There are two totally different worlds that I live in – I know that much but I know no more. One world is joyous, happy, overflowing with benediction. It smiles at me fondly and that makes me feel happy – all is good with me when I am in this world. There is an all-pervasive feeling of acceptance, belonging – approval even. I know I’m good. Everyone knows my name and everyone likes me. That’s the nice world. The other world is glowering and mean and withholding of any type of approval. It’s a savage and cruel and malignant world – it scowls angrily at me as I shuffle apologetically around the place and I feel unwanted, rejected, demonized, terrorized. I know that I don’t belong, I know I shouldn’t be there. I also know that I am hated and despised by this world. It resents me being there, it finds fault in me no matter what I do. This is the evil world.

It might seem strange to you that there are two worlds (and not just the one world) but I’m only just reporting on the evidence of my senses. I don’t like it any more than you do. When I’m in the good world, the nice world, the benedictory world then I’m happy and when I’m in the rotten world then I’m going through hell, not to put too fine a point on it. Everything about my existence is painful then. There is no joy, no happiness, no subtlety, only endless sullen endurance. Endurance for the sake of endurance.

‘People call me the Demon Lord and they have lots of good things to say about me,’ I blurted out loudly at random, to no one in particular. It doesn’t really matter that I don’t ever speak to anyone in particular because no one can hear me anyway – I exist only in my own mind, as the troubled, incoherent product of my own thoughts. Sometimes I think that I do exist and sometimes I think that I don’t, but it doesn’t actually matter which way round I think it because the truth is that I exist either way. Either way I know damn well that I exist because here I am thinking the thought – if a person didn’t exist then they would hardly be going around telling themselves that they didn’t – they wouldn’t need to bother themselves doing that, obviously enough! It would be unnecessary. So I know very well that I exist, even though it’s only my own thoughts that tell me so.

My thoughts tell me that I exist because otherwise what would I be doing going around the whole time wondering like an idiot whether I exist or not? The logic is indisputable. So my thoughts tell me, anyway. My thoughts tell me everything – they tell me whether I exist or whether I don’t exist. whether I’m good or whether I’m bad, whether I’m great or whether I am a sad freak who doesn’t deserve to exist. My thoughts tell me all these things. It’s some roller coaster, I can tell you! One minute my thoughts are telling me that I am supreme and that all other people are losers and then the next moment they’re telling me that the lowliest worm that ever crawled across a footpath has more dignity and sense of purpose than I ever will. How do you figure that one, huh? One minute I’m a demigod resplendent in all his glory, the next I’m cringing, cowering shell of a creature, afraid of everything that moves, constantly apologising for its own wretched existence….

I don’t really exist though, and thought is a lie. That’s my solace in these sad and troubled times. I still go along with the old rigmarole of what my mind is telling me to do. I couldn’t actually tell you why, though. Is it a sense of duty, or loyalty perhaps? Am I superstitious that bad will happen if I break with tradition? Something awful? I suppose the answer that would be closest to the truth would be to say that I’m going through with the rigmarole of believing what my thoughts tell me because I haven’t got what it takes not to. I don’t actually have a lot of willpower of my own – I’m too used to being told what to do, what to think, what to believe. I’m just wandering around looking for someone to tell me how I should behave and what I should think. ‘Tell me what I should believe,’ I cry out piteously – ‘I don’t care what it is, just tell me…’

I’m making a right ejit out of myself here I know. I’m not really like that, in fact I’m just a regular guy – as regular as you please, as regular a guy as you might ever hope to meet. Not a sad abnormal freak at all. I’m not some spook who exists only in his own crappy little mind. His own crappy little mind that doesn’t even exist anyway. Sure I’m not. I was only spoofing you when I said that. Maybe you fell for it, huh? Maybe you did because I’m pretty good at spoofing. Pretty damn good altogether. I wouldn’t blame you if you did fall for my little trick, my little manoeuvre. I know I can be quite convincing. No sir I’m just a regular guy – I wear trousers and shoes and socks and a shirt and I like to drink lots of beer just like any other guy. I drink it until it comes out of my ears and then I fall over into the ditch and piss myself. Then I wake up the next day and go to work. It’s a mad crazy merry-go-round. They call me ‘the Demon Lord’ and they say lots of good things about me…