There is no more immediacy in life, no more joy, no more spontaneity. That’s what I have come to notice. ‘Why is there no more immediacy in life, why is there no more spontaneity?’ I raged. I wish to blame the Others for this you see, those sinister, shadowy, semi-fictional presences whose existence and malign intent I sometimes suspect. The ‘Others’ – the very mention of them is sufficient to cause chills run up my spine. The Outsiders, the Strange Ones, the ‘ones who are not me’. ‘Maybe they don’t exist at all’, I comforted myself – how could they, anyway?’ Logic told me they were no ‘Others’. Logic tells me that there can’t be any such thing. But then again, I philosophised, if there were no others then it would be necessary to invent them. Who else could I blame for the unholy mess, the unholy misery that was my life? My anger knows no bounds, of course. My anger never knows any bounds. I rage without cease.

But aside from that, things aren’t so bad, I tell myself. Things were never better in fact. When I was at school the teacher informed me that I was totally lacking in moral fibre, that I had no team spirit, and that I would never come to any good. The educational psychologist said that I was a narcissist and incapable of empathy. But then again, I never did go to school – not really. That was just a myth I created in order to explain the riddle of my own existence. I have a supremely important role to play in this cosmic existence of ours you see – that has been foretold in the legends – but many difficulties lie in my path. Chief amongst those difficulties are the Others, who plot against me and yearn for my destruction. Why did the Others hate me so very much, I often wonder? How monstrously unjust it is. How monstrously unjust. How wrong it is to persecute an innocent person, how very wrong…

Is it any wonder that I hate the Others so much? Even though I don’t really believe in them I hate them – if the enemy didn’t exist then it would be necessary to invent them, didn’t someone say that? Maybe I said that – quite possibly it was me who said it. It sounds like something I might say. When I was doing time in Feltham Young Offenders Institute the psychologist there said that I was a psychopath, incapable of feeling remorse. I proved them all wrong in the end of course – I proved them all wrong in the end. Not that any of that ever actually happened of course – as I have already pointed out. This is just a myth I created in order to explain the riddle of my existence, such as it is. Such as it is. The myth is that I cannot truly realise my destiny and become who I meant to be because I am constantly being undermined by those who are jealous of my potential greatness. That is why I am as enfeebled as I am, as diminished as I am – the butt of every joke, the fall guy who every stranger in town feels perfectly at liberty to come up to and piss upon. ‘It will not always be thus, however’, I counsel myself. ‘It will not always be thus…’