Exerpt from Chapter 1 of 'The' story

Disclaimer: This story is fictional. None of it is real, even the bits that are. None of the characters mentioned, discussed or ridiculed actually exist; even if you think you do. If you think that these characters are based on you, it's not true but thanks for inspiring me. If you see anything up here that seems to be directly quoted from you, that's just a coincidence and I'd already thought of it long before you said it, so there. If you have any complaints, suggestions or ideas; don't hesitate to keep them to yourself. Thanks for your time and enjoy the story. Or else...

The story starts on the seventh day, of the seventh month, of the seventh year of the second millennium. According to some people since it was Saturday it was even the seventh day of the week, with the week starting on a Sunday, according to them. Of course, that was a bit strange; after all, God is generally described as a hardworking fellow and probably didn’t start with his day of rest. That is, unless he invented pot first, in which case all seven days would probably have been days of rest and none this would have been around in the first place, something that would certainly have cut down on the suffering.

The reason the story started on that day was that a few days earlier, on his farewell lunch (a pleasant affair, including another teacher that was leaving, the boss and a fourth person, who wasn’t actually sure why she was there but wasn’t complaining as the company was paying), events had been kick started by food poisoning. It wasn’t intentional food poisoning. According to the words spoken that day they actually rather liked him at his job. It was food poisoning, however, and not just a mild case of it either.

When he reflected on it later he came to the conclusion that it had probably been a bad idea to order the lime crab. It was a strange combination, with the lime’s overwhelming strength hiding the taste of the crab, something he remarked on during the lunch (he wasn’t always the most tactful of people). He had said it could just as easily have been chicken. Of course it could have just as easily been bad crab, which is exactly what it was, but he hadn’t thought about that while he was wolfing it down.

He became fully aware of this on that most auspicious of days, his first day when he was no longer working, when he was forced to sit on the toilet, bucket in hand, heaving and spraying. The reason he needed the bucket was that people had not yet bothered to put two toilets close enough together for just such an emergency. That wasn’t really that surprising, as this kind of a situation wasn’t really that common, but it was still inconvenient for our poor main character. Not that he was really giving what had and hadn’t been invented a great deal of thought at this time.

No, his mind was elsewhere, leaping from topic to topic, sometimes dwelling on his discomfort, sometimes on what was at the bottom of the bucket and sometimes on rather deep philosophical subjects (in order to not think about what was at the bottom of the bucket).

In between bouts of self-pity and moans he slowly but certainly came to a realisation. The world was screwing with him. Something, somewhere, had it in for him. These kinds of things always seemed to happen and he always ended up in situations that were massively humorous for other people, but rather painful and embarrassing for himself. What was it about him that made him so susceptible to providence’s evil stare? What provoked the world into making sure nothing was ever just normal in his life?

It wasn’t that he was unlucky, that wasn’t it - though he was often unlucky, he was just as often lucky – it was just that he was such an outlier. It was like fate had picked him to suffer through a great deal of the unusual situations, so that others, elsewhere could lead a more normal life. Someone, somewhere, he realised, must be in exactly the opposite situation; they must be wondering ‘why is my life always so normal, why is my life always so plain?’

‘Something’, he realised with absolute clarity between spasms, ‘is fucking with me.’

A moment later the thought was driven from his conscious mind as he projectile vomited largely into his bucket, but also partially onto the dingy mat at the foot of his toilet. The thought was replaced by a slightly more practical one, which went ‘Does bile wash out?’

But just because the idea had momentarily submerged, it hadn’t disappeared. This idea, though not yet fully conscious, was a patient idea. It could bide its time. There was no rush, there was no over urging need to push ahead too fast. It was better, according to this idea, to nudge than to dictate. It believed in guerrilla propaganda. It would gather intelligence, make occasional surgical strikes at essential mental processes, it would scout out the mindscape, find evidence and other ideas to support its cause. Then eventually it would emerge with an army of arguments at its back, too powerful to be ignored.

This thought would eventually provoke a chain of events that would ultimately lead to his true discovery of his own nature, a discovery that would have massive ramifications for both him and this story. But we’ve jumped very far ahead. At this point he hadn’t even left on his trip yet.