Well, I'm a month and a half into graduate school and with class work, teaching first year physics labs, searching for a research supervisor, class work, marking first year physics labs, and more class work, I'm more than just a little busy. But these last few days have made me think I've snapped under the load. Let me explain.
Alright, Thursday. Thursday mornings I teach a lab at 8:00 in the morning, a.k.a. ridiculously early (at least for the non-morning person I am). The lab went fine and I think there are 21 more people in the world who know how to use an oscilloscope because of it, but that was only the beginning of the day. After lunch I settled in to the computer lab to work on my quantum mechanics assignment. That was a relatively uneventful eight hours except for five minutes right in the middle.
Around 6:30 I heard these horrible screams coming from outside the building. They went on and on but I couldn't see any source for it because the dense foliage outside the computer lab windows. Those of us who were still around the lab after-hours guessed that someone had a bad drug experience as we went outside and saw no evidence of any sort of altercation. By the time I went home I paid it little mind because, well, I was tired.
Friday, on my way to the university, I saw some weird things while I was riding on the bus. First, up on Burrard Street, I saw this group of street people (or at least I guessed they were street people; they looked like they hadn't had access to a shower or laundry machines in the last week) walking down the street, with this odd shuffling gait in perfect synchronicity. Later, along Broadway, I saw some more people walking along with that odd gait, only these ones were in really rough shape. And I mean really rough shape. We're talking spreading blood-spots, half-severed limbs, and the like. The strangest part was that they didn't seem to care. Friday was another busy day so I didn't have time to see if there were more people acting like this around the university.
This morning was the last straw. Someone looking rather worse for the wear shuffled up to me on the street, grabbed my arm, and moved as though he was going to chew on it. Naturally, I tried to get away from him, but my first attempts failed. Feeling somewhat desperate, I jerked my arm sharply away and was able to free myself. Looking back at him, I noticed that I had broken four of his fingers right off, and he didn't even flinch. Blood and even more distasteful things were smeared over the arm of my jacket. I seized this opportunity to run away, noticing that the guy wasn't moving very fast.
Now I've been really absorbed in my work lately, it's esoteric work, and I've heard people talk about advanced mathematical theorems as a psychoactive substitute, but I didn't think they meant it this seriously. If there was some evidence that other people had seen some of these things maybe I wouldn't think I'm going crazy...