They call me Joe Normal on the account of the fact that I’m just a regular guy, on account of how there’s nothing weird about me. Folks like me because I’m just like them. You’d like me too if you met me, I’ll be bound! For sure you would. You’d like me in a flash on account of how I’m just a regular guy just like anyone else you might meet. They call me Joe you see, they call me Joe. That’s my name.
I wonder if you know that thing where you end up having to lie to yourself on a full time basis, having to deceiving yourself 24/7 and so on and so forth. This used to be easy but now it’s really hard work because you don’t entirely believe the story that you’re telling yourself and as a result there’s this nasty uncomfortable feeling about everything, an ominous feeling… And then – of course – the next thing (the thing that always happens next) is that you have to join some religion or extreme right wing political group to support you in your denial. That’s the real pisser, isn’t it? That’s a real pisser and no mistake. It’s ignominious.
It happens to all of us in the end of course – we end up seeking refuge in far-right ideologies. That’s life’s tragedy, you see – we start out as activists trying to destabilise the corrupt establishment and all of that, trying to bring down the whole toxic patriarchy and so on and so forth, the way you do when you are still young enough – and brave enough – to actually give a shit, and then before you know it your life has passed you by and you’ve reneged on all your ideals. You’ve become a filthy apologist for the corrupt regime. You have become yet another loathsome conservative stakeholder, viciously criticising anyone who dares to contradict your tawdry second-hand views.
We all know how that feels, and it doesn’t feel very nice, does it? To be sure it doesn’t but what can you do? That’s just the way it goes, that’s just ‘the way of things’, as they say. There’s no denying that this is one of life’s great tragedies however – no denying that at all – but at the same time we might ask if perhaps we’re not expecting too much of ourselves. Perhaps we’re being entirely unrealistic here. Perhaps we shouldn’t set such high standards for ourselves. That path only leads to disappointment after all; it leads to disappointment and bitterness. Ultimately – of course – this is a path that leads to intense self-hatred and self-loathing. There’s nowhere else it can lead, you see.
Each one of us needs to have our own particular personal fantasy to believe in, don’t we? How would we cope otherwise? What chance would we have? Each one of us has our very own line in fantasy and you couldn’t take that away from us. You couldn’t take that away from us without causing serious injury. Each to their own, as they say – each to their own and see how that works out for you! Hats off to each to every one of us for keeping up the tawdry pretence – against all the odds – for so very long. I’m whirling around and around in my very own hyperreality, a serene (but entirely meaningless) smile painted onto my strangely doll-like face. I’m a whirligig trapped in a vortex of bubbles, a defective ego-construct imprisoned in a false world that is made up of its own frighteningly banal projections…
‘I’m Joe Normal’, I cry out joyously, ‘I’m the one they call Joe Normal. That’s my name. Everyone knows me and everyone loves me – they get on with me famously on account of how I’m just like them.’ I think like them, I talk like them, I perform the very same meaningless mannerisms that they do. I’m even starting to look like them. ‘I’m Joe Normal’ says I, jumping suddenly sideways with no warning at all, unexpectedly coming out with an utterly terrifying scream. I’m laughing and crying at one and the same time. I’m so normal you could set your watch by me. You can bring me home to meet your mum. And if you don’t know me now then don’t worry because you soon will, and when you do you’re bound to be my friend. Everyone is, after all…
Folk are so damn quick to talk, aren’t they? They’re so damn keen to start yapping in your ear, given any chance at all. They only have to open their mouths and all this eager talk comes tumbling out! If only they wouldn’t, right? If only they would think the better of it, and just not go there, what a relief that would be! ‘For God’s sake,’ you want to shout out, ‘do you guys never shut up?’ They can’t, though – they’re just not able. They just don’t know how. That’s just the way it is, as I’m sure you yourself realize perfectly well. I expect you’re as annoyed as I am.
You were uneasy at the party, uneasy and out of sorts. You weren’t having a good time. Uncool people were giving you bad vibes. They were ruining your buzz – there was no chance at all of you having a buzz with them around! The uncool people were everywhere – there was no way for you to avoid them and it was doing your head in big time. If only there were some cool people to hang out with, you told yourself, then I’d be able to vibe with them and have a super-cool time, but it wasn’t to be, unfortunately. It wasn’t to be…
I was playing the ‘I’m Not The Idiot You Are!’ game with myself. There’s plenty of mileage in that, I can tell you. Plenty of mileage there and no mistake. ‘I’m not the idiot – you are!’ I shouted pugnaciously, putting the blame firmly on myself. ‘No, you are the only idiot here!’ I roared back, not taking it for a second. I was frankly livid: ‘I’ve a good mind to come over there and give you a few good slaps to the head!’ I screamed. It’s like the finals at Wimbledon, you see – it goes on forever due to the immense stubbornness of all concerned. Both the immense stubbornness and the immense bad mindedness, should I say. The immense stubbornness and bad mindedness of all concerned.
Bad vibes and uncool people – it’s the same wherever I go! Always the uncool vibes and the bad people, doing their best to do kill my buzz. Little do they realise that I am the Messiah of the Coming Evil and that it is my thankless task to go around informing folk about the utter futility and emptiness of their lives. The message I have to pass on is as simple as it is unpalatable. What’s more, we all know it to be true. We know very well that it’s true – we know well that it’s true but we won’t countenance it all the same! ‘Back off’, I warned myself sternly, ‘back off before I have to come over to you and teach you a lesson…’ I grimaced horribly at this point to show that I wasn’t joking. You’d realise I wasn’t joking if you ever saw me – I’m not really the joking sort…
I’m a member of the Dessert Club. I get to eat the most wonderful desserts! It’s all rather fine, it’s all rather special. Folk are embarrassed by the prospect of going too deep, of course. We are all extremely embarrassed by that and that’s just human nature. We can’t be blamed for that. It’s generally understood that we won’t ever mention it – we’ll look the other way and start whistling a little tune! It’s a question of reality of course – it’s all about the Big Question as to why it is so impossible to ever know anything about reality. Why is that? What’s going on? That’s the question no one ever dares to ask, of course. The question itself isn’t the embarrassing thing however – what’s so very embarrassing is the fact that we always pretend to know everything about everything even though we don’t even know what reality is in the first place. We’ve put the cart before the horse and now we’re in a terrible fix. This is guaranteed to make fools of us all, of course – there’s no way it won’t. Some would argue with this, naturally enough. They’ll roar and bluster and get up in arms over such a suggestion, but that’s only because they can’t handle the truth. Everyone knows that! Even they know that, but they can’t help protesting all the same. What else can they do? They protest by pure reflex – the reflex of Toxic Indignation. We have to allow them that however – we have to at least allow them that. I nodded to myself at this point, impressed by my own formulaic deliberations. I did a quick psychological assessment on myself and decided that I needed a few stiff self-affirmations to ensure that I stayed in the best possible fettle. ‘You’re a decent enough human being,’ I told myself, ‘You don’t always get it right but your heart’s in the right place. You may not get it right every time but for the most part your intentions are good. Mostly they are. Sometimes they are…’ So much of the talk we hear these days is empty old nonsense, isn’t it? Crappy old talk, stupid old talk, but it’s all we’ve got. And do you know, after a while that crappy old talk starts to make a kind of sense to us! A sort of a sense, at any rate. Stuff’s never so bad when you get used to it, is it? There’s no need for outright despair, in other words, no need to get all downbeat and miserable about things. No need for the long face, no need to let the side down. I paid the premium surcharge and now I’m a fully-fledged member of the Dessert Club, enjoying the benefits. Sitting back and enjoying the jolly old benefits, reminding myself of how very fortunate I am to be on this side of the fence and not the other. ‘Oh please not the other’, we cry out, consumed with dread and foreboding. ‘Spare us from the horror that all men fear…’ We’re so full of sterile self-congratulation that if anything ever happens to disturb us – even a little bit – we will immediately vomit up a tidal wave of toxic indignation…
Some people don’t like to do things by halves, but I do. I always do things by halves. I wouldn’t know any other way. That’s just the way I’m built. For example, sometimes I write a sentence but never bother to complete it. Sometimes I do that. I get bored halfway through you see, it suddenly seems all so pointless and I give it up as a bad job. I turn on my heel and walk away mid-sentence. This happens to me all the time – sometimes I’ve only just started doing something and the next thing I know I’m overwhelmed by these crushing feelings of futility and pointlessness. Needless to say, I don’t get very far with what I was about to do. It’s hard to make progress. That’s not the point I’m trying to make however. I am going off-topic. I am wondering in my mind…
Sometimes I can’t help wondering if we’re not all part of some kind of crazy, ridiculous ‘dumb competition’ – in other words, a competition in which generous prizes are handed out to those of us who contrive to be the dumbest! That would explain a lot, wouldn’t it? “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the dumbest of them all?” we ask, according to the age-old ritual. “Things were ever thus, and thus they shall ever be”, we say, in keeping with the rules and edicts that govern all human interaction. “Thus it ever was and thus it ever shall be…” we say, glibly.
Sometimes I write a sentence and I don’t even bother to put any sense into it. That’s how lazy I am! And then the next thing of course is that I’m wondering if anyone will spot it. Will I be caught out? I’m a bit worried by that possibility – will they spot it, or will they simply assume that it’s just too deep for them? It’s hard to gauge, really…
None of that has anything to do with the point I’m trying to make, however. None of that stuff could ever be the point. I’m stuck in my dumb and stupid mind you see, and I’m having a great old time. I’m having one heck of a good time. I’m having a laugh a minute. “This is the bloody life”, I say to myself, “I’m stuck fast in my dumb and stupid mind, having a great old time…”
Sometimes I can’t help wondering, sometimes I can’t help wondering. Wouldn’t you, if you were in my shoes? I know that I’m having a great time and all of that, but I can’t help wandering all the same. Wondering if perhaps I’m not being taken for a ride. Life is full of subtle nuances, isn’t it, and one such nuance is “Am I being taken for a ride?”
Maybe we shouldn’t be calling that a nuance, however. Maybe that’s not quite the right term. It’s a bit more ominous than that, after all. A lot more ominous than that. More like a note of pure paranoia! A pure, pure note of undiluted paranoia, ringing out through the hideous clatter and chaos of a wasted life. Ringing out most clearly and unmistakably, should I say? You know the sort of thing I mean, of course. Of that I have no doubt. You would hardly be here reading this otherwise, would you!
“Is there any type of interaction”, I find myself wondering, “that is not predicated upon avarice, and the violence that avarice breeds?” I felt sad immediately upon thinking this thought – I felt deeply, deeply sad (and this – I don’t mind telling you – is unusually deep for me). I don’t usually have deep emotions. The truth was evident as soon as I asked this question, you might say. The truth shone out like a light – is this not the way with the truth, after all? The truth shone out like a light and sorrow immediately stabbed me in the heart.
‘Magnificent moments call for equally majestic responses’, I told myself solemnly, enjoying the opportunity to say something profound, something auspicious, something uniquely meaningful. It was a long drawn-out moment, a sumptuous moment, a deeply spacious moment, and yet at the same time it was over before you knew it. It was over before it ever began. It’s sad to look backwards sometimes, recalling ancient glories. Remembering the person that you used to be. I’m enjoying being copied by the machine, being endlessly reproduced and replayed as the false version of myself. I’m enjoying the machine pretending to be me, I’m enjoying it telling me what I’m thinking. I like to go along with the charade. It’s telling me that I’m enjoying it, but – secretly – I really am enjoying it too. That’s a little kink I’ve invented myself you see – that’s how I contrive to feel that I am getting the better of the machine. I am getting the better of the machine because I actually want to be controlled by it, which makes me a willing slave rather than an unwilling one, but really that’s just the machine making me think that. That’s the twist in the tale. You’ve got to admire the serious degree of manipulation that’s going on here, don’t you? I know I’ve got to admire it, anyway. I’m sitting here trying to think important thoughts, but not coming up with very much, not coming up with very much at all. ‘Stirring thoughts elevate us to the very heights of inspiration’ my dutiful thoughts told me, but they weren’t actually my thoughts at all. The thoughts were being put into my head by that most Dire of Machines, that Crassly Cold-hearted and Sadistic Architect of my Sorrows and Desires. I’m remembering all the things I used to be but never really was and – as I remember – a single tainted tear of nostalgia works its way down my leathery cheek and gets lost in the folds of my great jowls. ‘Stirring thoughts elevate us’, I told myself again, straining up to come up with some modest morsel of profundity at least, but it just wasn’t happening. It never does, no matter how hard I try. And I do try hard, I never stop trying. ‘The machine is operating me,’ I realised, ‘and none of my thoughts – including this one – are real’. The machine invented me as a cruel joke and now it’s going to erase me again, I lamented, ‘and there’s nothing I can do about it’. It gave me memories that are not real and hopes that can never be fulfilled. That’s how cruel it is. My hopes were never real in the first place. I’m sitting here trapped in the sterile cocoon of my own thoughts but they’re not my thoughts, I just think that they are. The machine tells me that they are…
Image – deviantart.com, Jack In The Box Wallpaper by frankfiume
It’s funny the things you hear, isn’t it? ‘Supercomputers super-explain supermassive black holes’, that’s one. That’s one out of many. It’s a zoo out there and the amazing thing about it is that none of it has to make any sense. Making sense just isn’t a requirement anymore. It’s a free for all, of course – things are going crazy out there. Anything goes these days you see and that’s a sign of the times. That’s progress for you. Many speak but few are listened to. Talk is cheap and words are worthless – they’re not worth the paper they’re printed on! They’re not worth anything at all.
A special type of age has dawned you see – an age unparalleled in human history. Such is our great privilege; such is our unexcelled glory. A very special type of age. It’s what you might call a ‘No Limits’ age – there are no limits to the bullshit we will come out with, just as there are no limits to the bullshit we are prepared to swallow and this makes for pretty unique situation, as you can imagine. As you may well imagine. Pretty damn unique altogether. It’s the unique social contract of our times! Limits are for losers after all, and we want to go all the way. We always want to go all the way. We insist on it, in fact – we won’t take no for an answer! That’s just the way we are – we won’t be held back…
Limits are for losers and that’s why we want to live in a world where there are no limits. No limits to our bullshit, that is. Our colossally staggeringly nonsensical bullshit! Our frighteningly trashy bullshit. Our noxious and sickening bullshit. ‘But what’s the solution?’ I hear you ask, ‘what steps should we take to remedy this terrible situation?’ You’re keen for answers of course. We’re all keen for answers. Or rather we’re not – we couldn’t give a damn when it comes down to it. We just want to be allowed to get on with our nonsense – our hideous, appalling nonsense. We get enraged with anything that stands in our way. ‘What’s wrong with us?’ you ask plaintively – ‘why are we such freaks? Why do we have to humiliate ourselves in this way? Why do we have to be this way?’ No one can answer however – no one can answer that question because no one cares…
‘I want to live in a world where…’ – that could be a prompt for a creative writing class, couldn’t it? It certainly could, it most certainly could. Plenty of mileage there that’s for sure. Freedom’s an important thing, as we all know. Free to be whatever I want to be. Free to be the biggest idiot I can possibly be, and no one’s allowed to say a word against me. For sure they aren’t. They’d be shot. They’d be taken out into the street and beaten to a pulp. No limits, you see. That’s the whole point, after all. That’s what we’re talking about here, so let’s not forget it!
I’m trying to make me great again. I’ve got the T-shirt. I’m wearing the T-shirt – it’s got the ‘Make Me Great Again’ slogan printed on it in great big fluorescent letters. That’s a slogan we can all get behind. That’s the world we live in you see – that’s just the type of world we live in. That’s the whole point right there. Free to be me, free to be the best I can possibly be. Doing my best to make me great again.
‘We are in this world only very briefly’, the teaching robot told me solemnly, it eyes flashing dramatically in time with the words it was uttering so significantly, ‘and so to spend all our time pursuing unworthy goals is a very great error.’ I nodded dutifully, but my attention was elsewhere. My attention is always elsewhere. That’s the kind of way I’m built, to be honest. ‘And you might as well be honest’, says my good angel, the one sitting on my right shoulder, ‘because if you’re not then you’ll be a big fat liar. And you wouldn’t want that now, would you?’
The teaching robots do their best to teach humans like you and I how not to be so stupid. They do their level best to teach us but we’re not very good at learning this particular lesson. We never learn it, in fact. Never ever. That’s kind of our thing, really. That’s our kind of our thing and so we shouldn’t be ashamed by it – on the contrary, we should be filled with pride because that’s what we’re like! That’s who we are and there’s no point in being ashamed of who you are. On the contrary, we should rejoice in it and thumb our noses at all those who have so snobbily cast judgement on us. That’ll piss them off big time, you see. The dirty fuckers…
In the past there used to be human teachers, so the history books tell us. Back in the old days – the bad old days. That turned out to be a total disaster however because all the human teachers ever did was to pass on their own biased way of looking at the world whilst claiming to be doing everyone a big fat favour at the same time. This was a very basic mistake, of course – we had somehow confused ‘education’ with ‘indoctrination’! All we ever did was to pass on what we might call ‘humankind’s ancestral prejudices’ therefore, thereby ensuring that the human race remained just as stupid and bad-minded as they ever were. Possibly even more so. This reached the point at which something had to be done before we became extinct as a result of our festering ill-will to everyone who wasn’t exactly like us; a radical shake-up was instigated and all the human teachers got replaced by robots and things have been better ever since. A new Golden Age was about to dawn, or so it seemed…
Of course, it never actually worked out that way. It never actually worked out as it was supposed to, but we weren’t to know that. Events took an unexpected turn, as they so often too. As they so very often do. The unexpected has upset many an apple cart of course – the best laid plans, etc, etc. The best laid plans of muscilids and hominids. It always goes to shit in the end, doesn’t it? Things always go to shit in the end, no matter how much effort we put into it. No matter how good our original intentions might have been. It’s best to accept these things with grace however, it’s always best to accept bad outcomes with grace. If you can of course, if you can…
We talk about Paradise, we talk about Heaven, and we talk about Eden, and that’s all fine, but the problem is of course us – we’d ruin anything. Paradise is Paradise and I’m not denying that, but if we had anything to do with it then it wouldn’t be paradise for very long. Humans will ruin anything, as you know very well yourself. ‘Why are humans so bad?’ I hear you ask. ‘Why do they have to screw everything up?’ Yes – there is a heaven! There is a heaven but you and I will never know it, I can assure you of that. We won’t even catch a glimpse of it, I’m afraid. The better the good thing the greedier we get and that’s a natural law. Well, as far as I’m concerned it’s a natural law, anyway. Can you imagine the horrors that would unfold were the Gates of Paradise to be open to commercial practises? All things gravitate to their own proper level however and I don’t think there’s any getting around that. You can be sure that there is no getting around that. Absolutely not. So, we’re breaking into Paradise, we’re taking Heaven by storm – isn’t that what they say? And so obviously this is going to work out for us really well. Isn’t that the way it generally goes? Yes – there is a heaven, there really is, but the one thing that we can be very sure about is that there are going to be no humans in it. But I think I’ve talked long enough about that. I’m only repeating myself at this stage. It’s all a bit of a joke when you actually think about it – the way we’ve been told that we will for sure ascend to that Blessed State of Being if we do all the good things that we have been told to do, if we fulfil – as it were – the terms and conditions that we have been made so familiar with over the long, dreary centuries. The world was created by Satan – so we have been taught – as The Supreme Act of Spite, and ever since we have been compelled by our guilt to be grateful. Are we grateful enough, though? That’s the question. That’s the question that weighs so very heavily upon us – Can we ever be grateful enough? That’s a rhetorical question of course – it’s a rhetorical question because we all know very well that this is a debt that we can never repay. How could we think that we could? Instead, all we can do is try to atone for our shocking lack of gratitude by submitting daily to the atrocious ordeal of contemporaneous existence. But the suffering is never enough, the suffering is never enough…
I wanted to write a story called ‘My life as a Spiritual Outcast’. It was important that I should commit my story to paper I felt, or if not to paper then at least to some digital analogue thereof. I resolved within myself to do so. ‘The truth must be known’, I declared grandly, in appropriately resonant tones. ‘Say it like it is!’ I cried out excitedly, getting carried away by my own absurd and inconsequential rhetoric. I forgot that I didn’t know how it is, you see. I never do know how it is and this little detail had temporarily slipped my mind.
I had resolved to make a start on my long-awaited autobiography but I didn’t know where to begin. I could start with the Creation of the Universe, it occurred to me – which is where all stories begin, obviously enough – but that would make for an unwieldy volume. Or an unwieldy series of volumes, should I say. So that’s a non-starter, but it’s important to go through all the options. Not that I’d know anything about all that stuff anyway. I don’t even know that much about my own early life, come to think of it. It’s as if it had happened to someone else. Kind of peculiar really, I know.
‘Well, who would that be?’ you ask, bored as usual. ‘Who did your life happen to?’ I don’t know who though, I have no idea. It was as if my life happened to someone else but I don’t know who it was. ‘Why do you call it ‘your’ life then?’ you will probably retort, hoping to catch me out. It wasn’t really my life at all though – that that’s the whole point. The point, the point, and nothing but the point. It was never my life at all – I just thought that it was. I’d somehow got things backwards. Confusion had set in at some stage or other and as a result of that confusion I had felt that it was my life when it wasn’t. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?
I dreamt a dozen or so lives and I lived them all simultaneously, trying in series to figure out how I could escape this ‘hell of my own making’. Trying and failing too because they all came to the same thing in the end. No matter which way I played it, it always came back to the same place, it always came back to the hell of my own making. Not for the first time, it occurred to me that perhaps there simply wasno way to escape from the hell of my own making.
Before I even entered the room I knew that the man I was to encounter there would be a nullifier. In other words, I knew that he would be a nullifier without even having to see him. I smiled to myself as I made this prediction – it was a kind of a private joke I have going with myself, the point being that wherever I went I was bound to meet nullifiers, since the whole world is full of them. It was like betting on the fact that if you give a penniless street wino a fifty Euro note he will go and spend it on drink. Okay – I am prepared to admit that there are people around who aren’t in this category, but in a situation like this, with me being about to be interviewed by a consultant psychiatrist, what are the chances that he or she won’t turn out to be a nullifier? Or even worse, a nullard and (I don’t even want to begin to go into that possibility).
When I walked into the consulting room and saw him sitting there behind his desk – leafing casually through what was at this stage still a fairly slender file – I had all the confirmation I needed. He had all the tell-tale signs of being a nullifier. Any one of these signs on its own would not necessarily mean that he was a nullard or nullifier of course, but the combination of all of them proves it beyond any doubt. Every time. You’ll just have to take my word for that.
I will list the signs to show you what I am talking about. (I am listing them for you now but obviously I didn’t notice them all until after the interview had got properly underway). He wore a sober suit and a tie. He had black, shiny shoes (which I saw when he got up to shake my hand when he’d finished with me). He was neat and tidy, without a hair out of place. Everything around him was neat and tidy too. He had a serious, heavy-looking face, the bland, smooth face of a man who is used to being listened to without ever having to raise his voice. He broadcast an unmistakeable air of imperturbable authority. He had gravity, although not of a good kind; his voice, when he spoke, had a dry tone to it that constantly verged on sarcasm. He had the ability to completely ignore what I was saying. No matter how many times I tried to say it. Or he might acknowledge what I was trying to say but in a patronizing or dismissive kind of a way. Either way, it was as if I had never actually said anything. His eye contact was almost non-existent – he always tended always to be looking elsewhere.
His body was heavy and he had a very solid and stocky build (though there is another fairly common type of nullifier known to me who would characteristically be skinny and gangling with a lean, bony face, thin lips and big knuckles).
There are many other types of nullifiers as well, the lesser types. The more insignificant types. Some of them appear – to me at least – to be little more than empty perambulating suits, hollow human husks that walk and talk and act like men. For these ones there is only a very minimal pretence at being human. Others types wear uniforms and infiltrate the police or prison services. Or perhaps they choose to become security men or women. Or maybe they are bouncers standing at the door of a club in your local town, giving off bad vibes. Experts in the art of looking like they’d dearly love an excuse to stamp on your neck. Some become teachers or politicians. There are lots and lots of different types. But they’re all the same. They’re all nullifiers. They’re all bad. ‘Bad’ is a wholly inadequate word for what I’m talking about here, but still…
I can’t exactly tell you how I knew beyond any doubt that this guy was one of them. It was as if there was something about him – typical of nullifiers – that wasn’t physical: a raw psychic impression of someone who was unyielding, solid, dense, inert and immovable. Like a big old rock sitting half buried in a field somewhere. What you could see was massive enough, in some subliminal sort of a way, but you knew at the same time that what you could see was only a small part of the story, that for every inch you saw above ground there was a yard below.
And I haven’t even mentioned yet the worse thing of all about nullifiers – the way in which they slowly but inevitably drain the life out of you.
I hate nullifiers. I loathe and detest everything about them. But more than that, I fear them. I can’t tell you how much I fear them. The main reason I fear them so much is because they ‘have my number’ – they understand all about me and they know exactly what to do in order to drain all the life energy out of me, and they perform this operation with great skill and confidence whenever they get a chance. And they try to make sure that they always do have a chance – they carefully arrange it so that I am always in their power, and can never escape. If only I could escape out of their control I could come back to myself, I could return to myself and regain at least some of my sense of myself. As it is, my ‘sense of myself’ is contaminated with theirsense of myself – which is not the same thing at all. Their sense of me negates me as a human being.
In the eyes of a nullifier I am nothing, less than nothing in fact. This particular nullifier – the one I was facing – probably had more regard for the least significant inanimate object in his home than he did for me. Something in the tone of his voice communicated this fact to me in no uncertain manner. Needless to say I couldn’t really put my finger on what exactly it was and I could easily have doubted myself in this. In a clever sort of a way he made no secret of his disdain, his complete and utter disregard for me as an actual person, and yet if I had to confront him about it I would have been helplessly stuck for words, unable to pin him down on it. On the face of things the man was perfectly amiable, but this was part of his cleverness, the cleverness of a nullifier. They are – as far as I know – almost never overt in their actions.
Nullifiers are – it goes without saying – ruthlessly clever and sly. They look stupid, clumsy and clunky in their manner – but the fact that they always look so stupid and clunky is just another proof of how clever they really are. Although – on another level – they really are genuinely obtuse, genuinely dumb, like great big stupid lumps of lard. Nullifiers aren’t playing at being stupid, they actually are. They’re not really human. But whatever you do don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that this makes them weak, that this is their weakness – their total stupidity is their strength, and this strength is crushing. I have made this mistake before, and to my detriment. I have made the mistake of laughing at them, the mistake of failing to respect their huge inertial strength, their unnatural heaviness, their tremendous invulnerability.
I had once made the mistake of not sufficiently respecting the innate power of a younger, lesser, flimsier version of the psychiatrist who now faced me across the table. I had taken him for a lightweight because he had been so palpably foolish and gauche. I had felt superior to him because he was so demonstrably idiotic. I had tried to play a game with him but he had beaten me. Easily, effortlessly. Almost without knowing he was doing it, I would say.
He had won the game. He had put me neatly in a box, and had been smiling as he did it. That’s what they always do – they put you in boxes. That’s how they work. And that what this one was at now – he was preparing to put me in a box, and there was no doubt in my mind that he was an expert. An expert in the field. A heavyweight.
I wasn’t going to make that mistake with this one. I knew very what he could do to me and I was supremely wary – I wasn’t going to give him anything at all. I would keep it bland. I would be every bit as bland as he was. I wouldn’t give him a thing.
The game they play is all about asking questions, asking questions, asking questions. Wearing you away, trying to get you to let something slip, trying to get you to give something away. Trying to get it out of you. Trying to get inside your head. It doesn’t matter what they learn about you, it doesn’t matter how trivial or insignificant it might seem – anything you tell them gives them power over you. And then they grow stronger – more substantial, heavier, and therefore more draining – at your expense. Then they write it down in the file. Always the file. With time of course the file gets bigger and bigger, as more and more of you goes into it, until you end up like one of the poor bastards you always see hanging around places like this – people who have come off worse in such clinical encounters so many times that there is nothing left of them. There is nothing left in them apart from what is written down about them in the medical notes (and what you find in there is a shockingly mean and impoverished description of a human being, to put it mildly).
These unfortunate victims (I mean patients) are then only there in shell. They are there only in body. They become mere shuffling bodies – drained husks, shadows of themselves, existing in mute incoherent testimony to the malign and insidious power that has overcome them. No wonder psychiatric patients always complain of being dead tired!
We become helpless at this stage, we become the sad and helpless victims of the nullifier’s terrible power to nullify, to negate, to drain. The medical chart has grown fat, and you have become a shuffling ghost – thin on reality. (Thin on your own reality anyway, and that is the only reality that counts). The file has you in it at this stage and you can’t hope to ever get out of it again. Your ass has been nailed down. Your very soul has been taken from you. You’re in the box and there is no getting out; you’re in the box and there’s no chance of reversing the process. The box has become a deep, deep grave and there is no climbing out of it. That’s the end-stage, the end-game, and I can tell you I wasn’t about to let that happen to me.
The way they work is that they get hold of a little bit of you and then you have to play ball in order to get it back. That’s how they catch you. What choice do you then have? You keep going back and going back, you keep doing everything they say, you keep taking the pills, hoping to get yourself back one day, but they never give it back. Of course they don’t give it back – they wouldn’t have you anymore if they gave you the bit back. The bit they took off you.
But they weren’t getting any of me. Not this time. This time I was ready for them – more than ready for them. This time I knew what I was dealing with. I looked carefully across the desk him, “Nullify that, you cocksucker!” I said in my own mind, giving him the finger under the desk, where he couldn’t see it, smiling at him as I did do. And then as soon as I did that I straightaway regretted it because it seemed to me that at this precise moment his face reacted – a mildly quizzical expression passed briefly but quite unmistakeably over his blandly composed nullifier features. His eyes seemed to focus in on me, for all the world as if he were taking an interest in what I had just said. But I hadn’t said anything – not out loud anyway! I saw then – to my horror – that his eyes had a dark sparkle in them, a dark sparkle of incalculable evil, it seemed to me. The sparkle came and went and I felt deadly cold inside. I knew he was playing with me.
The eyes then of course went right back to being the blandly attentive eyes of a normal run-of-the-mill psychiatrist sitting at a desk, but I knew what I had just seen. I knew that I had been granted a sudden glimpse into depths of power and malice far beyond anything I had expected (or could ever have imagined, even in my worst nightmare). I started to panic deep inside, keeping it hidden as best I could. But my brain was racing. Had I miscalculated? Had I been overconfident, even when I had sworn to myself never again to fall into that trap? Had I given too much of myself away already, before we had even started? What was I dealing with here? Could I really hope to survive an encounter with one such as him?
The panic was starting to rise in earnest within me now: this was no ordinary nullifier sitting in front of me. This was no ordinary, run-of-the mill ‘STS type’. That much was plain. He had just shown me that – he had just put his cards on the table. This thing was a fully-fledged nullard at the very least. Or possibly – and I could hardly bring myself to think this – he was of another order of beings (‘null-beings’, that is) entirely. Maybe he was one of the Legendary Ones. The Ones no one ever talks about any more. The Ones we only hear of in myths and ancient folk lore. Maybe he was one of the rulers. Maybe he was one of the Old Ones.
