I had gotten into the habit of playing a very dangerous game in my mind, imagining vividly to myself things that could never happen, things that oughtn’t ever to happen, pretending to myself that they were actually real. Getting lost in my own fantastical creations in this way I soon became a fool and all those who saw me mocked me. Only they didn’t – that was all in my mind.

I was running down the street, squealing with indecorous excitement, ‘The Lord of Evil rules supreme,’ I babbled, ‘he has inflicted final ignominious defeat upon the decadent Forces of Light and he is now the Lord and Master of All!’ This  turned out not to be the case however and before very long my behaviour was brought to the attention of the Angels of Light who governed this city and I was brought before them, my eyes all wild and staring, my hair unkempt and full of tangles. ‘What’s your problem, geezer?’ the chief angel asked me, ‘you’re bang out of order here, you do realise that?’

My mind was at once inventing helpful scenarios by the lorry-load but unfortunately none of them were true. Luckily I have always been good at thinking on my feet and this situation proved to be no exception. ‘Well your honour,’ I replied obsequiously, ‘It’s like this: I was misled by an evil spirit but it ran away at the sight of you, since it was unable to bear the astral radiance that pours from your being.’ ‘Is that so,’ the wise but stern Angel of Light asked me softly, looking right into my eyes, ‘are you sure that it’s not you who are the evil spirit and that you’re not telling me big fat porkies in order to get your sorry ass out of the mess you’re in?’

I admitted instantly that this was so and that I’d been trying to slip off the hook by saying what I just said. ‘You’ve got me bang to rights guvnor,’ I told him, ‘I can’t fool the likes of you, that’s obvious.’ I grovelled pathetically on the ground, hoping to appeal to his better nature. The angel wasn’t having it though – he wasn’t going to fall for my transparent bullshit. No one ever does, come to think of it. ‘What’s an evil spirit like you doing within the sacred precincts of the City of Light?’ he asked me coldly, ‘what’s your bleeding game?’

I replied in a downcast fashion that I had merely been looking for a bit of fun but that now I had seen the error of my ways. ‘I merely act in accordance with my nature’ I explained dolefully, ‘for I am as you so rightly observe an evil spirit, albeit one of insignificant rank, and that is simply the kind of shit I get up to’. ‘That’s as maybe,’ says he, unimpressed by my self-serving logic, ‘but that doesn’t make me any better disposed to you, does it now?’ He conferred with his fellow angels then and by the grim look on their faces I knew that my luck had run out. My days of running down the street bawling ludicrous nonsense about the Lord of Evil were well and truly over, by the look of it.

I decided to play my last card: ‘The Lord and Master of Unclean Things will come to save me!’ I called out defiantly, ‘you see if he doesn’t…’ The assembly of angels stared at me in frank amazement. ‘I rather doubt it,’ the chief angel answered eventually, ‘I doubt that very much indeed. The Lord and Master of Unclean Things is not allowed to venture within the City of light, as well you know, and in any event he doesn’t give a shit about you.’ I agreed, in most in my most humble and contrite tones, that this was undoubtedly true – ‘I was only just playing my last card you see,’ I answered, ‘it was worth a shot, after all…’