‘Pay undivided attention to the lie that defines you’, I proclaim grandiosely. I’m being grandiose even by my standards! That is my mantra, you see – that’s my good old mantra. I’m always repeating it to myself and it doesn’t matter whether it’s day or night. That doesn’t matter at all. Only it isn’t my mantra, not really. I never repeat it in the day and I never repeat it in the night either. Not even once in my life did I ever repeat that mantra to myself.

‘Exceptional days bring forth exceptional events’, I always say, and today has proven to be no exception. Today has proven itself to be no exception at all! ‘Exceptional events are often very exceptional, I enthuse enthusiastically, a great big maniacal grin spreading infectiously across my grotesquely swollen face. My infectious good humour is infectious only to me however – no one else can catch it. It’s a closed circuit – I’m in a self-infector you could say, and everyone else remains unaffected. I’m a carrier but not a spreader, in other words.

My eyes are bigger than my ears and that is very fortunate since where I am there is no sound, never any sound. You never heard the like of the silence down here. I live deep under the earth’s crust you see, miles and miles beneath the surface of the planet and everything is inky silent down here. Everything is total inky silence. All around me the prey move silently hither and thither, impossible to detect with the everyday senses but very tasty all the same. As tasty as fried bubble-gum, as tasty as last week’s shepherd pie…

‘Pay unbroken attention to the lie that defines you’, I whisper to myself, ‘and mayhap the dire illusion of existence will dissolve…’ I speak cheerily, and with great confidence, but many are the ones who doubt my words. Many are the doubters we might say, and on those who doubt there falls a terrible affliction. On those who do not doubt there falls a terrible affliction too of course. On those who believe there also falls an affliction. We’re afflicted whichever way we turn, I’m afraid. There isn’t a thing any of us can do to avert the disaster. Small wonder we’re all so ratty! Small wonder we’re all such bad losers…

‘We are the afflicted ones / and no hope remains for the likes of us’, as the line in the famous song goes. That good, good song. That good, good song that I love so much. That good, good song that doesn’t actually exist. We are the unfortunate afflicted ones. We are the afflicted ones and hard indeed is our affliction to bear. I see you nodding your head wisely in agreement. You always nod your head wisely in agreement – in my mind you do anyway. In my mind you always do. You recognise the burden just as much as I do, after all. You too are aware of the dreadful, dreadful burden that we all have to bear – you are all too aware! I speak here of the dire affliction of existence, as you know. No one else knows of this affliction, but we do…