I was living in the normal and correct environment and everything was normal and correct, just the way it should be. I became uneasy however, despite this. Unease had crept surreptitiously into the picture and it wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. ‘I’m living in the normal and correct environment’, I barked officiously, trying to frighten off the uneasy feeling that had descended upon me. I barked like a sea lion, I barked long and loud, but to no avail… I felt the forces of evil stirring deep within me and I knew I had to act decisively so as not to let things slip. ‘Don’t let things slip’, my mind cried out to me, ‘don’t ever let things slip!’
Don’t ever let things slip, my friends – that’s my solemn warning to you. My most solemn warning. Letting things slip is bad – you probably know that yourself anyway. Most people do. The world is full of warnings of course. Warnings on all sides, serious warnings, warnings of the direst nature. We ignore them because that’s human nature and there’s nothing anyone can do about human nature – we just have to suffer it. We just have to endure it. It is our lot to be stubborn in our pursuit of unhappiness.
I was having a normal day and that was good. This is how things are supposed to be, I told myself in smugly satisfied tones. Nothing pleases me more than when things are exactly what they are supposed to be. That feels right, that feels very right indeed. I get angry when people say it isn’t right; the word ‘anger’ doesn’t even come close to describing how I feel when I hear people deny the true and proper way of things. They are blaspheming against God. I literally cannot understand how anyone could be so wilfully perverse as to go against God’s law. ‘What’s wrong with them?’ I ask myself incredulously, on such occasions, ‘what gives them the right to go against the Almighty in this way? Why can’t they obey God’s commandments like the rest of us?’
That’s me anyway – that’s my story. That’s what I’m all about. It’s very important to be sure of what you are all about otherwise Satan will immediately take control of you. The Great Evil One casts a very dark shadow, as you know, and that shadow will fall over your life so that nothing good can ever happen to you again. Things will go to rack and ruin very quickly then, I can tell you! I can assure you of that. You will be a plaything for the Forces of Evil and no one wants that. You’ll be possessed by innumerable clamouring demons in the blink of an eye and you know what that’s like! We all know what that’s like and it’s not very good. It’s not exactly a barrel of laughs when that happens, as of course you yourself are very well aware.
People say that I have the eyes of a great malignant toad and that this remarkable feature adds distinction to what would otherwise be a rather lacklustre physical appearance. They say this but I don’t know if it’s true. They could be lying of course. They could be lying out of their innate incorrigible badness. On the other hand, maybe they’re right. Maybe they were right all along. ‘Maybe you are the Great Evil One in disguise,’ my thoughts tell me, ‘did you ever think of that? Did you ever stop to consider that you mightn’t be ‘a plaything for the Forces of Evil’ so much as being the Force of Evil yourself?’ There probably isn’t that much difference between the two things anyway at the end of the day, it occurs to me in a moment of sombre realization. It’s kind of splitting hairs either way. My thoughts were taking to me a very dark place, you see. They always do, of course – they always do…
