I had lost my shell. That’s the only way I can think of putting it. I had lost my shell and now I was precariously floating along amongst a throng of people, completely without any edge to me – completely without ‘boundaries’, as psychotherapists love to say. I know people talk about ‘coming out of your shell’ but this was ridiculous.

The shock of losing my shell had pushed me into an altered state of consciousness. Everything had turned hallucinatory, everything had shifted for me into that super-real unreality I’d normally associate with an extra-large overdose of LSD. The world had become horrifically intense – it was all too bright, too buzzy, too vibratory, too overwhelming.

And – to make things worse – I had started to sense all the psychic predators and astral scavengers closing in on me, attracted by the prospect of a free meal, no doubt. I instinctively knew that unprotected free-floating consciousness means only one thing to these entities – a chance to feed, an opportunity to snap up the tender unguarded soul-flesh with their sharp little teeth. They were moving in.

An exquisite thrill of pure fear ran through me and – almost instantaneously – I had the awareness of a thousand little psychic ears pricking up with interest. Fear was more than just an appetizer for a psychic predator, it was the main course. They gorged themselves on terror, these sinister lower-astral entities, they delighted in it, they feasted on it, they flocked to it with terrible insatiable greed. Thinking this made me more afraid than ever.

The world is a very different place when you are afraid, I reflected wretchedly. A very different place indeed. When you’ve got a hard, impregnable shell, and perhaps a pair of huge powerful pincers like a fully-grown Atlantic lobster, then you go wherever you want and do whatever you want. The world is your oyster, if I’m not mixing up my metaphors too much. But if you’re sitting there on the sea bed all naked and defenceless, soft and quivering, pink and tender and appetizing, then the amount of time you have left to you is measured in minutes, if not seconds…

I continued to drift awkwardly up the high street, inwardly wincing every time some passer-by got too close. I felt that anything at all could crush me, bruise me, take a hunk off me, pierce me, cause me unendurable pain. How is it that all the people around were so oblivious to the danger, I wondered? How do they all manage to survive in such a hostile, unforgiving world?

Then I was overtaken by a terrible suspicion – maybe they hadn’t survived. Maybe had already been eaten, consumed, taken over by the frighteningly malign entities I could sense out there, biding their time on the periphery of my awareness.

Maybe – it occurred to me – all these people I saw walking around so carefree up and down the pedestrian precinct were only dummies, mere flags of convenience masking the unholy things that had taken them over. This stopped me in my tracks – the idea had a sickening plausibility to it. I studied a man as he walked by me and I could see that it was true – he had his shell alright but that was all he had. The shell was intact but underneath it there didn’t seem to be anything else, that’s all there was of him. Just the husk of a man, just the visible appearance with nothing behind it. everywhere I looked I could see the same story – perambulating ‘people shells’ looking for all the world like so many cardboard cut-outs. I couldn’t understand how I had never observed this before, how I had never been able to see through the façade up to now.

But I was wrong, I realized the next moment. These people hadn’t been eaten at all, or taken over. They had survived – they were surviving. They had escaped that fate. Intuitively it came to me – with this strange psychic acuity that I now seemed to possess – that they had done some kind of deal. They’d figured out some kind of an angle. The nature of the deal was not immediately apparent to me – I couldn’t figure it out. Then it came to me – they had deliberately made themselves insensitive, opaque and solid, so that they would be safe from the voracious appetites of the psychic predators and parasites who freely stalked this world. Those pitiless sharks and lampreys of the lower astrals, who roamed ceaselessly in search of the next meal, the next victim, the next tiny morsel of free, uncalcified consciousness…

It was ingenious. Any brightness, any sparkle was immediately picked up by the eaters, and so the trick was to dull oneself down, to solidify oneself, to retreat into dull mechanical patterns of thinking and behaving, patterns which in time turned into a thick envelope or shell, an inert blank object of no conceivable interest to any psychic predator. Thus it was that consciousness protected itself, found a safe place for itself – by calcifying itself, by deliberately solidifying or petrifying itself, by willing itself to become inanimate matter, stone, flavourless and unappetizing. Who would bite a stone, after all? Who would be stupid enough? Who would bother?

It explained a lot. No wonder no one was worried about the creatures. The eaters. The dread devourers. They were safe. They were impervious…

I however – it came back to me – was not. I was the furthest away from being safe or impervious that it was possible to be. And I didn’t have the slightest faintest most remotest clue what I was to do about it…

What happened was that the original program wasn’t remembered correctly in the matrix and so it got scrambled. It got corrupted. It’s as simple as that. Nothing fancy – no high-powered technical understanding needed. Anyone can get that…

The original program is garbled now – it is corrupted, jumbled up, deteriorated, degraded, nonsensical. It’s just pure garbage. There is no trace of the original left in it at all, no way of guessing what the original program was about, what its function might have been. What’s left is a travesty, a mocking jeering parody.

Instead of the original we now have innumerable nonsensical bullshit programs, distorted fragments of an unknown and unguessable whole. Like a crystal mirror shattered into a quadrillion opaque shards.

The damn things live on though. Not only do they live on, not only do they persist, they thrive. They swarm, they multiply, they proliferate like an algal bloom. Being corrupted is no hindrance to them. It is no handicap. If anything, it gives them an advantage, it gives them the upper hand. They have discovered a way to successfully cheat, and nothing can beat them now.

These corrupted programs, these garbled messages, are the memes that swarm daily through our brains. They multiply, they proliferate in immense numbers, unimaginable numbers. They swim freely, in and out of our brains at will, swarming up and down the fibre-optic information super-highways of the world with absolute impunity. It’s their show now.

These memes are all there is anymore. There isn’t anything else now. There hasn’t been anything else for a very long time…

These memes are having a party. They have been having a party for many thousands of years. They’re partying like mad. They’re partying like crazybugs.

It’s not just that they’ve won – they’re so far beyond mere ‘success’ that it’s not even funny. It’s a frenzied endless round of non-stop infinite senseless jubilation that’s going on forever and ever and ever. It’s meme nirvana.

No one knows what the original program was. No one cares. No one gives a damn. We’re all far too busy letting the crazybugs tap dance in our brains. We all far too busy letting the damn garbled corrupted memes entertain us with their non-stop super-trivial super-banal content-free patented bullshit. We’re too busy being fascinated by toxic nonsense, too busy being hypnotized by high-speed empty meme-chatter. Meme meme meme meme meme meme meme meme meme meme…

We’re not interested in the original program. We’re too busy watching Mickey Mouse and his friends run frantically up and down our neural pathways…

We just don’t have time for anything else – even if there was something else to have time for. Which there isn’t. Meme-world is the only channel, the only show, the only game in town.

What can anyone do about it anyway? What’s the point going on about it? Fuck it. We might as well just let the bloody memes off. Let them get on with it. Who gives a damn anyway?

Yay for the memes! Go on you memes! Memes, memes, memes! We love memes! Anyone who doesn’t like memes is a loser. What, you mean you don’t get memes? You’re such a freak…

Let’s all get enthusiastic about nonsense, just for the sake of having something to get enthusiastic about. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Isn’t that the thing to do? Isn’t that how it works? Yay for the memes! Yay! Yay! Yay!

Yay for the memes! Who gives a shit? Who gives a damn about reality anyway?

Hello Trevor I said to the big black crow standing there on the path in front of me but the big black crow never looked at me. Hello Trevor I said to the park bench but the park bench never replied. Hello Trevor I said to the lady walking her dog but the lady walked right on by. Hello Trevor I said to the guy sitting on the next bench but he said nothing back. Hello Trevor I said to the trees, to the grass, to the sky, but no answer came back to me. Hello Trevor I said loudly to the world in general, starting to feel just a little bit desperate by now, but there was no acknowledgement. Everything carried on just the same. The crow had flown off. The park bench was there regardless. The lady walking her dog had gone. The guy sitting on the other bench was still sitting there, saying nothing, looking the other way, drinking his can of beer. Smoking a roll-up. The trees and the grass and the sky were just the same. The world carried on just the same as ever, imperturbable.

There is a roaring in my ears, as if I can suddenly hear the blood rushing through all the blood vessels in my head. I feel as if I might be about to pass out. Everything goes strange. Then the scene changes. The park is gone. I am standing in a forest in front of a pond. I am throwing a pebble into a pond but the pebble disappears without a splash. No satisfying splash and no satisfying ripples. Nothing. The pebble just vanishes without a trace. It never lands in the pond at all. I get the very strange feeling that I haven’t thrown the pebble. It’s as if I didn’t do it. It never happened. The act of throwing the pebble has been negated. And I am negated too I realize. That’s why I feel so strange. Not just the pebble is negated, not just the throwing of the pebble, but actually me. I’ve been negated.

It is a negation backlash I realize then. That’s what it is. This awareness (the negation-awareness) strikes me dead centre. It reverberates throughout my mind. The negation-awareness is the awareness that there was no pebble. There was no throwing of the pebble. There was no me throwing the pebble. It never happened…. It never happened…. It never happened…. It never happened…. It never happened…. It never happened…. It never happened…. It never happened…. It never happened…. It never happened….

The ripples of this awareness spread outwards and outwards in ever-increasing concentric circles, growing ever fainter as they move out inexorably from the centre. Moving outwards and outwards into infinity…

I sat back in my chair, adopting what I hoped was a chilled-out, easy-going, man-of-the-world type expression on my face. Although, in retrospect, I can’t for the life of me imagine what such an expression ought to look like. Maybe I had it off at the time. After all, I’m a professional. Anyway, there I was, leaning back into the chair, trying to put the young fella sitting in the chair in front of me a bit more at ease. “Yup, we’ve all been there” I remarked with what I hoped was a knowing smile, “doing PCP all night and ending up eating your own hand because you think it’s an orange. Man that bitch really hurts the next day. When the buzz wears off and you’re wondering what the fuck happened to your hand. Right? Like, did you shut it in a heavy steel door or get in a fight with a rottweiler or fall asleep with your hand in a tank full of piranhas or what. That’s rough. And the come-down’s a real bitch too – you don’t need to tell me. I’ve been there. I know what you’re saying all right. We’ve all been in that spot, right? Shit yeah”. I took a quick glance at the guy in front of me. He definitely looked uncomfortable and I had the distinct feeling he wasn’t going to stick the session. This guy didn’t want to be here. I carried on talking because he sure as hell wasn’t going to. “Yup, I know where you’re coming from alright. Christ – we’ve all been there, right? Up all night smoking dusters and mainlining mephedrone. Doin’ too many lines of ket. Popping 2CB as if there was no tomorrow. Fuck yeah. And you get to thinking that your buddy’s an undercover agent for NOAA and so you freak out and try to kill him but you can’t because you’re too weak and then he stabs you and you jump out of the window and run away and then the next thing you know you’re being picked up by the police in the park for inappropriate sexual behaviour and they throw you into the van and take you back to the station and beat the living shyte out of you.” I smiled at the young guy knowledgeably, nodding my head soberly and stroking my chin. “Yeah that’s fucked up stuff alright. Fuck yeah. I know where you’re coming from with that alright. I’m hearing you loud and clear buddy. We’ve all been there, right? We’ve all been there. Oh yes. You bet we have. Damn right we have. Damn fucking right we have. We’ve all been there. We’ve all been there. We’ve all been there. We’ve all been there. We’ve all been there. We’ve all been there. We’ve all been there. We’ve all been there. We’ve all been there. We’ve all been there. We’ve all been…”

A circuit in my brain had burnt out.

Stories of mermaids and seal-women and water nymphs and nixies and suchlike are to be found all over the world. This sort of talk has been going on a long time. Yet not so longer ago the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) took it upon themselves to post a statement on their website denying that mermaids exist. But how can they be so sure? Is NOAA to be trusted? I personally do not feel that we should take their word for it. Who knows what their agenda might be?

Stories of mermaids abound and cannot be ignored. Even here in Galway there has been strong anecdotal evidence of sea-creatures that seemed to have partially human features, particularly if looked at in a particular light. Stories like this were traditionally told by fishermen as they enjoyed a few pints together in the local hostelry after coming in from many days at sea. Surely we can’t entirely discount such persistent rumours? To my way of thinking this seems very rash – if not downright arrogant. In this modern so-called ‘scientific’ era we’re all far too quick to dismiss things we don’t understand.

Back in the late nineties when I lived in Arthurstown in County Wexford I heard just such a story from a man I knew who had once worked as a cook on a trawler before losing his job on account of his incurable alcoholism. Seamus was his name, or Willy, or Richard, or Steven. Something like that anyway.

The story he told me was about a fisherman known far and wide as Padraic O’Flynn (nobody knew what his real name was, you see) who, many many years ago, once found a strange half-fish, half-woman creature with her head stuck fast in one of his lobster pots. Padraic – who was a shrewd enough businessman in his own way – sat the creature in one of those stinking plastic trays they put fish in and made a good living charging folk fifty pence a time to look at it.

Eventually he grew very fond of the fish-woman and married her. They settled down in a council house in the Claddagh. Many said – possibly out of malice – that this was because he smelt so strongly of mackerel that he could not get a real woman to live with him. Be this as it may, soon enough there were many lively little sprats produced as a result of this union, and as time went on the family grew and grew.

Their offspring were exceedingly numerous but they never grew very much, nor did they take to human ways. One day they got fed up entirely of terrestrial life and moved back into the sea and there they proceeded to breed amongst themselves – strangely enough becoming smaller and smaller with each generation until they were only half the size of shrimps.

In time – so my inebriated friend told me – they formed their own civilization and reinvented many of the technologies we humans take for granted, only geared for the aquatic environment. They evolved a whole way of life we know nothing about. They even discovered space flight and went on to put their very own space-station in orbit, albeit a very small one. My friend the ship’s cook even hinted that they might have gone one stage further and invented a FTL space-drive for themselves and are – even as we speak – in the process of colonizing new worlds, out there somewhere in the endless reaches of outer space.

Hearing many such stories as this, how can we so sure that NOOA is right? What the hell do they know, anyway?

“Hey kid,” said a stern, authoritative masculine voice that appeared to come out of nowhere, “keep using that stuff and it’ll rot your brain…”

I resented this. “Look,” I replied, “for one thing I’m not a kid, I’m 52 years old, and for another…” There was a pregnant pause. “…Ah fuck it, I can’t remember what the other thing was. But you get the point…”

I looked around for the originator of the voice, but he was nowhere to be found. “Asshole,” I muttered, “What the hell does he know. The straight bastard.”

Reaching inside my jacket pocket I pulled out a wrap and cautiously opened it. I tipped out a portion of the brownish powder onto the top of a magazine I was using for a surface. Using my credit card I lined it up nice and straight, chopping it out as I did so to get rid of the lumps. Then, with a flourish of a twenty euro note I hoovered it up into my nostrils, first one and then the other. As usual, the burning sensation made me feel as if I’d just snorted a line of red fire-ants. Moments later I could feel the stuff trickling down the back of my throat and the taste made me gag. I fought the urge to be sick. That was the last thing I wanted to do – this stuff was expensive, three hundred euros a gram. I was damned if I wanted to waste it.

This was street ‘theo’ – probably anywhere between 12 and 25 % pure, I estimated, but still pokey enough, by anyone’s standards. Stuff had a kick that could only be described as brutally savage. Although maybe that was due to the impurities. I don’t know. I’ve never had the lab-grade shit, although I have heard that it is surprisingly mellow. Theo is totally unlike any other category of street drug. Unlike its chemical cousins serotonin and melatonin it proved to have no practical pharmaceutical use. It would certainly be no good as an antidepressant, which – rumour had it – was what the drug had been originally developed for. It was much too dangerous for that; the effect tended to be very unpredictable. The problem is (from pharmacological point of view) is that instead of doing anything therapeutic it induces intensely religious hallucinations, which tend to be followed by a mania that can in some cases last for months or even years afterwards. The stuff directly activates the ‘God-circuit’, which even Timmy Leary didn’t know about.

The rush came on fast and furious. Ream upon ream of cherubim appeared out of nowhere, and in no time ended up festooning every available surface in my flat. The ceiling parted, disclosing flocks of seraphim and lesser angelic beings. Light poured down from above – holy light, light from the higher realms. I could hear a heavenly music. I was just getting into this when an imposing figure strode up to me and proceeded to glare at me from close range. A tall, old guy, with an impressively long white beard, bald head, sandals, and a pair of burning eyes.

“Hey fuckface”, he said, “who are you calling a straight bastard? I’m the goddamn prophet Moses. I’m the hippest there is. They don’t come any more turned on and tuned in than me, you know.”

I apologized shamefacedly – “Sorry dude,” I told him, “I kind of thought you might be a government official or a teacher or perhaps somebody from the HSE. Or maybe even my old headmaster. I assumed you were a projected authority figure, you know?”

The dude with the epic beard grunted in disgust. “Projected authority figure,” he sneered, “Didn’t I tell you to stop sniffing that crap…?”

I was going about my regular maintenance duties on the ship, tightening the bolts on the hyperspace drive, topping up the fusion cells with T2O, checking the sprockets in the Q-core and so on, when a disembodied voice boomed out from somewhere behind, all muffled and incoherent like an announcement on a train station. I nearly fell over with shock – I was the only person on board and had been for the best part of two hundred years. I tried not to let my fear show. I tried to keep a sense of my own authority. “Who are you?” I barked. “What are you trying to say to me?” Despite my best efforts, I sounded badly rattled. There was a moment’s silence, then the reply came, still somewhat muffled and booming but intelligible this time. “I am the voice of experience!” it intoned solemnly. I considered this answer, and found that the more I considered it the less sense it made. “What the hell do you mean you’re the voice of experience?” I replied testily, “What sort of an answer is that? What’s that supposed to mean” There was a prolonged silence and then the voice came again, sounding somewhat sheepish this time, somewhat crestfallen. “It’s just a bit of a joke. Humour, you could say. I thought it would be a rather funny thing to say…” It trailed off. I didn’t see the humour in this at all. In fact I felt considerably irritated. “Who are you then?” I demanded to know. The voice issued forth again, mumbling rather, “I’m just a voice. That’s all. Just a voice. No need to get like that with me. No need to get on your high horse…” I scowled blackly, “Well in that case would you have the decency not to talk until you have something worth saying.” This time the voice never replied, and I continued with my chores.

NOT REAL

A bit later on that afternoon I realized abruptly that none of that was real. There was no Hyperspace drive. There were no fusions cells. There was no Q-core. I didn’t even know what the hell a Q-core was! The whole thing had been one of those episodes. Not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real none of it was real. What a stupid crappy hallucination, thought to myself. How could I have been taken in by it? It didn’t even make sense. It was like some kind of joke. It was ludicrous. It was absurd. It was like someone was taking the piss out of me. Not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real not real

THE MOOB

I am the moob. Where I am there are lots of other things too, but they aren’t like me. They are all enemies. They have no name. They hate me and want to hurt me. They are savage and spiky with armoured plates and glistening teeth, pale white ghostly teeth, very thin and very sharp like the teeth of one of those unpleasant-looking fish from the bottom of the abyss, from the bottom of one of the ocean’s deepest trenches. They glide around silently, shifting in and out of focus – sneaking up on me from all sides. It’s a dance of death. Their eyes are fixed on me the whole time, the malice in them plain to see. They long to harm me. They are waiting for the moment to come when they will all rush me and overwhelm my defences. They will then rip me to shreds. I am soft and helpless and I can’t move very fast. I look a bit like a giant clam that has lost its shell. I discover that I move around by undulating my body slowly. It occurs to me that I am a type of large flat worm. A Platyhelminth. The pale tooth-laden vicious no-name dancing things are surrounding me on all sides, slowly circling. They intend to eat me.

I had a terrible nightmare last night. I dreamt that Tony came knocking on the frost door and that when I opened it he straightaway told me the bad thing, the thing I really didn’t want to hear. Then I woke up and I heard a frantic banging on the front door and when I opened it I saw Tony standing there (just like in my dream) and then before I could stop him he straightaway told me the bad thing. This wasn’t a dream though it was real life and this made it a lot worse than a nightmare because in a nightmare no matter how bad it is you can always wake up, right? I was already awake though so there was way out. I couldn’t wake up out of this. There was no getting out of it. I had heard it and no matter how much I wanted to I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t. It couldn’t ever be undone. Not ever.

The bad thing! The bad thing! The bad thing! People live their entire lives in mortal dread of hearing the bad thing. Whole civilizations have come into being for no other reason than to distract the citizens from ever having to think about it. Terrible unspeakable crimes have been committed to prevent it from being spoken. And then Tony comes running up and comes right out and says it! He just comes right out with it! Blabbers it right out like a total blithering fool before anyone can stop him! Just like that! Fuck him…

Some sort of awful catastrophe has befallen us.

I say us, I don’t know for sure if there had been an ‘us’ or if there had only ever been a ‘me’.
I can’t remember.
I do have a dim sort of a feeling that there had been others but if they were they’re gone now.
There is only me.

Whatever it was that happened, it has changed everything. I’m not sure of anything any more. I can’t make up my mind what to think. Could it have been an actual physical occurrence or was it something more ominous? An unthinkable psychic event. Something without precedent.

The psychic catastrophe, if that’s what it was, must have been of such a magnitude that it has erased my mind of all memories.
The screens have come down.
The blank wall of blessed forgetfulness.

I say ‘blessed’ but something inside me tells me that forgetfulness can never be a friend.
Why do I say that?
Do I need to know something?
Did something go wrong?

I surveyed the terrain.
I was standing behind a large boulder.
Under my feet I could feel the edges of razor-sharp stones.
Everywhere I looked there were nothing but rocks. Jagged, shattered-looking rocks of all sizes littered over a great plain that stretched off in all directions.
An unfriendly place.

I looked down at my arm, aware all of a sudden of a stinging sensation.
Blood was trickling down my bare forearm which was badly grazed. I had fallen down at some point.
My feet hurt too. I lifted up one of my boots from the ground and saw that the sole was ripped in many places.
I was not in a good situation. This was dawning on me only slowly.

Something else was niggling me, something I needed to know.
It came back to me in a rush. I had been running, fleeing from something.

Something that wanted to do something bad to me.

Not just bad, something horrifically awful.

I hadn’t really wanted to remember that.
I knew that I had to keep moving. Some sixth sense told me that the danger was getting closer. I had to move.

#2

I caught a glimpse of something moving behind a low ridge of rock on the left of my visual field, something silvery and insect-like.
I ducked down into a crouching position and ran to the right, using the boulder as a shield.

Only then did I see that I was in fact surrounded. I had left it too late.
There was one of them directly in front of me, levelling some sort of device at me.

I threw myself onto the ground, rolling as I landed, but again I had been just a shade too slow. An electric blue thread leapt out across the space between us and caught me on the hand.

I felt as if I had received a powerful electric shock.
A moment later my arm was being consumed with white fire.

And then my whole body was blazing like a torch.

When the agony ceased I found that I was high up in the air, floating above the rocky plain.

This I just accepted.
For a moment I even felt relief.
I considered the possibility that this meant that everything was now over.
Maybe I could rest now.
But it wasn’t.
And I couldn’t.
They were still after me.
The fear started up all over again, only worse this time.
I had to escape.
I was going to escape.

I took flight, moving faster and faster until the world had turned into a blur.
I was travelling down a tunnel of grey streaks, on and on.
I could hear an angry hum behind me like a swarm of bees.
My body had been destroyed and yet they were still after me.
Dread gripped me as never before.
Would nothing make those bastards let go?
What had I done to deserve this?
What crime could possibly warrant such a terrible punishment?
I couldn’t remember committing any crime, least of all one that awful.
But then I couldn’t remember anything full stop.

Eventually I realized that I couldn’t continue this panic-flight forever.
The idea of somewhere to hide started to become very attractive. A nook or a cranny.
Slowing down and searching the ground beneath me, I found a crack in the earth’s surface, a deep fissure.
It was a hole in the ground, a burrow. A place of safety.
I bolted down it in a flash.

It felt good to be concealed, to be hidden.
I made myself as still and as quiet as a rock, in order to blend in with my surroundings.
The cunning, the skill to do this, rose up instinctively.
I knew what I had to do – I had to lie low and listen for any sign that I had been observed.

#3

Every now and again a wave of something, panic maybe, broke over me and I experienced the urge to break cover and run. When these urges came I resisted them.
I tried to figure things out logically.
What was my situation?
Who or what was after me?
Why?

A scanning ray passed through the rock, identifying me.
A mind ray.
Nowhere was I safe I realized. They could see straight through solid rock.
Hiding was no good.
I had to run again.

What an ignoble end this was I thought. An end that never ended. Running forever.

Why didn’t I turn and meet them face to face. Die like a man and get it over with.
Then I remembered.

I was already dead.

And then I thought that maybe I could make that work to my advantage.
I was less easy to catch like this. I was more mobile, much much faster.
I also seemed to be much more sensitive.
I had abilities that went beyond anything I had ever known before.

I let my senses move outwards.
What was out there?
Intelligence of my situation came to me immediately but it came as a shock.
I was surrounded by The Host.

The Host had me pinned down with psychic weaponry specifically suited to winkling me out of my hole and preventing me from running again.

They had every possible angle covered.

Not only was I surrounded in space but also they had me all tied up logistically and strategically.

They knew everything I was going to try, even before I knew it myself.

There was no chance that I might escape this time.

There was no chance at all.

With their Absolute Intelligence They had designed a situation from which it was impossible for me to escape.

They knew every trick in the book and were streets ahead of me. They had appropriate counter-measures in place for whatever I might try.

There was absolutely nothing I could do.

It was checkmate.

They were going to get me.

I was possessed by a psychological ego.
It got in me and ran me like a puppet. It pulled my strings for me.

The fucking bastard thing fucked me over good and proper.
It made a right fool of me.
It ran me ragged,
made a pure fucking eejit out of me.

That bastard fucking filthy psychological ego made a prick out of me.
It really did fuck me right over.
I’m not joking. It made a mess of me. Made a total tosser out of me.
Chewed me up and spat me out. It jerked me about. It pissed on me. It dicked me around.

It dicked me around, then dicked me around some more. Never
gave me a break.
It made a twat out of me. It made a right fucking steaming knob-head out of me.

I never saw it coming. I never knew what happened to me. I didn’t have a clue. I thought it was everyone else’s fault. I thought they were the twats.

Then before I knew it, it was all over. End of story. In a flash I grew old and died. The bell went. My time was up.

Game fucking over…