Sometimes the cards you get dealt makes you think there's a loaded deck in play.

But House Rules. House always wins.

And I suppose that, in the long run, the Dealer has sent me down a few good cards and I've played them well.

And I'm sure she will again, in the future.

I'm a humble man who writes for a living and spends the rest of my time locked in crazy wars with lunatics.

I've been doing this for about 20 years, but recently, or maybe halfway through, I began to come out of my coma.

I started feeling weak and crazy and maybe drunk, and it happened with such terrible speed that I had to lean against the wall...It was too horrible to understand all at once.

That dirty, evil, thieving bastard. That treacherous, rotten little twat!

I was stunned by the flat-out criminal insanity of it.

Holy Mother of jabbering God, I thought.

We don't get many moments like this in life. It was an original experience.

But he was clearly sick and dangerous.

Fuck you, I said out loud.

I stared at him, but he was grinning like a new-born sheep.

I wanted to kill him. And I knew I could, but it would be wrong. Indeed, I was tired of murder, and tired of scum like him.

On my way out I paused long enough to give him a quick beating on both sides of his ugly truthless head.

And then I had to go. With no noise, I walked back to my car in the rain.

It was midnight, I was running late on my deadline, a date I finally managed to hit in a frenzy of hate, dillusion and fear.

As I was finally leaving, many hours later and the last one in the car park, a dead-eyed tramp was shuffling around on the pool-stained tarmac.

He tried to look away, but I grabbed him by his throat. His eyes screamed terror at me.

I stuck the barrel of a revolver in his mouth, splintering teeth.

Mind how you go, I said, and left forever as the sirens shrieked again.