I started to hallucinate and everything suddenly became unreal. I was hallucinating like crazy and the real world was gone forever, gone as if it had never existed – which it hadn’t and which it never could have done. Don’t ever think it, don’t ever think it, for it wasn’t and never could be. I hallucinated myself and I hallucinated everything else too. I hallucinated myself hallucinating, and I hallucinated that too. Is this the moment, I asked myself at that precise moment, and immediately I knew that it was. I knew without having to ask, even though I did ask. I asked just for the sake of asking.

I hadn’t hallucinated this much for a long, long time, I realised, and then I realised that this realisation was also a hallucination. It had never happened, I realised – it had never happened and I had never thought that it hadn’t either. I never thought that I never thought that I never thought. The hallucinations started to hallucinate themselves at this stage and no one knows where that leads! No one knows what happens after this. No one can tell you. The hallucinations were hallucinating themselves at this stage and there’s no telling where this may lead, no telling at all. If you thought that your hallucinations were frighteningly extreme, then perhaps you should meet your hallucination’s hallucinations…

It all gets a bit much really, doesn’t it? It goes past a certain point and once this happens then there’s this queer feeling that straightaway comes over you. The queerest feeling you’ve ever had. You start to realise that you might have gone just a shade too far. A moment of doubt befalls you as it sinks in that there’s actually no going back. There’s no going back and there’s nothing to go back to anyway. We all know that moment of course and I’m sure no one here will try to pretend that they don’t. I used to pretend that this had never happened to me, of course – I tried to pretend, I must admit. I tried as hard as I could to pretend that something like this ad never happened but I got found out. I get found out every time.

It goes beyond a certain point, you see. It goes beyond a certain point and then there’s this moment where you realise that whatever it was you thought had happened before that point hadn’t happened at all. It’s as simple as that – you thought that there had been something but the point is that there hadn’t been. There had been nothing before the point of no return and so that means that there was no point. It didn’t happen, as the voice in your head will happily tell you. It never happened and it never could have done. We all have our stories however and I’m not going to deny that. No indeed. We all have our stories and we must stick to them. Stick to your stories my friend, stick to them for all you’re worth. Stick to your stories through thick and through thin. Because that’s the Universal Rule. There’s no point to the rule, but it’s the rule nonetheless.

The hallucinations were coming thick and fast now, like heavy snow in the dead of winter blowing right into your face in the middle of a terrible blizzard. You can’t see an inch in front of you. You’re snow-blind. When your mind isn’t free then that’s a terrible thing you say, and my mind is never free. It writhes on the end of my line like a fearsome eel from the deep. It could strip a person’s flesh from their face in a single bite – that’s what these fearsome eels are like. When your mind isn’t free then you’re in for a hard time, my friends. If my experience is anything to go by, that is. If my experience is anything to go by then I must say that I don’t envy you. No sir – I don’t envy you at all.