I tried to take up jogging today. I even went so far as to go out and buy a fancy pair of ridiculous looking trainers. My mother always used to go on about the virtues of finishing what you’ve started and seeing things through, but I canned it this morning and decided to pack it in. As I stepped out of my front door, my ridiculous trainers gleaming in the sun, it dawned on me that my mother’s advice was crap. Anything that can be equally applied to genocide and cross training can’t be good.

This world is filled with things that will never make sense. Trying to make sense of them will only result in one thing. Spending the rest of your life trying to remember what you were like before any of it mattered.

Go

I used to dream about being here. Watching all these faces looking down at me, their eyes filled with an uncertain terror that is as perplexing to me as the frantic actions of the paramedics that are currently attempting to plug my chest. I wasn’t supposed to make it this far anyway, so why the long face? There were never paramedics in the dream though. Just those faces up there. You’d think, tangled up in the countless details, my subconscious would have remembered to add paramedics. I believe they think they’ve got a fighting chance. Relax guys. I don’t make it to the hospital in the dream. It ends right here.

All I can remember are the flashes. Two of them, right on top of one another, no reports. And then I doubled back like I’d been hit in the chest with a hammer. Everything is silent and surreal, the actions of those around me have played out in an almost comical slow motion while I do my best not to giggle at them like some gin-soaked high-school girl. I don’t know why I find it so funny, but I do. Lying here, I’ve been pointlessly telling myself that I’ve just been winded and will be alright in a minute. I’ll get up and everything will be okay. That, in itself, is humorous enough. Lying in an expanding pool of blood, I find it rather ironic that I got it in the lungs. After battling sarcoidosis and pumping my body full of antibiotics in an effort to keep me well enough to perform, it’s my lungs that have truly been shot. And because of that I feel cheated in a way.

In the dream I always got it in the head and there wasn’t any of this inner monologue to wade through. So if I’ve got to wade through it, then you’re going to have to put up with my bullshit a little while longer. Tomorrow’s another day kids. One in which I’ll not be around to remind you that it’s nothing more than our irreversible perpetuation of eating shit and being programmed to ask for salt.

I remember a time not so long ago when my dreaming subconscious used to dwell on images of some quiet paradise lost and the perfect features of the face of a girl that I’d never met. I used to wonder what her hair smelled like. For some reason that was the one thing about it that always bothered me. I never knew. I’m not quite sure whether all of this means that I’ll never know or that I’m about to find out. Maybe that’s heaven, I don’t know.

One thing I do know is that it would be nice if these paramedic guys would stop bringing me around. I like it in here when it’s all quiet and full of wind sounds. For some strange reason I can’t stop thinking about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I have no idea why. Who would have ever guessed that, in my final moments, I’d be consumed by thoughts of milk-chocolate rivers and doors made of marzipan. Typically, this is where I’m supposed to be asking for forgiveness and letting the better angels of my nature consume me with warm fear and resignation. Instead, I’ve got images of grape-flavoured bubble gum trees in my head. It would seem that my implant has gone all screwy again. The last time this happened I was covered in chocolate sauce and couldn’t stop thinking about redemption. I had been a very bad boy then as well.

Maybe you’ll buy my box set and remember me from time to time. On your stereo. In those bad walkman headphones. I’ll be in there, wandering around, bumping into walls, tickled up on the inside. It’s me, He-Man—is that you Battle Cat? I’ll be watching you dance around your room using a brush for a microphone, a tennis racket for a guitar. I’ll recognize some of me in you and we’ll be together again.

Up goes the gurney. So much for subconscious accuracy.

During the nine months that you are held captive within your mother’s womb you breathe symbiotic fluid. Although blood is a substance that carries vital oxygen through the body, and is therefore usually considered an ally, my last few breaths have forced me to the conclusion that blood shares no resemblance to symbiotic fluid whatsoever. It is somewhat harmful when it attempts to skip several steps and wanders into your lungs in hopes of cutting out the middle-man and getting first dibs on the O2. This is not good. Your lungs, which are quite stern and not that receptive to fluidic change, decide to stop transferring oxygen to the blood, causing you to choke and ultimately suffocate. My inner workings are all about ego it would seem.

Something just occurred to me. If you blew hard enough into my mouth I might actually be useful as a wind instrument. I can imagine being played like a flute. A naughty business, that.

Is this where I stop pretending to be the me you always hoped I was? Somewhere, imprisoned within the impregnable fortress of your inflexibility, I remain perfectly fabricated. In a place without windows, without doors, without the knowing of what transpires on the other side of things. I’m going to die. The trials of myself, the pitfalls of being Marty, that beautiful confusion that always was my photogenic side. I am a better liar to myself than to others. Maybe it’s time to realize that all this talking isn’t doing anything to stop the panic that keeps gnawing at my insides like dynamite with a full dance card. I think that you should go.