I don’t know the difference between a premiership and a championship. I have no idea what playoffs are. I can only look on, confused, and hope no one notices my complete ignorance when they talk about tries or runs. “Four for two” sounds like something that would be entered into the Enigma machine, and for ages I was convinced that scoring “a birdie” meant hitting a passing pigeon with the golf ball. Three love sounds like something the hippies did. At least they had the right idea. Not that in would fit in there any better than any where else. Which is to say: not at all.

I would rather have one lasting relationship than “pull lots of birds”. I’m not even sure that isn’t another golf thing. I do not “respect women” because I do not understand why they are treated any differently in the first place. On average women are better at some things than men, and not as good at others, but that is an average and no more descriptive of individuals than saying “human adults are on average 5’6″ tall” accurately describes everyone you meet. I recognise that it is anyone’s right, male or female, to be seen as sexual beings if they wish to and this does not turn them into objects nor is it a betrayal of their gender. However to see or treat someone as nothing but a sexual object reflects an almost wilfully sociopathic lack of insight into other people.

I would rather talk and listen to someone than fight them, no matter how much of an ass they are being. I try to retain my honor and dignity, even though I admit I’m not sure what they even mean. Homophobia, racism, religious intolerance and other forms of persecution of people just for being different really stick in my gut. But I do not react with hate (as much as it may be my instinct) because meeting hostile intolerance with more hostile intolerance can never lead to anything better. I smile at strangers I pass in the street, and talk to anyone I happen to meet. Especially when they are serving me. If someone has got the mundane job of scanning every item of my shopping, the least I can do is ask how their day is going and give them a smile.

I do not have a type of music, I enjoy almost all genres. Except opera. I just don’t get opera. The same with movies and books; as long as they are good within their genre I can appreciate them or at least understand how someone else might. I will never say “That’s shit” because liking things is entirely subjective and I am no better a judge of the objective quality of something than any one else. Except Twilight. That’s shit.

My idea of a good night involves friends and games or movies, not crowded rooms and lack of conversation. It doesn’t require alcohol. I would rather have an evening in with candles and a book than out trying to overcome my insecurities at a pub that smells like beer and sweat. And i never, ever, want to wake up next to half a kebab again.

I have no useful skills. I cannot fix a car or rewire a house. My clothes always get washed on the same setting because I don’t know what the other ones do. I can’t iron for shit. I can’t even paint a shed. I don’t own a shed. I don’t own a house – I rent. I can sew, and write, and even draw. But not very well. I can drive a car, speak another language, and build a fire. But not very well. I can cook. That I do well. Skills wise, generally, I am pretty average.

But I am definitely not your average kind of guy.

You’ll squawk and squeak at the strongful sight
Of sparkletails in the sunrise
Or a nannymoth family
sunbathing at night.

There’s a farm for frozen funghoppers
Far from fierce faddleflops
Who flop on frozen funghoppers for fun

And a truck of tired tyres who like to tease
Swerving sleepily sideways
Almost smashing the tuckabees’ trees

Ladies and gentleplankton, enjoy my world!
Today I am very busy so journey on without me,
I have toodles to oo
And noodles to be!

Dishonored
They call it “blinking”, as if to suggest it is as easy as that. Well it feels exactly like it is: a massive acceleration of every part of my body simultaneously then a jarring stop that shakes my organs around inside. It feel like being hit by a speeding tank, and it takes everything I’ve got not to scream out in pain each time!

Sonic
“Lets spin-smash through that wall!” Did you never learn that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should do it? How would you like it if I made you jump through every plate glass window you passed, hmm?

Prototype
Do you have any idea what this feels like?! My arm is literally torn apart, shredded inside out, then twists into this sick perversion that makes me sick! Not just a little sick, deep intense nausea that stretches to my soul and leaves it’s mark there. I am an abomination, I hate myself and what I have become!

Dead Space
No amount of therapy will ever save me from the pure terror and horrors that I have been through for your entertainment. I hope you have nightmares every night of your life, because I know I do.

Mario
Why do you make me run all the time? Right across the land you make me run! Why can’t I just call a taxi? I’m a fat plumber for God’s sake – you’re going to give me a heart attack! My feet are in tatters, and my butt is so beaten the bones are bruised!

They called her Ma Mountain. A wildly unimaginative name chosen more because no one knew enough about her to pick a better alternative than because it was a good moniker. Children believed she was a witch who ate her victims. Adults said she was a crazy woman, and told stories of her howling naked at the moon. She was neither of these. Ma Mountain was a woman like you or me, who one day, for reasons we may never know, decided to remove herself from society.

I first heard about this “wild woman” through a friend. An urban myth that had been passed from person to person, embellished with the fanciful imaginations that make such stories so interesting to hear, and more interesting to tell. With your own imaginative additions of course. But there was something at the heart of this legend that piqued my journalistic interest. I wondered where it had come from, if there really had been a woman at some point living in the mountains all by herself. There was a story here, I could sense it. But it wasn’t the story I expected, and I certainly never imagined I would actually meet Ma Mountain.

It took five months collecting different versions of the story to trace its origins, a location that I will respectfully not publish. I discovered many variations, some of which ventured into the plain absurd (that she was an exiled and secret member of the British royal family), while some remained perfectly sensible. One in particular has always stuck in my mind. Ma Mountain, so this tale went, was a single child of a poor family. Not overly endowed of beauty nor charm, she was overjoyed when the very man she had secretly admired since she was old enough to do so asked for her hand in marriage. But the wedding day passed with no sign of the groom. The very next day the utterly heartbroken would-be bride walked tearfully out of the town and into the mountains.
There is no reason to believe this version of events any more than any of the other variations, but it always appealed to me. Maybe because I am a hopeless romantic at heart. Maybe because few things other that this kind of heartbreak would seem to justify withdrawing from all society, hiding away from everything.

It took almost another month to find the exact location where Ma Mountain had been living, and I was almost too late. As I passed through the cave she had fashioned into a home, the first thing that I noticed in the low flickering light of a small fire was the collection of ephemera. Carved into the wall were shelves which had been filled with an apparently random assortment of items. On one shelf sat a snowglobe with a miniature Eiffel tower inside. Next to this, its distorted reflection wrapped around the curves of the snowglobe, sat what seemed to be an red plastic photoframe holding a photo of a woman and a child. The huge grins and perfect slightly soft focus gave it away as the stock photo that came with the frame. As I walked deeper into the cave the flickering firelight caught the silver of a ring on another shelf, the reflection winking at me as the light moved around. As I looked closer I saw next to it was a children’s drawing of a dinosaur, on wrinkled paper that had seen better days. I think it had been scrunched up then laid out again. In the corner was a name that I couldn’t quite make out in the dim light, and as I was peering closer to attempt to read it I was startled by a noise from the back of the cave. A weak splutter echoed out of the darkness, and once  got over the start it gave me I strained my eyes against the gloom and could just about make out a figure lying on a makeshift bed cut into the wall.

She was old, so very old, and frail beyond words. The woman I saw was more bone than flesh, wrinkled skin hanging so loosely over a skeletal frame that I feared even her shallow breaths would break what was left of her. Her gaunt fingers held on to a threadbare old teddy bear that looked as old as she. Quietly I approached, afraid of literally scaring the life out of her. I kneeled next to her bed and introduced myself in a soft whisper. Ma Mountain opened her eyes and looked in my direction but did not move. I knew then for certain that she was no longer able to, these truly were the last moments of her life. Without really thinking about it, without considering what it might mean to someone who had long ago severed all contact with other humans, I took this dying woman’s hand in mine and held it.

A look of pain washed over her face. Not physical pain, but something deeper. As her weak fingers curled around my hand I could swear I sensed regret in that look. Regret, and relief. A tear rolled down her wrinkled cheek, losing itself in the deep folds as she took a deep breath. Her hand tightened with the effort, but I could tell she wanted to speak. The whisper that came out was as much just escaping air than speech. One breathy word, the first word in many years, and the last. “Thankyou”. Almost as if she had been holding on for this last moment, Ma Mountain went still and silent, the gentle rise and fall of her chest finally at rest.

After all those years of self-imposed isolation the one thing Ma Mountain longed for most in her final moments is the same thing we all need: to feel the touch of another human.

Here I live in seclusion, my days absorbed by my work. For you see, although I know the secret, knowing is not the same as doing. But I see your confusion, so let me backtrack and correct your ignorance before I continue. Or maybe that is not confusion but indigestion, in which case you may wish to avert your ears as what I have to tell you won’t help any. It’s ok, you can put them in the box over there, I promise not to boil them. I’ve already tried that.

Custard. The yellow nectar of the gods, sunlight in delicious form. You may think you know what I am talking of but really you know no more about it than you do about the smell of a centipede’s armpits. Trust me when I tell you that you are ignorant at best, but more probably wilfully wrong. Where does it come from? Wrong! See, I told you! Do you really think Adam was tempted by something as boring as an apple? Did you seriously buy that, even for a second? It was custard, the fruit of the hard-working custard-bees of Eden, that Adam was powerless to resist. God was angry because of Adam’s defiance, but mostly because Adam ate a particularly delightful batch of most exquisite custard that He had been saving for a special day. He was so angry in fact that He decreed that no bees of this world would ever produce custard again and that no human would ever experience its heavenly pleasures from that day forward. God struck this yellow temptation from our history. This is why there is no mention of custard in the Bible. However the secret of custard, its blissful taste and soft creamy texture, has been passed from father to son in hushed whispers over countless generations.

This is where I came in. A very, very, long time ago my father told me this story and I made it my lifetime mission to uncover the secret of true custard. Thanks to the secret support of many religious leaders and people who make the fortune 500 look like cider swigging hobos I have been able to delicate many lifetimes to this quest. So where does custard come from? Me. At least everything you know as custard does. But that is only a shadow compared to the real thing. True Custard is an experience of nirvana so powerful that afterwards even Heaven is disappointing. I have shared the results of my work so far with the world, but now I am entirely consumed by my final challenge. Because, as I said earlier, I now know the secret. I found it a quarter turn between alchemy and sorcery, three steps into enlightenment and behind the ethereal spice rack.

The only problem is, as I mentioned, knowing the secret and using it have turned out to be two entirely different problems. For sixteen generations now I have been down here working on it. The substance I can produce now makes what I have released before seem like rusty rainwater. This custard is so good it literally glows, providing me with all the light I need, and tasting it makes the neurons in your brain spark to life as if you’ve never truly thought before. The taste is so wondrous that the best poets on earth are wordless to describe it (believe me, they have tried), and the richness so finely balanced that you can consume as much as you wish and never eat too much. Yet still my work is not complete, and finally my incredibly long life is drawing to a close. So please, come find me so I can pass on the secret to a new master. For I fear that if I pass before I get the chance, the true secret of Custard will be lost forever and mankind will always live wondering what it might have had, how history may have been changed.

Please come soon, my time is running out.

On a cold night look for the steamy breath from below, lit by the golden glow.

“Well I guess we need to find everyone else. If there is anyone alive.”
I shuddered as I thought of the mess in the room where we found Susan. It looked like someone had been butchered in there; the carpet was wet with blood and we found half a hand by the door. Whatever had happened it there was bad with a capital F. It was no wonder Susan was so gone when we found her, curled up over her own knees and sobbing but completely unresponsive. We had only learned her name from her passport left on the bedside table. That was almost three hours ago and she still hadn’t said a word, or even given any indication that she was aware of our presence at all.
“We can’t get out,” I continued, “so for now we don’t have many options. Maybe we can find a phone…or a weapon.”
Adam seemed to think for a moment then said simply, “Kitchen. Knives.”
I had to hand it to him, that was probably our surest way to find something to defend ourselves with. I took Susan’s hand and led her toward the stairs at the end of the corridor, with Adam following behind, his eyes glancing constantly around like some kind of squirrel with a panic disorder. I would rather be alone, but something very bad was going on and if I hit trouble I wanted some backup, or at the least someone to use as fodder while I escaped!

We were just taking the first steps down to the first floor when the silence was torn apart by a terrifying scream from the floor above us. I barely had time to register what was happening before Adam was sprinting up the flight of stairs. Suddenly I wasn’t so keen on his inability to resist a damsel in distress, and I strongly suspected it would get us all killed.

Amy set down her mug and thought to herself “This isn’t just morning coffee, this is M&S coffee”

Some days I am good with words; they fall into place on a foundation of ideas and concepts. Tiny threads sprout between them, connections tying everything together into on coherent, structured whole.

Today is not one of those days.

Something wants to be said, but it is shy, maybe it doesn’t even know itself what it is. So it prowls on the edge of my consciousness, leaving me to face a disarray of unrelated, disjointed words and ideas. Pick a word at random, go fishing and see what I catch. A shopping trolley and an old boot. Try again. “conundrum” good word, but what does it mean?

No sense will be found today. But that’s ok, nonsense is as much use, if not more. When we make sense we have shaped, twisted, and tricked words into the meanings we desire. But through nonsense the Truth can be glimpsed, just visible between the words if you look at a certain angle. That’s Truth, not truth. Something raw, primal, deep down in our very soul. Freud knew this, which led him to “free association”. Speak out whatever words come to your mind as they come to you, and your Truth hides behind like the Sun seeking out between blinds.

So if I pick words at random, what is my Truth?

“xylophone buggery”

Ladies and gentlemen, that, apparently, is my Truth.

One day he provoked me so much with his twisted manipulations and vile comments that I flew into a blind rage. My fury caused a riot; things were throw, destroyed. The army had to be called in to contain things. But in the end nothing changed, only that the Warden got to exert his power some more.

Suddenly, with no warning, the Warden was called away leaving the prison under the supervision of his second in command. A stern woman who could easily match the Warden if you crossed her, but far more amiable at other times. Life as a prisoner became much easier for the six month’s I had left. Not that I knew my time was almost up.

Sometimes, if I was lucky, I would get to go on trips. I met many interesting people on these trips, some of whom even became friends. And then one day, while I was out on one of these carefully supervised excursions, the fates intervened and a new opportunity snuck out of the shadows with a whisper and a knowing look. The resistance whisked me out of the clutches of authority and off to another life…

As my hourglass runs low I find myself looking back at my lives. I have experienced so many lives, but can I truly say I have lived them? Have I quaffed on vitality and feasted on experience like a starving man at a king’s banquet? Or have I picked at the edges of my plate suspiciously, too wary to brave the unfamiliar before me? It is true that I have had many courses, many dishes of life, but I have discarded so much.

A mirror spins slowly, and in each side I see my stories. The image reflected back at me each time looks like me, but different. Not just different people, but different worlds.

In one life I was a child, young and foolish but headstrong, fiercely loyal to my beliefs, with a sharp glint in my eyes that took in all around me and cut through the veil of childhood innocence. I had many adventures. I was a spy, a warrior, a thief, and a guardian. Guardian to a mother tormented by an evil curse. Some days her mind was so numbed by this spell that she fell into a deep sleep that no shaking, no command, no bucket of water could rouse her from. Then some days she fought back and regained enough lucidity to tell me of what had happened. “They” did this. Their corruption. The poisons they forced on her or tricked her into taking. In bottles, in food, even through the tap.

No one could know that she was under such a powerful curse, that she was so vulnerable, or they would assuredly come for her again, as they did that dark still night. Only this time I knew she wouldn’t escape again. So I put on a performance worthy of any stage. I fooled everyone around into believing that she was strong and healthy. I would cook, clean, and shop when it was needed, when she couldn’t manage it herself. And when she was at her weakest and most confused I would cover for her, protect her, and guide her away from prying eyes.

Every day I was alert for the agents who worked against us, always aware that They had spies everywhere. Trust no one. Keep the secrets. Hide when they look. Look when they hide. But above all beware of Him. The serpent, the rapist, the deceiver. He was the one who cast the spell. More poisons she was tricked into taking, and the moment she did her mind shattered and she became vulnerable to Him and his twisted ways. But I would protect her. That was my role. To keep her safe from Them. From Him.

In the end I realised there was only one way I could protect her, only one way to save her. And that was to betray her. To offer myself as sacrifice. To save her I had to abandon her. Leave her defenceless and vulnerable.

And that was how I became the Betrayer. I became one of Them. They had me, as she always knew they would. My actions were out of love, but appeared loveless. So as I betrayed her, so she cast me out.

A turned back.

A slammed door.

The mirror spins and one life ends as another begins…