushing even more out of embarrassment, if that were possible, and then finally found a clear path and ran for the door. It was already dark outside, but that didn't startle Taylor as much as one would have expected, because the person Christine had bumped into was her fateful neighbor.

"At least now I know I'm not imagining him," she thought, and her brief feeling of relief was immediately replaced by dread when she realized that if this guy was real, then maybe her trip to the other side of the world was too and some new ordeal was sure to follow.

"Hi," he said, with the conversation tone of an old acquaintance. If anybody in the store saw them talking, they would have assumed the two were good friends, or family, even.

She thought of protesting about their being in the bookstore together, and then she realized how absurd that would sound and reconsidered, while watching the door and thinking up a good parting phrase that would allow her to leave immediately. As always, he seemed to be unperturbed by her body language, which would have made it clear to anybody else that her demeanor was hostile.

"Do you always go out without a coat in the middle of winter? Lucky for you I grabbed one from your closet on the way here." She handed her a heavy winter coat, which she ripped out of his hands, furious.

"You went through my closet?!" she raised her voice. "That's outrageous!" She was so upset that she didn't bother to question the winter comment.

"I realize this is a bit unorthodox, but it was a matter of health, safety and welfare. As I said, I'm responsible for your well-being, I don't want you to catch pneumonia during my class."