I was trying to give myself the slip. ‘The hell with this,’ I said, I’m out of here!’ I wasn’t going to stick around to put up with this sort of abuse. No way was I going to stick around… ‘If it was abuse I wanted I could have gotten that back at home,’ I snapped irritably. My nerves were frayed. ‘I’m not hanging around here to take that sort of treatment,’ I grumbled loudly, ‘if it was treatment like that I wanted then I could have got it in any public place. I paid good money to come here, you know.’ No one listened to me of course, no one ever does. It was as if I didn’t exist. It’s always as if I didn’t exist. I’m just not the sort of guy people listen to. I’m a bit like the invisible man in that regard, I’m sorry to say. ‘I’m not staying around here,’ I yelped excitedly, ‘I don’t have to put up with this crap.’ I was trying to give myself the slip but some things are easier said than done. ‘I’m not sticking around to take this type of abuse,’ I growled angrily, just like the proverbial bear with a sore head. ‘If it was abuse I wanted I could get plenty of that outside in the parking lot!’ Plenty of abuse to be had out there in that parking lot,’ I muttered vengefully, to no one in particular, ‘there’s no shortage of abuse there, I don’t think…’ I was in foul form and the longer I hung around the crankier I was getting. ‘To hell with this for a game of soldiers,’ I said to myself as I edged my way to the door, ‘I’m out of here. I don’t have to stay to take this shit…’ But my ploy had been spotted and before I could take another step my chief tormentor had run over to me and was mocking me to my face, belittling and demeaning me the same as he usually does. He loves belittling and demeaning me, preferably in public. He loves humiliating me in front of other people so that they can all have a good laugh at me. He prides himself on making my life a misery and I’m not able to stand up to him. ‘You can’t get away from me that easily, you pathetic dumb-shit’ he laughed scornfully, ‘did you think I wouldn’t notice you trying to sneak out of the door like the wretched cowardly maggot you are?’  ‘It’s not that easy to run away from yourself, you know!’ he jeered. ‘You’re stuck with me, loser-boy,’ he told me nastily, poking me cruelly in the ribs with his long bony finger in time with each word. ‘You’re stuck with me, and I’m going to make your stupid crappy life into a living hell!’