Make A Joke And I Will Sigh

It visits me first on the train. Go away, I tell it. Fuck off. You were due yesterday. You’re late. I’m not interested.
It sits next to me on the seat and stares quizzically, deaf to my command. I ignore it. This is not a conversation I’m having today. It tries to summon the flies, but they do not come. Presumably they’ve found another corpse around which to hover. It pants and drools. Waves of nausea wash over me with each exhalation of its hot, rancid breath.
I flee to the calming presence of Lady Penelope and my travelling companion thankfully fails to keep pace. We examine portraits of startling technical proficiency. A world that contains these images can’t be anything other than a good place. I start to feel human again. We cross the river and sit in the sunshine, until time comes to part.
I enter the Festival Hall. Normally a place of calm inspiration, today it feels brittle and arid. Music drifts out of the auditorium, sounding baleful and funereal. I hear a scuttling behind me, but there’s nothing there. I feel haunted. Hunted. The phone rings. Conversation is awkward, stilted. I know who she wants, but he’s not here today.
It’s time to move. I head for the Portal of the Divine Martyr, the gateway to the madlands. I chase the ghost of John Betjeman around its interior for a while, before meeting my mother, father and wife. A sense of calmness and normality descends, shaken only by the recurring sensation that we’re all characters in A Clockwork Orange.
My parents pass through the portal to the land of my birth. My wife and I head for home. I tell her belatedly how lovely it is to see her. She eyes me strangely, suspecting an ulterior motive. I can’t get the words to make sense, so I hold her instead. She sits on the seat next to me, a more than welcome replacement for the earlier marauder.
It finds me again in the house. Go away, I tell it. Fuck off. You don’t live here. You’re lost. I’m not who you think I am.
“You’re nobody,” it chuckles maliciously, before slinking into the shadows, leaving its childish taunt hanging in the air.