Human Remains

had funding specifically for athletics, for taking students away for track events with other schools, but they didn’t do that any more. I was the only one bothered, in any case. In the end I got so bad that I had to leave school, even though I needed to run still and who knows, I might have got better if I’d been able to run properly and do weights and spinning classes and things other schools got to do.
    But the running was a mistake. I put the effort in but my legs didn’t really work the way they used to. It was like my body had already died and was just waiting for my mind to catch up. And maybe that’s what the black cloud is, after all. Maybe the black cloud is death and I just didn’t recognise it for what it was. And so many of us are still walking around the world but we are all just dead because of the cloud inside us and outside and all around us.
    I was under the cloud and there was no way out of it, no escape from it. It was like being in a maze where every path you choose is the wrong one, every path leads to a dead end. Except for one. There’s one path, which is the way out. I just needed to find it.

Colin
     
     
    Another mind-numbing day at work, although at least it’s Tuesday again, which means it’s gym night, which means I shall manage to sleep. Last week’s effort is dutifully recorded on my fitness app, ready and waiting to be beaten.
    I’m finding it quite disturbing the amount I’m masturbating. So far this week it’s been hours every night. I think it must be a combination of boredom and too much porn, this obsession.
    So I find comfort – of a sort – in my routines. Monday is study night. Tuesday I go to the gym. Wednesday is laundry and housekeeping. Thursday is college. Friday is takeaway and film night. Saturday and Sunday… well. I like to keep my weekends flexible, shall we say? And of course there are the visits I make to my friends. I like to keep up with them.
    The main focus for my attention, however, is always the study. Although the last degree course I did was very interesting, I didn’t find it a particular challenge. All my essays were on time, some of them were even early, and I got a First without even trying.
    When that course came to an end last year I looked at the options for part-time study and there were very few left which appealed. I even considered doing biology again, as that had been the most enjoyable. But then I saw ‘NLP and behavioural analysis techniques for business and social interaction’. The business bit is neither here nor there, I have no interest in furthering my career with the council – but I was intrigued by the idea that a course might grant me some insight into the thoughts and intentions of others. And it has been fascinating, if undemanding. Very few of the courses I have undertaken at the college have been taxing, and this was no exception. No, the intriguing thing for me has been the additional avenues I’ve been able to explore as a result: thought transference, hypnotism (as distinct from hypnotherapy, another matter entirely), neurolinguistic programming – a misnomer if ever there was one – and brainwashing. I rarely do a course without undertaking some additional study, especially if the subject captivates me, and this one in particular has opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Although it’s unusual for me to continue with a subject beyond a year’s study, unless it’s a degree course, I have found this one particularly absorbing, and so I have moved on to the higher-level course. Quite surprising that some of the other participants have done the same; they have never struck me as being especially intelligent.
    And why all this behavioural analysis results in me wanking every night, I have no idea.
    When this course first started I remember lying in the darkness pondering, as I’m sure countless single men have before me, whether there might be a way, in all of this human contact bullshit, of getting a woman to sleep with me.
    It’s not as though I’m hideous, after all, am I? I’m over six feet tall, well built without being overweight, well-dressed, impeccably clean – what more could any self-respecting woman ask? The only thing I seem to lack is the ability to comprehend what any of them actually want me to say. So what is it that women really want? You don’t have to answer that. I don’t think I can even begin to guess – and I suspect your answer would be different from that of the