I grew angry because I thought I should have been the President of Europhrasia but there is no such place. I screamed and I screamed and I screamed. I screamed out my frustration to the world! I wanted to write the story of my life but nothing had ever happened to me – nothing worth mentioning anyway. I was meant for something better than this, I informed myself. I wore a business suit and I had an important life. I was meant for something better than this, I realised. I was watching TV shows but none of them satisfied. I was chewing gum but it failed to deliver. That’s the story of my life right there, I realised. I was looking for that moment of gratification and fulfilment but all I found instead was sterility and boredom, the consequences of a wasted life. ‘Why must I always suffer the consequences of a wasted life?’ I asked myself bitterly. ‘Don’t I deserve better than this?’ I should have been more than this and yet I’d failed to make the appropriate effort. I had failed to make any effort. The days were long and filled with tedium – unremitting tedium. I was the tedium and the tedium was me. Wherever I go there I was, sitting there with a smirk on my face. Wherever I look there I am. With that sick, sick smirk plastered all over my face. If I could have punched myself in the head I would have done so. The crunch of bones as my fist connects. The full weight of my body behind the blow and the awful scream of pain that unfailingly follows. They called me Mad Dog Anderson when I was in the army only I never was in the army. I wore a shabby business suit and I worked in a run-down office in Herne Bay. I should have been the CEO of a large corporation but I never had the breaks. I saw myself wherever I looked, sitting there with that disgusting smirk on my face. I had ruined my own life. I had ruined my own life many times over. Wherever I went I was already there, spoiling things for myself. Deriving perverse pleasure from the fact. Full of that sick, sick satisfaction. ‘You’d have to get up very early in the morning if you wanted to get the better of me’, I told myself. ‘I’m streets ahead of you, boy.’ The days were long and full of intense unremitting tedium. I felt like screaming but I was too emotionally repressed that. On the inside I was angry though. Way down on the inside I’m like an enraged goblin jumping up and down in his squalid little cave. The walls of the cave are covered in black mould – I am trapped in my own brain. ‘We’ve all been there,’ I tell myself wisely but the words are so hollow. The words are as hollow as hell. The words just hang there in the air, dripping with unspeakable malignancy. I have ruined my own life of course and there is no denying it. I got there first and I spoiled it for myself…