I used to grant myself many favours, back in the day. Many, many favours. Too many favours. Nothing was too good for me – I indulged myself terribly. I indulged myself disgracefully in fact and – as you might expect – I became entitled and insufferable as a result. I became obnoxious and people didn’t like me anymore. Well, they never had done, if I’m to be honest, but you get the point. The point being of course that I was an obnoxious person and that no one liked me.

I was playing a game with myself, a light-hearted party game, you might say. A fun game. It was that game where you have to ask every person in the room what their most special thing is, their most special thing of all. “It’s me!” I reply enthusiastically to my own, somewhat ritualistic question – “I am my own most special thing, no one else!” I jump about then, clapping my hands delightedly, doing my little dance, shouting “It’s me, it’s me, it’s me – I’m the most special person!” I dance and I caper and I clap my hands together until eventually I get sick of the game and wander off to do something else instead.

It’s easy to judge, isn’t it? It’s so easy to judge but at the same time you know it’s the right thing to do. Judging is good and you shouldn’t feel bad about it – who are they to judge you for your judging, after all? What right have they? I was in search of the secret of immortality and eternal youth, you see. I was an esoteric student, a earnest seeker, like the guy in the Tarot Cards. Plodding on in the darkness, in an unassuming way. Stumbling occasionally because I can’t see where I’m going. Wearing a cool looking monk’s hood. That’s what I call a cool look, my friends! A very cool look indeed. I am an esoteric seeker, I said to myself importantly, unsatisfied by the cheap and tawdry inveiglements of a crassly materialistic society. This is another game I like to play, just in case you haven’t guessed!

Play the game boys, play the jolly old game. Play it for all you’re worth –  which might turn out to be considerably less than you expected! To be sure, play it for all you’re worth -what have you got to lose, after all? It does get awful wearisome sometimes however, I must confess. The game that is. It gets appallingly wearisome and when some brain-dead jerk pipes up “Play the game boys” you want to hit them in the head with a length of steel piping. To be sure you do and you’re not ashamed to admit it either. You’d give them a good solid crack in the head that they won’t forget about in a hurry and that’s no lie. Playing the game snuffs out your life spark you see. It’s an addiction. Playing the game always stops at your life spark. It hollows you out – it hollows you out so bad that one day you discover there’s actually nothing left of you!

It’s a game I invented myself, you see – I call it the Me Game. It’s a kind of solitary game, I guess – a bit antisocial perhaps, a bit ignorant, a bit isolationist, but what the hell? It’s every man for themselves so what are you going to do? So anyway there I was playing the game as usual, playing the jolly old Me Game the same as always, when all of a sudden I realised to my horror that playing the game too much had caused me to lose all my essence-quality and as I realised this fact I felt myself imploding in slow motion. I felt myself caving in on myself, amidst a cloud of choking dust.

I’m in the Funhouse having fun. Having a great time, as you might expect. Having a whale of a time. Whaling it up like a boss. Giving the finger to the man. It’s all fun and games in the Funhouse of course, only sometimes not so much. Sometimes not so much at all. Sometimes the Funhouse can turn out downright spooky, full of echoes and unexplained creaking noises, full of feelings of loneliness and despair and suchlike. Feelings that roam around dolefully, rejected and reviled, turned away at every door. Condemned to walk the weary road until the end of it all, until ‘The End of All Days’ comes. Hypnotized by the sheer horror of your experience, unable to believe that this is actually happening to you.

The terrible weary old road, huh? How well I know it. How well you know it too.  How well we all know it. It’s the weariest thing ever, it’s the ultimate grind, the ultimate in doleful tasks. There’s never anything more doleful, just as there was never anything more futile and that’s not mere hyperbole, I can assure you! Absolutely it isn’t. How frighteningly sinister that weary old road is – it would give you no end of nightmares. You wake suddenly in the dead of night, drenched in ice cold sweat, drenched in clammy fear sweat. You know the dream had been bad – no one needs to tell you that – but you can’t remember any more than this. You remember the horror but not the content. You’re sitting there on the edge of your bed, shaking. You were dreaming about your time in the Funhouse…