I’m trying to stay focused on ‘the real’. ‘Stay focused on the real’!’ I tell myself, in tones of growing alarm. It’s not easy staying focused on the real though, it’s not easy at all. It’s not easy because I don’t know what ‘the real’ is! I’ve never met ‘the real’, I couldn’t even begin to tell you what it looks like. How to know it, how to know it, I fret. If only I had a few hints as to what I was looking for. If only, if only…

I’m full of great and thrilling excitement as I chase after my own mental projections – ‘it’s going to be so great, it’s going to be so great, it’s going to be so great…’ I tell myself as I chase. That’s what I always tell myself. Chasing my projections, so full of excitement. I can’t wait! I’m already making plans as to what I’m going to do once I catch up with them. This kind of stuff never gets old.

The wisdom of the wise and the foolishness of fools, isn’t that it? We are all looking for an answer – I know that much! That much and no more, you might say. That much and no more… Happy times for all, but only in our imaginations, right? What a party we will have; what a party we will have. It sure is a good thing we all have such good imaginations!

It’s late at night and I’m watching endless car ads on the Sony movie channel. Slick, successful egos pose inside sleekly expensive machines. Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. They have a repellent air about them as you might imagine. They have a repellent air about them as befits their nature. We are required to be like them of course – we are always required to be like them. That’s called ‘social engineering’ I do believe. Such is our unhappy fate in this misconceived world of ours.

‘I’m playing the game and I’m trapped in the game,’ I tell myself. ‘I’m playing the game and I’m trapped in the game’. My voice has become maniacal, inhuman in some way. Quite possibly I have turned into a fully-fledged demon, I realise. It’s not as if that hadn’t been on the cards for some time now, after all. My face is twisted into a maniacal sneer – I can feel the deep furrows on my forehead, I can feel the awful tension in my jaw. My face is locked into that hideous sneer; my face is locked into an inhuman rictus. It’s the Demon Rictus, I realise in horror. The mark of demonic possession is upon me and I can’t smooth it away, as much as I may try. My forehead is ridged, my eyeball sunk deep into my head, and my lips have all but disappeared as I bare my teeth involuntarily in that terrible demonic sneer.

‘I can’t go out into the world like this,’ I say to myself. They’ll call the police on me for sure. They’ll call the police on me as soon as they see me. I am very obviously possessed. ‘Possession is nine tenths of the law, after all’, I inform myself solemnly. The police have a mandate to deal harshly with demonic possession, whenever they might come across it. The fabric of decent society has long since fallen into grievous disrepair and the only thing left to hold it together is fear. Fear of the police, fear of being subjected to their brutal interrogation techniques, fear of the counter-measures they will put into place if their instruments indicate that demonic possession has taken place.

Slick successful egos are posing and posturing in expensive top-of-the-range cars. They are showing how it is possible to have a successful, fulfilling and gratifying life if you submit to becoming unspeakably vile egos just like them. You can smell their repellent smugness, their complete lack of interest in anything other than the ongoing charade of their own second-hand reality. You can smell their hideous narcissism without even having to get close to them; you can smell it clear across the TV screen. It’s the dirtiest, filthiest smell in the whole wide world, you realise. You’re nauseated to the core and yet something in you itches to be just like them.

I look at myself in the mirror and I’m appalled at what I see. I no longer have the face of human being at all – I have the face of the snarling jackal. Two large triangular ears stick up high above my head and a steady stream of saliva trickles incessantly from my jaws. I can’t close my mouth because of the profusity of teeth that I now have – I have a mouthful of yellow rotting fangs and bad breath to boot. Breath so appallingly bad that I could very easily choke myself on it if I wasn’t careful. ‘However did it come to this?’ I find myself wondering. ‘However did it come to this?’