The Boy Who Woke Up and Realised He Was God

Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.”

Thank you all for the incredible response to the Letter To My Dead Dad. It received more reads and comments in the first twelve hours than any of my other Substacks. I’ve decided I’m going to write a collection of them, which I’ll be dropping here as and when they’re written. So, thank you for the feedback, like the whore I am, I’ll give you what you like. Speaking of which, here’s something I hope you like. As usual, not edited, and made public too soon, ho hum. Enjoy!

OK, so I’m in this psyche-ward; proper One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest malarkey, and these two YouTube influencers came in to do a story. It’s happened before, the so-called mental health crisis comes around every few years, so the lumpenproletariat, the rank and file, the hoi polloi… well, when the kids are going crazy, it suitably whets their communal appetite for another interview with a nutter, a psycho, a schizo, anyone really who’s slowly shaking loose their mortal coil at His Psychiatrists Pleasure.

So, into a room with the pair of them I walk. Nondescript male, hot female, the sounds of zips unzipping and synthetic fabrics unfolding as they set up lights, microphones, all bit, and a reflector that nearly gave me a heart attack as it snapped into action and quadrupled in size. There’s a bit of a hoo-ha due to a potential lack of power outlets, but that’s quickly resolved, and we’re ready for liftoff…

Where did it all start, take us back to the beginning. What, like the start of the universe? No, when did you first encounter Patrick? Yeah, I knew that; I was just taking the piss. No worries, Patrick, little Paddy, he was the new kid at school, but poor. We were all poor, state comp settings. But Patrick was really poor. Nan knitted his jumper, so that’s minus ten points right away. Trousers didn’t fit, minus another five, probably handed down - and he had that dirty one bath, one shirt a week look about him. I knew it well. When you’ve got kids walking around school with Lyle & Scott jumpers (and even the odd Chico Garmetti from the Saturday market) your nan’s gaping stockinette stitch, savagely wrong shade of red jumper pretty much alienates you from the outset. His Simod trainers didn’t help, either. There’s the exciting, attractive new kid, and there’s the smelly tramp new kid. Paddy was very much the latter.

So why did you and him become friends? It’s the lady asking, twiddling with her hair. I’ve pulled her. She knows, and she knows I know she knows. But she was seducing me from the moment we made eye contact. After that, it was just a semiotic dance of sexy give and take, (if you can stretch your imagination to near tearing to see a semiotic dance as in any way alluring,) but we gave and we took. He knows it too, Adam, or whatever he said his name was. But, Victoria, I can’t forget that. I asked her name and immediately repeated it back to her. People love that - birds do, anyway - when executed correctly, with just the right amount of panache and decorum. Overdo it, though, and it’s creepy. Anyway, Victoria asked, so I’ll give her the answer she wants, executed correctly.

I don’t like bullies. And there was a gang of them, all picking on him, spitting on him, stealing his dinner. Giving him a little dig in the arm, a slap around the back of his head. Not all the time, but too much, too often. One-on-one, I’d say Paddy’d probably take most of them. Being that poor, he’d learned that life was a fight, a battle, all day, every day. There’s often a toughness to those proper boracic working class kids that belies their malnourished frames. But when attacked in packs…

So, I just started talking to him one morning between classes, to cut him some slack. Not because I was a hardcase or anything, I certainly wasn’t, but I was unpredictable, and in an already mercurial and erratic pubescent swamp in which the entire year was treading water, more unpredictability was quite the deterrent. We were only second-years, like eleven or something, and they soon lost interest when one became two. Pathetic.

It turned out nice, though. He was a good kid. We were both into computer games: I had a ZX Spectrum, and he had a Commodore 64. The debate over which one had the best games was a source of endlessly pleasurable contention in many male friendships during the early eighties. We had plenty to discuss, and he was very bright too - one of those kids who read books - out of choice! He’d tell me about the Soviet Union and the horrors of the Siberian gulags. He told me about the opium wars between the British and the Chinese. Truth be told, I didn’t really care about much of what he was saying, but his passion for it was engaging, and sometimes that’s enough.

So when did it all…You want me to cut to the chase, yes? Well, there was no slow decline of his sanity, or slow ascent of his divinity, depending on your point of view, he just came in one day, and I ask him how it’s going, and he says, “I woke up this morning and realised I was God”.

Wow! Poor response, but when she smiles and her painted red lips open to reveal gleaming white teeth, I get that feeling in my belly, and she runs her fingers through her hair to get it away from her face and it falls back exactly where it was and in a way we’ve already fucked. Adam knows. And he knows I know he knows. He’s probably been trying to fuck her since he met her. And apart from setting up the microphones and saying ‘Wow,’ I can’t think of any other reason she’s part of this set up. Nothing wrong with that, work with your strengths. Hot chicks are cool.

He just came out with it like that? No build-up like ‘Hey, I’ve got a secret I want to tell you,’ or… No. I think the key word here is realised, he didn’t say he thinks he’s God, or he might be God, believes he is, could be, wants to be. He said he realised he was God. He was totally convinced. So, what did you say? I asked him if he wanted to skip class and go to the arcade, he said yes so we went to the arcade. He could flip two pence coins up the coin eject slot and get fifty pence of credits. For that alone, he was already a God in my book. I’d tried for years, and I never met anyone else who could do it. We’d often go to the arcade with ten pence each, and that would last us both about two hours, because: A) That was five flicked two pences each, and B) We were pretty good at the games. Getting fifty pence of credits for two pence will do that.

I reach my foot under the table and slide it down the side of Victoria’s calf muscle. She turns her head away from Adam, Graham, fuck knows, we’ll stick with Adam, teases her hair with her fingers again, the waxy red lipstick assisting the deliberately slow parting of her lips. I think she’s wearing a red bra.

So, when did things start heating up? When did Patrick, realising he was God, actually start affecting things? Well, word got out. I certainly told a couple of other mates, but they weren’t gossips, and I just kind of said, hey, Patrick told me he’s God, and obviously they just disregarded it, because, well, you know. Maybe Patrick told someone else; fuck knows.

But what signs were there? The first thing I remember that happened was we went down the arcade, and I said, ‘I wish I could flick the twos,’ and he placed a two pence in my palm, looked directly into my eyes, and I swear they were completely black, the pupils, I mean, there were no irises; what’s the plural of iris? Iri? Anyway, his iri were black, and as we maintained eye contact, he folded my fingers over the two pence and then kind of clasped my fist in his hand, which seemed strangely larger than mine, larger than usual I mean, like an adult hand. And as he continued to look into my eyes, I went into a kind of trance, and then he moved my hand to the coin reject, let go of my hand, and guided my fingers and the two pence into the coin reject, and then smiled at me, and weirdly, I just felt a huge, warm, wave of… of love, like nothing I’d ever known before. And when that two pence flicked up that coin reject slot and I heard the Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! of fifty pence worth of game credits. IT.WAS.EVERYTHING. I could now not only play games for next to nothing, but I could make money selling credits! The miracle of making money had been bestowed upon me. By the God-child.

OK, I understand, but why did you end up in here? It’s going to take more than someone showing you how to cheat the arcades to end up in a mental institution. Right, here’s where it all started going wrong… very wrong. Here’s what you came for. There were these two girls, Claire Coats, and Jane Downing, and they used to hang around together, kind of weird girls, not trying to be popular, were confident with what they had, and pretty much kept themselves to themselves. I had a bit of a thing for Jane, and one day she wore a red bra; I could see it in assembly as her and Claire sat in front of us, well, cos we chose to sit behind them, nudging a couple of younger kids out of the way so I could be near Jane. And her red bra - it just done me - it was the sort of garms the birds in those three well-fingered pages of mum’s Littlewoods catalogue wore. And that did it for me. I’d imagine her climbing into my bedroom window at night, and you know, I’d wank my cock loose just thinking about it. So, then Patrick develops a crush on Claire, sort of like kids do, it’s convenient that she’s best friends with Jane, and at eleven, you’ll take any bird, really, hormones and all that.

So we decided to bunk a couple of days off school, go down the arcade, and spend the whole day flicking twos for money. Hang on, Patrick hadn’t mentioned anything else about being God at this point, and you hadn’t asked him? No, him teaching me how to flick twos was fucking weird, but I was so happy to finally be able to do it. I thought more about that than the how or why, or God or anything like that. May I continue? Please… Thank you, Victoria. By the end of the two days, we had about twenty quid. Then we went down the woods and talked about how we were going to pull them, Jane and Claire, these two girls we’d never talked to.

I asked Paddy if he’d ever touched a girl’s tit, and he said no, but he’d like to and had thought about it a lot. I told him I had, two of them, at the same time too, but she was asleep, and Paddy said it didn’t count. He used to carry this little, somewhat faded picture of eighties stunner Maria Whittaker around with him, and he said he thought Claire would look a lot like her if she wore a similar red bikini and had massive boobs and hair, and I agreed because why would you argue about something like that? Anyway, we spent all afternoon in metalwork talking about Jane and Claire and how we were going to have the greatest night out with them, like a date, and snog them and feel their tits and they would love us and we would love them and it would be lovely and the best time of our lives.

So it was teenage lust that really got things going? Steady on, Michael. It’s Adam. Him as well. I’m not sure I’d like to be quoted as saying anything like ‘it was teenage lust that got it going,’ but we decided that after metalwork, we’d approach them, Jane and Claire, tell them about our twenty quid, you know, show them we had the lucre to make a night happen and see if they wanted to come out with us, maybe buy some booze and go down the lakes.

Hang on, sorry… You’re alright, Victoria. How may I assist you? Well, you said, ‘after metalwork,’ er…did the pair of you have jobs? Oh gosh, no, well, unless you count flicking twos as a job. But no, back then, we learned metalwork at school. Anyway, we decided that after metalwork, it being the last class of the day, we’d approach them.

I see, so you’d arranged between the two of you to approach them after school, invite them down the lakes, and spend your twenty pounds? Yes, that’s it. Beautiful really, childhood, so innocent. Speaking of innocence - which is to speak of guilt - have I been a bit off with you, Graham? A bit, but it’s OK, it adds a bit of spice. Spice, eh? The thing is, I often get a bit skittish in the presence of a gooseberry, I mean, if you weren’t here now, me and Victoria would be at it, so your presence, to me, now, right here, is just a rusty old spanner jammed right in the gleaming engine of sex through which me and Victoria would otherwise be seamlessly shifting gears. You think you’d be having sex with Vicky if I wasn’t here? Yes. Ask Her. Vicky? No! Ask the question. What question? Victoria, if I wasn’t here, would you two be seamlessly shifting through the gears of the gleaming engine of sex? Victoria, if I wasn’t here, would you two be seamlessly shifting through the gears of the gleaming engine of sex?

Whoa! Look at the colour drain from Michael Graham Adam’s face! It looks like it’s appearing on Victoria’s face, wouldn’t that be a thing? Alas, it’s just the release of epinephrine, although other hormones are involved, causing the blood vessels on her face to widen. You, on the other hand, well, face, expressing that ghostly, dare I say transparent blanched cadaverous pallor, is the opposite of blood vessels widening, unimaginatively called vasoconstriction. You can get vasoconstriction of the penis, well, you can, I mean, I can’t. Not with the likes of Victoria ticking all the right boxes. Ask the question, Victoria. Do you have vasoconstriction of the penis, Adam? What the fuck is going on here? For a start, you haven’t answered Victoria’s question. And she didn’t answer mine, well yours, the one you told me to ask her. Come on, Pete, it’s so obvious, it didn’t require an answer; it was right there on the cusp of rhetoric. No I don’t have penile vasoconstriction. Vicky, would you two be fucking if I wasn’t here? Yes. Told you. Wow. Wow indeed. So, my newly penile vasoconstricted friend, I’ve got places to be, things to do. No you haven’t, you’re stuck in here. I’m not saying there aren’t things to do here, but it’s a hospital for the clinically insane, and for all your posturing, I imagine there are only so many games of table tennis you can play. Fair point, especially with spastics, and people who cry or shit their pants when you serve the ball. Right, so what happened next? I drew some religious symbols on the table tennis balls, and now there are only about two people here who will play. No, what happened with Patrick and the girls?

We missed them. We waited by the school gates, and as the crowds became bunches, and as the bunches became pairs, and as the pairs became people we’d never seen before, like a bloke carrying a box of tools who was wearing a thing around his neck saying Visitor, we realised we’d fucked it up. Maybe they’d bunked school. They weren’t in our metalwork class, but we darted out early and were sure we’d see them, like we did every day, from afar, like two little lost boys. Very much like that, in fact. And that’s when it all went.. I don’t know. I was pissed, like proper annoyed. The thought of cupping my hands on Jane’s warm breasts was getting me through the endless… schoolboy’s life of not cupping warm breasts. So I said, “Right, God, sort this shit out,” and wouldn’t you know, he did.

He did? What, Jane and Claire came walking along. Please. This was next level. The four of us were there, but not in this physical world, we were on a different plane, a different way of existing, you know, the sort of thing you’d expect God to do. I wasn’t cupping Jane’s breasts, I. WAS. JANE’S. BREASTS. And I was the cupping of them too. It was everything it could have been, everything I wanted it to be, and so much more. It was like when you do DMT or something and you find out things about things you didn’t know existed, you get answers to questions you didn’t even know how to ask. Sexual questions, mainly. Maybe if I hadn’t been eleven, it would have had a different theme, but you know, what are eleven year old boys thinking about? It was fucking weird, beyond words, beyond memories, The four of us inhabited a place beyond… no not beyond, before, before time and space.

So when did that, er, trip end? I guess that night must have ended. No. I’m still there, but without Patrick, without God to pull the strings. That’s why I’m in here. I started self-harming, drink and drugs, all bit. I’m caught between worlds, I’m caught between who I am and who I am. You know, and when your mum takes you to the doctors and you tell them that story, well, you’ve kind of signed-off your insanity clause. Looking back, it was inevitable that I would be psyched-off for a life with the lunatics. For my own protection, you understand, they protect me from myself with drugs I don’t take. I’m just going to use the toilet and grab a cup of tea, do you two want tea or coffee or… Er, OK. OK.

He’s certainly a strange one. Yes, I think we can agree on that much. But you’d fuck him? Sorry? You’d seamlessly shift through the gears of his sex machine. What on Earth are you talking about, Adam? You need a coffee. You said that!

Adam, Vicky, here’s Gerry, sorry we’re a bit late but Gerry had a meeting with his prescribing doctor. We got your tablets all taken care of, didn’t we, Gerry? Yes. We got all my tablets taken care of, didn’t we. What are we doing now, Nurse Davies? Remember I told you about Adam and Vicky, they want to talk to you about when you were young. Yes. They want to talk to me about when I was young. That’s right. OK, I’ll leave you to it. Let me know if you need anything. I’ll let you know if we need anything, Nurse Davies.

What’s your name? Are you recording? Yes. Stop. OK, He’s been here, hasn’t he, Patrick? We’ve just interviewed someone yes, someone who we thought was you. Well, it wasn’t me, clearly. It was Patrick. Show me some of the footage. One sec. Hmm, did you set this up right, Adam? Of course. There’s nothing on it. It’s just blank, no video, no audio. Sounds about right. Now listen to me, you haven’t got any footage, but you have got a story. If you value your life, never mention a word of it to anyone. Because your life will never be the same again. It might already be too late. Pack up your stuff, get in your car, and go home. Don’t even think about sharing any of it.

Are you saying we just interviewed Patrick, the boy who woke up and realised he was God. Yes, it certainly looks like it. So how come you’re the one in this institution?

It’s consecrated ground, Patrick can fuck about with me, and he does try from time to time, but he can’t cause me any real trouble. What, this hospital is consecrated ground? Yes, Frigg. Frigg? Frigg’s gleaming engine of sex? It was built on an old pagan ritual site where the Germanic goddess Frigg was worshipped. If I leave, who knows what he'll do to me.

I suggest you pack up your stuff and go. Seriously. You’ll get some clicks, that’s what they call them, right? But you might also get Patrick in your front room playing with your kids, or sitting in the back seat of your car, controlling the steering wheel, accelerator, and brake, with his mind.

Hang on. This is insanity, this story needs to be told. I’ve never heard anything like it. This is important! There’s evidence, there’s Jane, Claire, there’s the moment you were all beyond time, there’s you in here, for life, there’s Frigg and consecrated ground, this is the biggest story I’ve ever heard. I have a responsibility to tell this tale.

You really believed all that shit?

Eh?

Excuse me, sorry to bother you, Dr Johnson, you’re needed in the consultation room.

OK Lynn, thank you.

Dr Johnson? Dr?

Adam and Victoria packed up their kit in near silence. Sentences were started but faded quickly before making a point or asking a question. As they left the little room, all the patients and staff of the facility were in the main room, rocking backwards and forwards, smoking cigarettes, repeating tics and the usual capers of a madhouse, but they all broke into a howling, laughing, giggling, applauding mass. Dr Johnson walked Adam and Victoria through the room and to reception, where they signed their discharge forms.

Can I just ask, what the fuck was all that about?

Sure. This is a place of healing, not a place to help you sell Nord VPN subscriptions. Close the door behind you.

The End

Chris Dangerfield

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