Schizophrenia

This morning I was driving to work - or being driven if I'm telling the truth and I don't really feel like lying this early on because that's a quick way to lose an audience - when a disembodied voice started talking to me from the floormat.

Now, today is my Monday even though it's disguised as a Tuesday, so I admit that my head wasn't quite in the right place. Still, it seemed a bit of a drop from being grumpy about having to go to work in the morning, down to hearing an imaginary voice talking to me.

What was even creepier was that I just couldn't quite make out what it was saying. It was whispering too softly.

I tilted my head to one side, and tried to pick out one word. One word would do. Then I'd know if the voice was talking in English, whereupon I may have to start paying attention, or speaking in another language, whereupon it could not possibly be expecting my monolingual brain to understand.

Still no clarity but the voice certainly had the pattern of English. Not New Zealand English which has a sound rather like eh-eh-eh-eh-eh as we try to merge five distinct vowel sounds into one, but English nevertheless.

I bent my head closer. Surely this was the time when the words would begin to make sense and issue me with their instructions. I could barely wait. What would it be?

Kill the {insert your favourite victim of the day here}.

If a voice from the floormat tells you to do it, I've heard you have no real choice in the matter.

I sat back up as I thought of how awful that would be. Not the murdering, I'm down with that, but I hate it when people tell me what to do. A voice who doesn't even go to the trouble of growing a full grown body around itself would be no fun at all.

Then my darling spoke up and asked the joyous words, 'What's that?'

All the pieces of the puzzle came together as I realised that he couldn't possibly be prone to my auditory hallucinations. He can't even hear me when I'm talking aloud. In the same room. Directly to him.

I reached into my bag and swished around my pile of vitally important bag refuse until I located my mobile phone. I turned off S voice and made sure the on button was facing the opposite way when I tossed it back inside.

So happy I'm not schizophrenic. I've got enough voices to ignore already.