People don’t tend to realize this about me but I’m a fully qualified Doctor of Demonology. I studied Pure and Applied Demonology in the Invisible University, the university with no name, the university that doesn’t exist anywhere. I’d hang my doctorate on the wall but that doesn’t exist either. I know my stuff – I’m an adept in the field. More than just an adept. I’ve tangled with more than just a few demons in my time I can tell you. I’ve gone head-to-head with a few demons alright although not all of them had heads. People probably think that I’m just some kind of ejit. What particular kind of ejit I don’t really know – they won’t tell me. They keep it to themselves what kind of an ejit they think I am. A harmless kind. Not the dangerous kind, that’s for sure. They’re wrong though if they think that. They’re very wrong but it’s no good hoping to get them to see that.

I feel so excluded from other people’s happiness. I look around me and I can see life going on everywhere and I feel like I’m shut out, like I’m on the other side of a thick pane of glass. I look around me in the hospital canteen and I can see all the conversations going on all around me on the other tables and I wonder how they do it. It amazes me. I feel so excluded – I’m excluded not only from other people but also from some kind of understanding that everyone else has except for me. Everyone else ‘gets it’ apart from me. I’m missing out on this particular bit of knowledge. Or maybe there’s nothing to get and that’s my problem because I think there is. Everyone else knows that there’s nothing to get and that’s their secret – it’s only a secret from me, however because everyone else knows it. Only they don’t know it because there’s nothing to know. They don’t need to know it – why would you need to know about something that isn’t there? That way lies madness for sure. You really don’t want to go down that road.

I once had an idea for a story about a man working in the state health-care system in the not-so-distant future when most of the human race has either just died or was just about to. Healthcare has shifted, out of necessity, into another realm, another domain – the domain of the bardo state, the gap between one life and the next, the gap between death and rebirth. Medical bureaucracy meets the bardo state, so to speak. Because it has to adapt itself to mankind’s circumstances, which are rather drastic. It was a good idea for a story, even though I never developed it. I was going to call it Quaternary Healthcare in the NHS of the Future. That’s was before the NHS got dissolved back in 2020. I was young and naïve then.

It never does to be too confident in one’s dealings with demons. I’ve learned that the hard way. I’ve had to learn that the hard way – that’s the only way I can learn things! I don’t have any other mechanism. People are oblivious to demonic entities, by and large. Completely and utterly oblivious. Stupidly oblivious. It’s as if they imagine that they are immune to them by not being able to see them, in some sort of bizarre way. The demons know that they can’t be seen and so they don’t pay any heed to people. They couldn’t care less.

They are demons and ghosts and psychic parasites everywhere but no one ever sees them. I can see them, however. I can see them and they straightaway know that I can and that’s where my problems begin. I’m visible to them just as they are to me and that’s an uncomfortable kind of a thing. Very uncomfortable. You try to tell people about demons though and they just don’t want to know. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried? You won’t get anywhere. You’ll bounce off their glass walls. You can trust me on that one. You will hit the glass schizoid wall and when you hit that wall you’ll know about it. By god you will know about it. Try to tell people about all the psychic parasites that are proliferating all over the shop and you’ll soon find out how interested they are. It really does go down a treat. You’ll soon find out that this is one sure-fire way not to make any friends! You don’t need to tell me this. I learned that the hard way too…