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A stupid thing I wrote


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I was going to explain why but every way I tried to explain it was gayer than the last so funk you this is it with no context. It's formatted for MS Word so the paragraph lengths are funked by the sheer amount of text YCM shows per line but I'm not reformatting it for the two people who will read it here, it's short anyway and it would gain little by being compressed further.

 

[spoiler=here]Hello and welcome to the opening paragraph of the story. If you are reading this, that means you can read and that’s pretty cool. Give yourself a pat on the back. Go on. Why didn’t you do it? You think I’m just going to continue masterfully weaving a layered and complex narrative wonder for someone who won’t even do one simple thing for me? funk you. Pat yourself on the back.

 

Did you do it? No you didn’t. You thought this was a joke but it isn’t. Story’s over. Go home. You ruined it for everyone. Maybe you’re reading this and you did pat yourself on the back and you’re thinking this is unfair, and I’d agree, but I have to take a stand here alright this isn’t acceptable. I provide dozens of words worth of entertainment and you won’t even slightly raise your arm in return? It’s frankly quite insulting and I’d like you to leave. Yes? Ok. Thanks. Bye.

 

Well now that that jabroni’s gone we can continue. This isn’t going to be a first-person narrative or even in the present tense so get ready for a jarring transition somewhere along the line as John abandoned his wife and infant son to start a new life in Japan. Knowing nothing of the country, John felt well prepared to settle into the Tokyo lifestyle. He was deported three weeks after arriving amidst a slew of charges relating to public urination, and with nowhere else to turn he headed home.

 

Upon his return, John found his now ex-wife rather inhospitable, and his next discovery was himself wandering the streets alone late at night, spitting at homeless people and kicking pigeons, wondering as he wandered about how he had arrived at this juncture.

 

His ponderings were cut short by a piercing cry for help emerging from a dark alleyway. Instinctively, John left the area and spent the rest of the night in the kind of hotel where you can walk in at 2am and get a choice of room.

 

Awoken the next morning by the unwelcome sensation of a cockroach crossing his forehead, John leapt from the bed and left the hotel as quickly as physically possible; it wasn’t very fast but he tried and that’s what counts. Again he found himself wandering and wondering, but no revelation came to him and he wasn’t even sure if he’d know if one did, so aimless were his thoughts.

 

Nevertheless, he managed to become so engrossed in them that before he knew it he had returned to the alley of the previous night.

 

Emboldened by the weak sunshine, John decided to walk down it. He had no real reason to, but he isn’t real, and this is a mediocre piece of fiction, so he did anyway. If you would prefer that he not walk down the alleyway, this is the end of the story for you. Not very long is it? Not a very satisfying piece overall? No, it’s not. So let’s just stop with the critical thinking and let things happen and see how it goes, alright? Alright.

 

So John headed on down the alleyway and encountered nothing of note. You thought something was going to happen because of that last paragraph didn’t you? You were wrong. How’s it feel to be wrong? This whole segment needn’t have been included, there’s no story here. I was just showing you that you can’t know what’s coming next. I’m making this up as I go. There’s not going to be any foreshadowing, that would take effort, and I’m not putting any into this. Why would I? Who’s reading it? You?

 

John continued with his day, unstructured though it was. He had lunch at a Chinese takeaway and wept openly into his chow mein as he sat on the floor eating it with his hands, regretting his decision not to go into the attached restaurant and just pay the extra 30 cent to maintain his dignity. Once that was done with, he wiled away several hours sitting on a park bench and making everyone uncomfortable by his presence.

 

Unwashed and unshaven, John decided to bathe in the park’s lake. This was an error on his part, and he was arrested for indecent exposure. With no-one willing to pay his bail, John was detained for 48 hours in a minimum-security prison.

 

Following his release, John was a changed man. That time on the inside had given him a new perspective on life, a new appreciation for the freedoms he had, and he resolved to right every mistake he had made. He started by drawing up a list of people he had ever wronged and enlisting the help of a colourful cast of recurring characters, before realising that this was all too similar to the premise of My Name is Earl and he couldn’t afford a legal battle so soon after the divorce, so he scrapped the whole thing and returned to languishing in self-pity for another few weeks.

 

Eventually I realised this was not nearly long enough and John awoke one morning determined to turn his life around. Tired of sleeping in ditches and doorways, he decided to depart for Denmark, a distant land diametrically different from Dominica. Though wary of making life decisions on the basis of how easily they could be expressed alliteratively in a narration of said decisions, John resolved to follow through nonetheless. Alas, just as in Tokyo, he made a horrific error of judgement with regards the culture and was again deported.

 

At this point John decided he didn’t want a narrator anymore as his life had become too predictable. Unfortunately for John he can’t make these decisions because he has no agency of his own and relies on me to do anything. I could just stop typing now and where would he be? Perpetually in the process of being deported.

 

Struck by this realisation, John suffered a complete mental breakdown. That was the end of him. No punchline there, he simply broke completely. The man he once was was lost forever and all that remained was a husk bearing the same face. Bit unfortunate but what can you do?

 

I’ll tell you what you can do. Or rather, what I can do. I can bring him back! John made a full recovery! See? Only thing is I want to be honest with you, and that means I can’t bring John back because that isn’t really what happened. Well none of this really happened. I suppose I can bring him back actually. That’s useful, I hadn’t even introduced another named character yet so there was really no basis to continue if I lost John.

 

Recovered from his total mental collapse and back to being the man everyone knew and tolerated, John again vowed to get his life back on track. Unfortunately for John, I am telling this story, and I don’t have the capacity to come up with a new punchline, so John was deported again. On this occasion he didn’t actually leave the country in the first place, which made the process difficult, but nothing is impossible if you set your mind to it and that’s exactly what the immigration office did.

 

By now several months had passed; John was financially ruined, his family had disowned him long ago, and even describing it to you now I am losing interest so let’s wrap this up. John was walking aimlessly through the streets when he was hit by a car, and then a bus, and then a cyclist, and then another car. As he lay dying, he lamented his decision to walk on the street rather than the footpath.

 

Well there you go that’s the story of John. It’s not an entertaining one, but there is a lesson to be learned. You’d imagine so, at least.

 

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