Something bad must have happened

It’s no secret that people are searching for a purpose. For some that purpose is the ability to emotionally engage with the stuff you do during the day that ends up paying the bills at the end of the month. For others, the purpose is to find out whether or not the couple with the neat clothes, battered briefcase and apocalyptic magazines are right, or if spiritual fulfillment comes from meditating through to emptiness and epiphany.

I’ve had my purpose modified. Exhaustion has made me feel like a shotgun. Perfectly calibrated at the manufacturers, each tiny wheel and catch designed to operate in joyous harmony at the points of combustion, propulsion and destruction.

But I’ve gone a step further- I’ve been hidden in a shack in a back yard, covered with an old t-shirt that once said ‘Marathon Runners Do It Faster’, and, by the sound-dampening cover of night, sawn down to further extend my brutality.

My purpose is still the same- but my accuracy is off. The benefit is that now I’m almost guaranteed to get there, a flesh-shearing spray of pellets will do the job of a single spinning pointed death sculpture of a bullet.

This is cheerful stuff, eh? I can almost hear you backing away slowly. It’s impossibly early, but I’m going to sleep, now, and, with luck, will awake in the morning, read this, and think- who was that temporarily insane man? It isn’t that bad, before you attempt to check up on me- I have a doctorate in Melodramatic Studies.

Maybe I’m suffering from Post Traumatic Stress. I don’t think I’ve been through a trauma, but one of the symptoms of PTS is mild amnesia, so who knows.