Sin.

Yep. You heard me right. Sin. Sin-sin-sirree, there's no place for me. Or 'thee' as my dear old father, God rest his weary shade, used to say.

"You're a waste of space, boy!" he'd yell when he was feeling in a good mood. "Sin-sin-sirree, there's no place for thee!"

And he'd laugh. He'd laugh until he cried.

I just cried.

But that was then and this is now. So no matter, eh? Let's be cheery. Let's be happy. Let's be a-smilin' all the love-long day. Why not? Life's too short, so they say.

Weird that. "So they say" is also something 'They' say. So really, I should put it as "Life's too short, so they say, so they say..."

Or not.

Anywho-be-do. Name's Sin. That's me. And, I should coco, me and nobody else. If that's not the case, then my apologies to any other Sins out there. I hope you either changed your name or had big, hard fists. Really I do.

Sin. The kids at school loved me for that one. I wasn't fatter than a turkey three days before Christmas grace, or covered in raging acne as if Vesuvius had decided to dine out on my face, being a right pig in the process by having starter, main course and a big old yummy dessert. I didn't speak like I'd had a hearty meal of helium for breakfast, nor did I wear specs the size of full-fat-full-cream-full-cholesterol milk bottle bottoms. It was just the name.

Sin.

That's worth a punch or two, don't you think? Worth a kick between my legs once a day and twice on Fridays, no? No, but I'm biased. I'd rather be the kicker than the kickee. Well, to be honest, I'd rather be neither, but if it came right down to dancing on the edge of a knife, kicking or being kicked, punching or missing teeth, a choice isn't a choice. Not really.

So. That's me.

I tried to kill myself once. I thought I'd mention that just to keep the mood up. Just to keep us all smiling, you know?

It wasn't with pills, or razor blades, or leaping from tall buildings in a single bound. I used none of those mundane, ordinary, everyday techniques. My method of self-destruction was (drum roll please) teleportation.

Hah. Got you, that one, didn't it? You were expecting, perhaps, that I'd tied myself to a train track like in some old black and white film. Maybe you thought I'd tell you I'd stepped out in front of a truck down on the M180, in the rain, and at night. Better to make sure the truck didn't stop. Better to add a little dash of Craven-esque melodrama to the mix.

I could even have said that I'd had an all-day breakfast (served until 3:00 pm) at that little cafe down the end of Freeman Street. You know the one - next to the shop that sells unusual pets; geckos, tarantulas and the like. Is that shop still there? I can't remember. I've only ever been in there once, just to have a look. They had a komodo dragon in there the size of next door's cat. It was in a case not that much bigger than itself. One long stump of old tree branch for company. No wonder it did little more than sit and stare. Maybe it was eyeing me up for lunch - it obviously wouldn't have fancied the rat-burgers from next door. It's been a while since I was along that way, so maybe it's long gone now. But me and King Komodo agree on one thing - apart from the fact that I'm not on the lunch menu (not even the Chef's Special). The cafe was Alfonso's according to the sign, but Greasy Joe's to everyone else. Their breakfast was not a preferable method of suicide, even though it would no doubt be a successful one. I mean, if one of Joe's homemade hash browns didn't kill you...

Teleportation. There, I said it again. No, before you ask, if you were going to, I'm not crazy. The fact that the teleportation was actually out of a 'loony bin' - a bona fide mental institution - doesn't sign, seal and deliver my certificate of insanity. I just told them that so they'd keep me pumped full of those nice drugs that let me forget. Well, while they worked.

So anyway. I had a cunning plan. It didn't involve turnips or pushing pencils up my nose and saying "Wibble," or anything so loop-de-loo. I was going to teleport (that word again - if I say it enough times, do you think you might start to accept it?) straight out of my cell, padded nicely in a lovely glaringly serene white, right into the fiery heart of a dragon. Well, a reactor at least. Being licked by 20 foot flames flaring at a sliver below 1000°C wouldn't have been entirely pleasant, but at least, I figured, it'd be quick. And if it wasn't quick, well maybe I deserved that.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to find out either way.

Self preservation. What a wonderful, sick, twisted, spit-in-your-eye, spiteful thing it is. They should have a society named after it.

I couldn't do it. I wanted to, oh, how I wanted to! But I, the I inside, wouldn't let me. It didn't even ask if I minded. There was no conversation, argument or heated debate over coffee. I wanted to commit suicide, kill myself, end it all, but I wouldn't let me. I don't know whether I was doing it deliberately, or if it was the grand old Universe having it's little bit of fun. Maybe the school bullies had been replaced by something far greater, and the Cosmos was taking its turn in hefting a great size 10 where the sun doesn't shine.

Cheers, pal. Yeah, thanks a bunch. Remind me to return the favour one of these millennia.

So I tried. I clicked my little red shoes together three times and said "There's no place like death. There's no place like death". Well, of course I didn't. I didn't have any red shoes for a start. I only wore these soft black soled things. We used to wear them at school. What were they called? No laces, just in case I wanted to do exactly what I wanted to do. What damage I could manage with a couple of thin bits of string with plastic ends, I don't really know. I'm not particularly inventive when it comes to doing myself in. If it's quick and relatively painless, then yay! Let me at it. If it's slow and the equivalent of a body wide paper cut? Thanks but you can keep it. No really, you have it. I'm fine with the death I've got.

Hey, paper cuts really hurt!

So what did I do? I didn't have my trusty little tuppenny sidekick geeing me on. Not that I think that's a bad thing. Mr Two Pence had caused me a whole load of trouble and heartache and had then piled on a good wadge more for the simple pleasure of it. Nice of him, eh? Listen to me. Heartache. Trouble. ME! I sound like a right selfish arse. Sod all happened to ME, apart from the ruination of my life, of course, and the everso slight inconvenience of being stuck in a padded cell. But at least I had a life! Thanks to me, all those people...

All those people.

Deeeeep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Focus.

Plimsoles. Crappy little fall-apart-if-you-sneezed soft shoes for PE. God I hated PE. Physical Education? My physique was educated enough, thank you very much. Maybe it would have gotten an F in the mock exams - well, maybe a C if I was a wee bit vain - but running around a muddy field in the rain in shorts in September was not something I thought my body needed to learn. And cross country?

Can I ask why?

A group of kids running (and I use the term about as loosely as the Weightwatchers Slimmer of the Year's old knickers) around the streets, ducking into alleys for a crafty ciggy or nipping home for a packet of salt 'n' vinegar before running across the muddy field, in the rain... You know how it goes.

Back to the molecular transference of my physical atomic structure from one spatial co-ordinate to an alternative one. Or good old teleportation to you, me and the lampost.

I'd built myself up to a grand old height for the big day. The hour of doom was noon, when the sun would be high in the sky, birds would be singing, kids would be playing and the plague that a pair of nice, sweet, stupid parents had named Sin would be incinerated. Was Justice ever sweeter? I think not. I had no real ideas about what I was going to do - the methodology of my madness. Well, you've got to be mad to kill yourself, haven't you? Mad, but not necessarily crazy, thankee very much. I was wound tighter than Donald Duck's behind, snip snapping at anyone who happened by my cell that morning. Not that there were many. Room W17 didn't get that many visitors under normal circumstances. It wasn't the local branch of Woolworths, nor was it the local drugs den. It was just a simple padded cell, or rather cushioned accommodation, a third of the way along a blazingly white corridor of similar such rooms.

I used to like the lights, recessed into the high ceiling (so, I suppose, I couldn't jump up and bash my brains in if I was so inclined), fairly subdued to help keep me calm and equally subdued. It meant that when I ventured out of my cell, either by choice or by 'request', six inch nails of light were immediately hammered into the depths of my optic nerves, at least until I became accustomed to the 600 watt neon strips they'd decided to install in the corridor. Yes, they probably were only 60 watt bulbs, but combining white light with white ceilings, floors and walls, and dressing the staff in the same colour, enough to make them often look like disembodied heads floating along the hall, was something of a contrast to the relative duskiness of my room.

On this fine morning, however, no amount of twilight could ease my tension. It was the right thing to do. Of course it was. End it all, and it all ends.

Such are the plans of mice and men and me, that not all goes according to said plan. It wasn't my fault, and yet it was entirely my fault. Pretty much the same as all this low down stinking pile of doggy doo-doo we call life, in fact. I had no real control over events, but it didn't stop me being to blame. The finger of guilt was pointing, Pythonesque, directly at my bonce. I could feel it close enough to scratch my head with or to pick my nose. Granted, this finger bore a striking resemblance to the one on my own right hand - I was the only one who knew of my particular gift. Dr. Connors, bless him, knew as well of course, but he only believed the sun rose in the morning because, as a young boy of only five, he'd somehow climbed onto his parents roof at the crack of dawn to see for himself. He'd also wanted to hear if Dawn actually cracked, but he's yet to confirm that fact either way. It's a story he never ceases to enjoy telling, and it's one I and many others never tire of nodding and smiling and pretending to enjoy hearing. Consequentially, he didn't give a flying fudge about my claims, they couldn't be true, because then the sun might actually go to sleep at night, waking up all refreshed in the morning, ready to face the challenges of the day. Or the stars might be fairy dust in the night sky, sprinkled by some wayward Tinkerbell who's lost her way to Neverland.

Who knows? Maybe they are.

So. I didn't have any ruby slippers. Scotty wasn't orbiting in a geo-stationary orbit ready to beam me up. I didn't even have my lucky two pence piece. I had me. Just because I'd realised the truth about my relationship with that coin didn't automatically mean I knew what I had to do. As far as I'd been aware previously, it was all flip and catch. Flip the coin. Catch the coin. Kill a few hundred people. It had been that simple. That direct. Except the coin had nothing to do with any of it, other than being a catalyst. It had been the coin dropped into the jukebox of my mind, ready for me to press the right combination of buttons to play the records of destruction. It was a lot cheaper than the £1 for three songs that my local pub charged, that was for sure. Except it was also much, much more expensive. Devastatingly so.

Ruminations had been ruminating around my head all morning. They'd been chased by packs of rabid doubts which had in turn been pursued by... well, by fact. People had died. People had died because of me.

So in the end, it was as simple as dear Simon.

How, though? I thought I'd have to screw up my eyes. Clench my teeth and my fists. Hold my breath. Squeeze my whole body. But it didn't feel right. No great efforts had been taken previously, when all had been needed, it seemed, was an unconscious flick of the hand to send a small coin spinning through the air. What if that was the case now? But to do something so big had to take something, didn't it?

I didn't get the chance to find out. I didn't really even need the deep breath I'd taken. I was about to say some magic word or other, like "Go," or "Now." Maybe Houdini or Paul Daniels or even Sooty the Bear would have scorned those words for not being as theatrical as 'Abracadabra' or 'Izzy Wizzy Let's Get Bizzy'. This, however, wasn't conjuring. It wasn't even, to me at least, magic. It just was. So "Go" and "Now" weren't needed.

I went, then.

Just like that, as the wonderful Mr. Cooper would say.

I knew exactly where I wanted to go. I knew just where my crypt, or rather my pyre, would be. Right on top of a 1000°C, hot as hell, flame.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself on a beach, breakers breaking against my cold ankles, my strait jacket lying folded on the wet sand struggling to avoid being washed away by the tide.

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