I hope that you find what you are looking for in this life. This Vale of Darkness. I hope you find what you were looking for and that you don’t come out of it empty-handed. Empty handed and bereft of good cheer. Bereft of joy. Bereft of all good things. Tormented by your own abject failure to make a success of yourself, and so on and so forth. I hope that you find the Peace that comes when the Perfect Product has been Purchased. This is the blessing that I bestow upon you…
Purchasing the perfect product is so ineffably wonderful, is it not? No joy can be greater than this. I know I can rely on you to agree with me on this point. I know I can rely on everyone to agree with me on this point! On this most splendid point. I know many things – very many things – but the sad thing about this is that most of them aren’t real. Very few – if any – of them are real. Most of them are just things that I myself made up – things that I invented one day because I was so desperately lonely. Because I was existentially isolated – because of the hideous sterility of my phoney existence. Because I found myself ‘out on an existential limb’, as you might say. ‘Alienated from the real world’, as you might also say. Very alienated – frighteningly alienated. Terrifyingly alienated, in fact. We all like facts, after all. Everyone likes a good fact. I like a good fact. I’ll eat it for breakfast, so I will…
‘What’s the fact of the day?’ you ask, full of naivety and youthful enthusiasm. I however am old and sour – I haven’t time for any of that shyte and I’m quick to tell you so. Very quick. I’m old and cranky you see – I’m trying to write a book about the secret semiotics of the marketplace but it has of course all been done before. It’s all been done before, and it’s been done better too. I’m flogging a dead horse here. I’m barking up the wrong tree. I’m trying to say something that’s never been said before, but all I’m doing is imperfectly echoing the words of those who – in their turn – were wrongly and distortedly misrepresenting the Sphinx-Like Utterances of the Ancient Luminaries. I am thus providing a garbled account of an already profoundly garbled account and – in this way – I am burying the truth even deeper than it was buried before. No one ever buried the truth deeper than me.
I am the Lizard Man – I am ‘The Reptile Within’. My cold unblinking eyes scan the room looking for bugs to eat. I’ll eat them as soon as I see them. I’ll eat them so quickly you won’t even see me move! In this world I am King, no other – I am the undisputed Lord and Master of all that I survey. If it moves, I shall eat it! I am the Great Devourer – you’ve probably heard of me. I’d say you’ve heard of me… Everybody’s heard of me (although you can be sure they won’t admit it). You dream of me every night, and then you dutifully forget what you have dreamt. You forget the horror of what you have beheld. You bury it. The chaos and the confusion, the white-hot fury of your enemies as they close in on you. The cruelty and malice in their eyes. You forget it all, but you wake up nevertheless trembling – you wake up covered in a cold sweat, beset by a thousand nameless misgivings…
