Instincts

I knew when I came around to the world from my deep, dreamy, sleep; that something was wrong.  The world around me seemed different; I was scanning the room with my eyes like a hawk searching for prey, to see if anything had changed.  I felt different, something about myself had changed; was it my body? Was it my mind? Was it my feelings?  Or was it all my imagination?  I seemed more alert, my senses were heightened; my head jolted to the left as I heard the buzzing of a mosquito’s wings far in the corner of the room.  My eyes were locked onto its body, bobbing up and down frantically; I had an urge to lunge out at it and attack, like a leopard for a gazelle.  It then became apparent to me, once the mosquito had flown out the window, that I seemed to have renewed instincts, I’d become some sort of predator.  How had this happened?  What had I done to make this happen?  Yesterday was a normal day, nothing strange or different happened?  I woke up late at around 10:30, as usual, and I quickly got dressed, grabbed my books, and sprinted to my lecture; got there at 10:45, 45 minutes after I should have been there, snuck into the auditorium, sat down and tried to catch up with what the lecturer was talking about.  Nothing significant happened?  I decided to sit up on the side of my bed, scratching my thigh relentlessly, the itch wouldn’t give in!  I took a look at the underside of my thigh to find a round insect bite about a centimetre in diameter.  Which was when I remembered I saw a mosquito in the auditorium that was bothering me; it was very similar that which was in the corner of my room.  It had the same shiny bronze-like colour, which was something I’d never seen before, but I never took that into account until now.   Was this what had changed me?

Before I knew it, sitting on the side of my bed contemplating what has happened; I was late, again, but this time to meet with my friends at the pool club.  So yet again I was getting dressed in a rush, scrounging around my room for some rare student money, and running to the pool club.  By the time I got there they were already playing, and as I went in they had a light-hearted moan at me about being late as usual; I just smiled and went along.  I wasn’t really paying attention to anything that was happening around me, my mind was occupied with what was going on with myself; my reaction to jokes and talk was lifeless and my game play was poor.  Although my new reactions kept kicking in, when the pool balls cracked into each other all around the room, my eyes would lock onto them; it became too much, being sensitive to the cracking of pool balls together in a pool hall was not easy to put up with; but I had to deal with it to make everything seem alright.  Although my mind was preoccupied, I could tell that on the outside I wasn’t looking or being the way I usually am; and I could also tell that my friends were noticing it.  After about an hour they were asking the usual “You alright mate?” that standardised question we all asked if someone in the group seemed different to usual.  I replied with a low, boring acknowledgment of “yeah”, which really didn’t rid them of their suspicions that something was wrong with me; but never the less they accepted my answer and carried on playing pool and talking as usual, but with the knowledge that something defiantly wasn’t right with me.