Ever keen to bring down retribution upon the heads of the guilty, and never coming across anyone who wasn’t guilty, I lumbered through the forests, woodlands and scrublands of my ancient homeland roaring like a demented maniac, roaring as if there were no tomorrow, roaring and shouting and bellowing like a pure head case. You could hear me coming miles away.
It had gotten so I didn’t even know what I was seeking retribution for – all that didn’t seem to matter anymore. All I knew was that I was the Bringer of Pain. “I am the Pain Bringer”, I scream hysterically, “I come to cleanse the earth!” My mission was a noble one, there was no doubt about that – there was no mission more noble, no mission more exalted, than the one I was at present embarked upon. A red seething mist covered over my entire field of vision and I knew it was time to strike one last desperate blow in the name of decency and honour. “I might go down”, I vowed to myself, “but I shall go down fighting”.
I was grieving over all our lost tomorrows. “Alas”, I cried out in a stricken voice, “alas for all of our lost tomorrows.” Now there was only the sombre awareness of the Great Mistake, the mistake that could never be undone, the mistake which from which there was now no escape. “But why did you do it?” a small quiet voice spoke up then from deep within me, “why did you make the Great Mistake?” To this question however I could find no answer – I hadn’t a leg to stand up, to be quite honest. I had done the bad thing and there was no way to pretend I hadn’t.
“What had I been planning at?” I wandered, “what in God’s name had I been thinking of?” The mistake had been so big that I didn’t even know what it was – there was simply no way to know what had happened. That’s how it always works you see – that’s what happens when a person makes a truly catastrophic mistake, as I just had done. Amnesia sets in. And then, following the onset of the amnesia, there’s nothing but confusion, nothing but confusion along with a deep and abiding sense of guilt. An awful, ominous sense of guilt, but at the same time you wouldn’t have a clue as to what it was all about. All you know is that you must have done something very bad, something very bad indeed…
“Why did you make the Bad Mistake?” the small, still voice of my conscience asks me again, plaintively. “Why did you do it?” I do my best to deny any culpability of course – I bluster and shout and roar and jump up and down and try to distract the attention elsewhere. I try to smudge the issue and make out that it was someone else’s fault, I try to insinuate that the government or the military or perhaps Big Pharma is involved but this is merely serves to cement my guilt – people only need to look at me to know immediately that I have done something terribly bad. The more I try to deflect suspicion the more it comes home to roost and that’s not a pleasant experience, I can tell you. It’s not a pleasant experience at all…
