Madness and reality

Yesterday I was out on the balcony with my son and his girlfriend, and we heard a deep booming voice say “Get out of my house. Now.”

We peered down to the sidewalk below and spotted a man walking by.

“No point looking for Joe,” the man continued, “He’s dead. He was murdered three weeks ago.”

There was a pause, and then he said “I saw her myself. I saw her physical body as it entered.”

Then he turned into the building next door.

I know that guy. He was one of the professional movers who moved me into this apartment in February. He and one of the other movers really liked my old place and decided to rent it. I spent two hours chatting with him while he assembled furniture in my new place. I got no sense at all that there was anything wrong with him. Just a friendly guy and a hard worker. He told me about his parents, his two marriages, his previous jobs.
A few weeks ago he knocked on my door and handed me a bottle of wine which he said was to thank me for helping him get the apartment.

But now he’s walking down the street talking to voices nobody else can hear. His voice even sounds different: louder, deeper, slower, clearer.

“I think he’s schizophrenic,” said Tara, “And I think schizophrenics are actually in another dimension.”

On the surface I didn’t give this theory much credence. Schizophrenic, maybe, but another dimension? Ha.

But over the course of the evening and this morning, it kept coming back to me. How do we KNOW the voices aren’t real? Maybe they’re real, but we just can’t hear them and he can. What if instead of him having a disability, maybe he’s got an EXTRA ability? Maybe it’s us who are lacking a sense, and maybe it’s him who is more finely tuned. Maybe there’s a parallel universe, or multiple parallel universes, and he’s got one foot in this one and one foot in the next one?