My new body was that of a giant flatworm. I was bright pink with no head and I was flat just like a ribbon which made me not very nice to look at, but on the plus side I was very, very strong – far stronger than I had ever been before. I had actually been quite weak before. I was also very flexible, I could wriggle under a door in seconds and this made it near impossible for anyone to catch me. I decided to become a criminal as the chances were that I could become very successful at a criminal career and this would be good as I have never been successful at anything else in my life. I didn’t particularly like my new body, it unnerved me when I saw it in the mirror, but at the same time I knew I could turn it to my advantage.
I had tried my hand at being a criminal before of course but I just hadn’t been very good at it. I got caught every time I did something illegal and as a consequence I was always doing bird. ‘Do your bird, mate!’ the other guys would shout from their cells, full of camaraderie and good cheer. ‘Do your bird mate, do your bird mate, do your bird mate…’ It was a joke – just about the only joke we had. In one way you had to do your bird of course – what else were you going to do? But in another way it meant that you should just keep your head down, stay out of trouble, and get on with it. In some ways those were the happiest days of my life – things have gone seriously downhill since then. I think what it is is that I’m not very good at responsibility – give me enough responsibility and I’m bound to screw it up! Give me enough responsibility and I’ll screw it up every time…
The game had changed dramatically since then however because now I was a giant flatworm. Well, I’m still me but my body has changed. My new body is full of energy, it is vibrant with energy. It actually can’t stay still for a moment – it is ceaselessly undulating, ceaselessly rippling, ceaselessly flowing. I have lost the ability to sit still; I have lost the ability to sit at all, come to think of it! I wondered what crimes I could commit now that I was a flatworm. What crimes does a flatworm commit? What are its typical offences? ‘Here you see a typical flatworm offender,’ I told myself solemnly, as if I was an investigative journalist doing a newscast, ‘observe the pink, muscular body. A flatworm can wriggle under a closed door in seconds; having no bones it is incredibly flexible. When you go to grab a flatworm it simply slips from your grasp.’
I grew restless with this game after a few minutes and left the house without bothering to open the door. I set off undulating down the road at a tremendous pace. A new life was about to begin for me. My new life was about to begin and I had absolutely no idea what was in store for me! I had no plans either – all my plans were immature fantasies. My whole life up to this point had been made up of me trying to enact one immature fantasy or another. I was going to say that ‘my whole life up to this point in time had been composed of me unsuccessfully trying to live out my various immature fantasies’, but that goes without saying really, doesn’t it?
