These aren't the stories your mother told you.

No.

These are the other stories.

Intermission.

I've got used to hiding.

I've been doing it most of my life.

Luckily, I'm a nobody. No hobbies or interests, not a single friend.

All I have are my linear days.

From work to home and back again, eating, sleeping and masturbating and staring aimlessly out of windows and

into screens and at my sunken eyes in the mirror.

I know how it got this bad.

I drifted into mediocrisy and obscurity and there was nothing I could have done to stop it.

I slipped down into the mundane depths, and I've been wallowing there for years.

Not enjoying it, which would be ridiculous, but living with it.

Not finding it hard to get up in the morning, or to smile at a a colleague or to tell the shop assistant to have a good weekend.

None of them knew how pathetic my existence had come to be.

They wouldn't be interested anyway.

If I was hit by a car while crossing a road, My ID left in my wallet at home,

or if I died of a heart or liver failure on my sofa

within those familiar four walls,

I'm not sure anyone would notice.

I didn't go to the office for four whole days once,

...