One thing they always say about me: ‘He ruined it for everyone, you know…’ Wherever I go I hear people say this, sometimes out loud but usually in their heads, usually in the privacy of their own thoughts. The important thing is that they all know and that no matter where I go, I can never escape this knowledge that people have about me. It was given to them to understand, all of them. This knowledge has been shared – for whatever reason – with the wider circle of humanity, which is a remarkably rare thing. Whenever I hear someone think this (‘He ruined it for everyone, you know’) I groan on the inside and I have to move on. I find the judgement unbearable, even if it does happen to be true. The fact that it is actually true makes it particularly unbearable. That’s the icing on the cake.

I’m famous, the most famous I’ve ever been, more famous than these brazen 2-dimensional pop stars and celebrities we hear so much about on the Ethernet, only it’s in a bad way. I have to make the point that it’s in a bad way. What’s more, because of the nature of what people know about me no one will ever admit that it is actually a thing. They pretend that it isn’t a thing, although I read their thoughts and so I know perfectly well that it is. It would be no good me cornering someone and forcing them to admit it – they would still insist that they don’t know what I’m talking about and they might get quite indignant about it. That’s happened to me many times. What I do nowadays however is that I play along with it. but it still doesn’t feel good. Their dislike is evident to me no matter how polite they might be on the outside. Sometimes I wonder if I smell, if it could be something as simple as this.

I have a great big frightened mind and wherever I go I bring it along with me. I carry it with me, I lug it around, despite the pain that it brings me. The problem is that I’m too frightened to let go of it, you see. When I think about what would happen to me if I didn’t have this frightened mind of mine that terrifies me more than I can tell. I don’t have the words to explain that terror – what would be there if my frightened mind went away? What would be left? How would I cope? I don’t like this mind of mine all the same – it torments me every day, it gnaws viciously at my vitals like a vulture. It torments me unrelentingly, and that’s why I call it the Great Punisher. It exists only to punish me, I in my turn exist only to be punished. As long as that bit is understood we won’t go too far wrong. As long as that bit is understood, we won’t lose sight of what’s really going on here, and that’s important.

The Great Punisher teaches me what the meaning of my life is but I don’t really understand what that meaning is. After many, many years of this Promethean torture I am still no wiser. ‘What’s it all about?’ I ask myself’, ‘what am I supposed to make of this experience of mine?’ I’m obviously too stupid to understand what the Great Punisher is trying to teach me, I think – no wonder it’s so very angry with me! The sun has climbed high into the sky, I notice. I don’t know what I’ve been doing all morning. It must be nearly midday by now and I’m still sitting here, grubbing about in the dust. Sweat is running down my forehead in streams and I’m starting to feel light-headed. I look up into the sky and I realise that it isn’t the sun up there making me sweat but the Great Punisher. As I look up, squinting my eyes as I do so against the glare, I can see his face – small at this distance but clearly incredibly angry. Clearly incredibly wrathful. ‘How can anyone be that angry?’ I can’t help asking, ‘how is that even possible?’

Those malicious features seemed to be etched in miniature in the solar disc. Those hideously distorted features, distorted with rage, distorted with anger – looking down on me from above. Pressing down on me. What a terrible, terrible face that was. I could feel it like an actual weight leaning down on me. Crushing me with its implacable hatred, choking the very life out of me. It was hard to breathe – the very fact that I was still alive, still breathing was an affront to the intent of that malign presence suspended high above me. ‘How dare you live in the face of my wrath’, that wizened, hateful little face seemed to be saying. My body was growing weak, as if under the force of this bad intent it could no longer muster the will to live. As if it could struggle no longer in the face of such hostility. I’m haunted by the terrible anger I see in that face – there’s a frightening familiarity to it, a familiarity that I cannot place. Then it comes to me in a flash. Of course – the face is mine. Whose else?