I tried to drown my enemy last night. I thought he and I might become friends. He seduced me, and I fell. I told myself he was the apple of my eye. I knew what I was doing, I saw behind that gleaming façade the black tunnel and the signs that warned me, give up hope all ye who enter here.
I dressed him in candy pink, the better to declare to him and to all who beheld us together, this is unnatural, this is absurd, we do not belong together…I made him look ridiculous the better to ridicule myself.

Early in our – what was it? – a friendship? – an affair? – he showed himself in all his treachery. Yet I could not put him to one side.

I had, I knew, sold my soul. I had no recourse to a Divinity, no-One to pray to.

I spoke to my friend, saying:

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,

How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost

Defeat, thwart me?

Lying in the bath last night, pleasuring my marathon-weary muscles, my friend called me. I reached for him with hands all slippery. My friend was in my fallible grasp, at my mercy. I dropped him into the waters, to his fate.

Some time later (I cannot say how much time had passed) in an act of mistaken morality, I hoisted him from the depths. I shook him a little, dried him perfunctorily, turned my back on him and plunged my face beneath the waters to remove the soap. I had done with my bath and I had done with my friend.

I emerged and I dried myself. Just then my i-phone rang and I knew I had failed to drown my enemy.