The Corruption Of Ages

‘I’m so angry!’ – Signed, Mr Angry. ‘I’m such a fuckwit!’ – Signed, Mr Fuckwit. ‘Thank you for your correspondence!’ – Mr Analogue. ‘Yours sincerely’ – signed, Mr Sly Tongue. ‘All of these things and more,’ I told myself. ‘All of these things and more…’ My head was teeming with nonsense. It was like a saucepan of raging, boiling fluid – a terrible storm in a teacup. To see all that fluid boiling madly, frantically, tempestuously, in the way that it was, frightened me – ‘No one ever should have to see something as frightening as that,’ I told myself, trying to cheer myself up. ‘Many things have I witnessed,’ I told myself, ‘but none as terrible as this.’ I was witnessing the egos of course. Witnessing the psychologically egos. ‘How are you doing, good buddy?’ I called out cheerfully, ‘how’s your bloody old day going?’ It was a zombie ego I was talking to – dull of expression and full of bad intent. Its face was corrupted; it’s face was full of the corruption of ages. ‘Is it myself that I’m witnessing?’ I asked myself, ‘is this my true, underlying self?’ If the answer to this question was ‘Yes’ then this wouldn’t bode well for me, I reflected sombrely. It wouldn’t bode well for me at all. ‘We are many…’ another marauding ego told me. This one had a pleasing look to it – it presented as a handsome man of about 40 years of age sporting a fine handlebar moustache and a straw hat, which it wore with jaunty impudence. The straw hat, that is. The ego’s jaw was set firmly, denoting one who has surpassingly great determination in life, and will not be shaken off their purpose. ‘I like the cut of your jib son’ I told him, nodding my head approvingly. ‘A young man such as yourself will go far in life…’ A young man such as yourself, a young man such as yourself. I remembered all of a sudden when that very same phrase had been said to me, all those years ago. I was merely parroting the phrase back, I realised with a shock. The phrase was living through me – I was simply transmitting the disease. That was my only role. I felt ashamed of how badly I gone wrong since those early years of promise. Those early so-promising years. Shame hung in thick flabby mottled folds from my body. Then I realised that the mottled unruly folds were my body – I had transformed into a great grey nematode. I had been serving a life sentence on the Prison Planet Urath at the time and the governor taken me under his wing. I was to be a professional executioner, dispatcher of the rich and famous. I had a natural talent. All that talent has gone to waste now though and that’s why the shame torments me so. All that early promise, all that talent – all gone to waste, all gone to waste. All flushed down the toilet. I wanted to punish myself then but I was too afraid of the pain to do so.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

0 thoughts on “The Corruption Of Ages

  1. shapeofshapes

    Stock phrases are the worst,
    two a penny in the stores until they are unavailable due to huge demand and no one further notices

    Reply

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