Engineered: Chapter 3

When losing your mind, it's important to lose everything else too. It can't come with you.

Here’s me telling you about it. So, remember that lovely piece of common sense I had on my arm? Well, for the aforementioned software issues and hardware malfunctions, I ended up alone. And drunk. I had been drunk before the missus gained that horrifying prefix: Ex. Before she was my ex-everything, I had drank. I ran on a diet of ethanol and carbohydrates. I ran whilst on both. I kept the scales tipped in favour of svelte. Easy to do when debauchery is a weekend vice. I sullied every sabbath in the Abrahamic pantheon. But that was only one strike, one demerit. I got plenty others. Have you ever woken up where you shouldn’t? It’s thrilling until the phone is trilling and the excuses fall out of you like last night’s kebab. You lie, dramatise, strategise and then hang up. You arrive home, she shouts, and you pout. And that cycle, man, that fucking cycle. It don’t fly too high, slick. You know what I mean? It doesn’t clear the storm clouds ever. And man, the fucking turbulence. Oh boy. So, let me go all linear in the telling. Let’s get Lee Child in to tell it like it was: