The First - and Second - Sign of Madness
It was a warm, sunny day. A carefree primary-schoolboy at the time, I was pootling my way through town to do whatever it was children of that age did during late 1980s late summers. I noticed that, just ahead of me, a man was shuffling slowly in the same direction. He was dishevelled and seemed to be mumbling to himself. As I drew nearer and overtook him, I could hear more clearly what he was saying. He turned out to be describing an event in fairly graphic detail to a friend - a friend who just happened to be invisible.
"... and then we drowned him, but it still didn't kill him; and then we cut off his head, but it still didn't kill him; and then we put him in the oven, but it still didn't kill him..."

The mumbling became fainter as I passed, and so I don't know how many other gruesome attempts were made on this person's life, or who he was, or whether any was in the end successful. He must have been a resilient bugger, though.

Twenty-something years later, I'm still reminded of him every time I overhear someone on the street talking nonsense into a handsfree phone.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 30 Aug 2011, 10:07, Reply)