First of all, I was out of tea. It’s excruciatingly painful, it’s almost like the world’s ending. You begin to ponder your own mortality and shit. Secondly, I overslept. Well, not really, for I usually get up at this hour, but today was no usual day, oh no. I had a performance, you see. I had my first and only performance.

So I had to look nice: a freshly-ironed white shirt, one of those black ties that are constantly going out of style and making a come-back — I wish they’d decide already. I brushed my hair, and I brushed my teeth, and I brushed my coat, and I brushed my shoes, and I used separate brushes. I looked ever so professional, what with the creases on my trousers and the reflection of the sun shining from my feet.

I wondered, who’d be there. Probably the critics — you can easily recognize those by their little wrinkled foreheads. Some husbands, dragged in by their wives. Art students and other dodgy characters with those hideous scarves. Wondered, if there’d be women. Those intellectual women that can pull off wearing red lips without looking like a slut. Or perhaps they do look like sluts, it’s just that you know they’re not. I think this kind of deception nicely foreshadows any kind of relationship you may try to have with intellectual women.

I’ve got two sisters, you see. Their IQ combined is something of three hundred and one. They had this ridiculous crush on the same boy. He lived two blocks to the south and built railway roads in other people’s attics. He died snorting coke till it came out of his nose. Our house was a very gloomy place back then. I moved out shortly afterwards, and, I s’pose, it got much better in the course of time. Liz decided she’s a lesbian, and Beth converted to Islam. She’s happily widowed now. And yes, my name’s El, and our father’s always been in love with our mother. I don’t remember her much. She’s living somewhere in the Amazon, saving the forests. At least, that’s what our father used to say to explain why she didn’t write to us. She couldn’t possibly do that to the trees.

Anyway.

I missed the train. The next one was in a quarter of an hour, and I was late, and I was even later. When I got near the theatre, there was this wrong kind of anticipation in the air, or maybe it’s just the smell of Chinese across the road. The hall was empty, and I started feeling dreadful, because, well, one’s not supposed to come late for an execution. It just doesn’t work that way.

Mine had been scheduled for nine. And it’s a very good time, they’d said. They’d really had to work to squeeze me into that slot, ’cause otherwise it’s Birmingham, and the facilities there aren’t nearly as good. I was appreciative. I was also late, but it hardly could be helped. I’d been late all my life, why should I change my habits because of death.

They were pissed off. Said the crowd got hungry and left. Said there’s far too much competition in the field these days, what with the situation in the Near East, Middle East, Far East and Antarctica, where they’d discovered a cannibal penguin.

So they gave me an axe and said I should do it in my own time. The axe was nice and shiny. I bet you could really split hairs with that. Modern art kind of crap with a smooth white handle. I was impressed. They clearly put so much thought into this whole procedure, and I blotched it all. Oh well. But still, it’s nice — doing work with pros. It was almost like I wasn’t doing this for money. Don’t get me wrong, the money was good. It was good indeed; it’s a pity I couldn’t do this twice. But, they said, a joke is only funny the first time around.

They said I should remember to put the video onto YouTube. Said they hoped it would score high, and then they could put that achievement on my tombstone.

Said I should give the food I had in my fridge back home to my neighbours, for it’s bound to go rotten in a few days, and just think of the smell. And it’s not like I was going to need it.

Said the bathroom was the preferable place. But do take the wet clothes out of the washing machine, should you have any. Then they pat me on the back and left.

My college mate Danny’s always watching those videos on his phone while travelling to work. Pictures of those drowned, war victims, post mortems of the Victorian time. He says there is beauty in death. I say that I can’t understand it. I mean, I know what it is, I got straight A’s in Biology. And I know that it does exist. I just don’t get how something that once was can be there no more. It’s like a miracle but reversed. I guess you never get used to it, and then it’s your own, and then it’s too late.

Anyway.

Shall I proceed?

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