# Three Tales of Madness



## Polednice

*OR 'IDIOTS AND SOCIOPATHS'*

*Two*

Antony - an Idiot - lives a life of blissful simplicity. In a shed at the bottom of his parents' garden, he has all he needs: a bed, a TV, food, and all of it provided for free. In his little world, where ambition and planning-for-the-future don't exist, he is a rich man. A very rich man. Every month, thanks to his high-flying job in the retail industry, he is paid literally hundreds of pounds, lasting him literally days, which he'll rapidly spend on bespoke football boots and cheesecake. He's just wise enough to be distrustful of banks, and so, as soon as he is paid every four weeks, he immediately withdraws the thick wad of cash, only for some apparently avaricious brain tumour to goad him into spending it all as soon as possible.

But, football boots and cheesecakes amounting to a sizeable slice of his income, he does not always have money when he needs it. So how does he pay off his routine debts to friends, or afford dates with his bitches, when he has an unnecessarily expensive shirt to buy? He turns to the pawn brokers. Of course, the pawn brokers are not what they used to be - they're no longer set up in grotty, black caves, suffocated by a mound of crap; now they live at the eBay. If Antony - an oblivious Idiot - ever finds himself short of cash, he just sells one of his many luxury items - a stack of scratched DVDs or a faulty laptop, perhaps - with the plan to buy a different second-hand copy the following month once he is credited with his hard-earned wages. The commodity he most often trades in is the PlayStation 3. He has owned at least six PlayStations 3 (one at a time, of course), each sold either because he was temporarily convinced he would never play with it again (a falsehood he has yet to learn from), or because he needed instant cash, and - praise the Lord and all that is Holy - has never understood credit cards or seen an advert for wonga.com.

However, currently destitute, he is without a PlayStation and cannot yet afford a seventh. Surprisingly, given the complex stimuli that his brain requires to be satisfied, he has managed to entertain himself by other means and has not missed his gaming machine all that much. But, a close friend from Brighton, who he knows as PussyKilla via voice chat on First Person Shooters, has had such a hard time finding other friends to play with - and admires Antony for some unknowable, but probably not Sociopathic reasons - that he offered to simply buy a replacement PlayStation for him (this PussyKilla is definitely a friendly Idiot, not a Sociopath).

Their many successful in-game skirmishes and missions having bonded them so closely, it was needless for our Brighton Student to exhaust himself with buying a PlayStation 3 online and going through the hassle of changing the default delivery address by some convoluted means of clicking buttons and typing information. Instead, he thought it much easier and safer to transfer £260 through PayPal. Of course, despite this peculiar offer breaking several Rules of Normality, Antony - a simple-minded, oblivios Idiot - was eager to accept the freebie with the honourable intention of actually buying a PlayStation. Yet, to his dismay, upon viewing his PayPal account, he saw a mere £254, PayPal having some devious terms and conditions that allow it to steal 'commission'. So he was £6 short, and his multi-million pound career being what it is, he wouldn't have so much as £1 to his name until the following month when the cash flowed in again.

A little slow on the uptake, Antony - a puerile, simple-minded, oblivious Idiot - had the bright idea of telling Brighton Student to buy the PlayStation himself, and then send it to a different address. So, he made attempts to send the money back the other way through PayPal. Of course, his inability to learn from his or others' mistakes - even if those mistakes were made, identified, explained, and laughed about within the past 24 hours - meant that he was about to credit the Brighton Student's account with approximately £248 (after some more PayPal thievery), putting them in their starting position minus £12. But, by some celestial miracle, he was saved this embarrassment by his redemptive immaturity and complete lack of understanding about sensible behaviour, as when he made the transfer he included the humorous note: "STUPID ****". PayPal has blocked and is now investigating the transfer due to obscenity.


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## Aramis

Here is fourth: a guy wants to cap a druphark but he reaches ancient city of Virk-Verk where they call him OOOO DEAR, DEAR, COME and he comes but there is only empty cup and he drinks from it wine that he brought with himself, it's red and warm and when it touches his lips he learns that it is the wine hhe brought here and it doesn't come from the cup and the cup was empty it brings him mad and he runs around but the cup is gone it lives near the sea where the other cups, less shining but which served as model for this cup live as well and at the sea they live and the cup doesn't even bear the traces of his lips with which he was drinking from it the wine he brought with himself


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