You know when you catch something out of the corner of your eye and whip around to check…and there’s nothing there? If there’s one thing that I regret, then it’s reacting to that impulse. If I’d ignored that flash of movement and light, then maybe I wouldn’t be lying here. Then again, maybe he would have found another way to draw me in.

As it was, I *did* twitch, turn my head and stare.

—

It’s not unusual of me to be outside my flat of an evening enjoying a cigarette. I could trot out all manner of cliches about time alone, time to think..but it would all be so much bollocks. Fact is, I enjoy smoking. I also enjoy driving fast, drinking and pretending to shoot people with paint pellets, lasers or online. Whichever is most accessible at the time.

Enough self-justification. I was having a fag.

Not much tends to happen in streets like mine – Leith Walk is not the warzone that some would have you believe. Not any more, anyway. And certainly not the streets directly off it, where I stay. The most exciting thing that happened to me over the last two years was finding a bloke in the gutter on a cold night in December. Paramedics duly called, responsibility discharged.

That opinion is certainly not anything to do with being a “hard case”, either. Cabbies and random pub punters have been known to call me “big man”, but in these parts, that’s generally just a friendly way of saying “fatty”. I’m only 5’10″ ferchrisake.

No, I’m your common or garden, middle-class, almost 40 year old bloke. No martial arts, no weapons training, rather unfit…not exactly a force to be reckoned with. Although, I did think that I was somewhat worldly wise until all this. Talk about a rude awakening.

Back to that cigarette…

At the beginning, you would think. Unfortunately for me, I don’t know where the beginning…well, “begins”. There are a couple of moments in the last year that could conceivably be considered a natural place to start this tale but, the problem is, for me, at any rate, that I no longer trust my memory. Or any of my senses, come to that.

Thus, whilst I have a number of options, I don’t know which are real, and which are a result of what was done to me. Hopefully this will make more sense as things unfold but, if not, then I can only apologise. Lets face it, it barely makes sense to ME, and I’m the one with all the facts. And, of course, I’m not technically sane. So I’m told.

There is one moment that seems to resonate with a bit more clarity than the rest, however. For want of a better measure, I might as well start there.