There they are, inside. If they’re in, I’m out. If they know, I don’t. If they get, I go without.

This is a painful lesson. Makes one bitter. Makes one yearn. Then the door opens. By accident, of course. They never just let you in. You fall in and they wonder; who is this man? That is, if they notice you at all.

So once again, here Matsi was, thinking about it. Thinking about the game. Us versus them. When you’re out, you don’t just know it, you feel it. Is there anything more dangerous for a human than the desire to belong? Maybe there is nothing that corrupts quite like it. Matsi’s awareness that he was an outsider changed him. Changed how he thought. Changed how he acted. Changed how he felt. Made him a dancing monkey.

Matsi felt like he was looking in from behind a window except, on this occasion, there was nothing separating him from those on the inside. He’d fallen in. God knows how. A friend of a friend. But the friend had left. Now he was alone with them. A vague place indeed. The insiders hadn’t been guarding the gates so well for a change. He sat at the periphery of the group. He sensed opportunity but he had no idea how to navigate it. Talk? Stay quiet? Be bold? Be indifferent? Laugh at bad jokes? Assert opinions? What if he just hopped up on the table and started dancing like Michael Flatley? It would be interesting.

He watched them talking. He was moored on the periphery. He’d been introduced to no one. They were probably wondering who the fuck he was. A little dormouse hunting for scraps. Maybe he was. Pathetic really.

He checked his shoulder. Would someone come to save him? No. He wiped his face. It was quite possible he had something on his face that was ruining his reputation in front of the insiders. This is the sort of concern that can really break a person: the fear of having something on one’s face that shouldn’t be on one’s face in a social situation that one should never have been granted access to in the first place. His face felt as it should, though. A relief, but still the doubt lingered. Does it ever really leave?

This was brutal. Matsi played it cool. Matsi was cool. Even if the insiders didn’t know it, one day they would. These insiders, he thought, they don’t know what they’re missing. He picked up on snippets of conversation. All boring. Dull as Sunday Service. This was the irony. He craved involvement even though they were boring. Humans aren’t cool. The need to be needed ruins us as a species. Much better to be a cat; indifferent.

The door swung open. It was a person. Were they an insider? If so, they were late. A power move, probably. Matsi watched them gravitate towards the group. This person looked like a smarmy bastard. Matsi knew it was wrong to judge people, but he also knew that impugning a person with no knowledge of them was a salve to the harrowing sensation of being an outsider. At least if the insiders were smarmy bastards then it softened the blow of being outside.

He would need to do something significant here. Make an impression. If he could ingratiate himself to them – the insiders – his life would improve tenfold. Insiders are the key. They are the portal to money, success, fame, invitations, holidays on yachts. Everything except self-respect – an increasingly useless commodity anyway.

Matsi looked for weakness among the insiders. Insiders were high value, but not of equal value. One of them was a key to a locked door. But who? He felt like he was playing a PlayStation game. When they say life is a game, they aren’t wrong. The mistake would have been approaching this like Grand Theft Auto, though. This was more like Sim City. One poor bit of planning and the entire city goes to shit. He remembered his younger days locked in his room playing games. Bliss. It was cruel to make humans socialise when they could be playing video games instead.

Video games. Power games. Sex Games. Games everywhere.

He needed the toilet. Should he go? What if he stumbled? What if someone else arrived and took his seat? He’d heard that when a zebra gets separated from the herd it is likely to be brutally attacked and killed by a predator. Was this to be his fate if he went to the toilet? These games are harsh on the bladder. Humans are insane.

It was precisely at this moment – as he was weighing up whether or not to risk a trip to the bathroom – that something unusual happened. Everyone’s phones started squealing. Really squealing. Like something was wrong. The insiders exchanged glances. These were the glances of uncertain people. Uncertainty makes an outsider of all of us. How quickly the facade melts. Now they knew how Matsi felt. But they had other concerns. The nukes, according to the phones. This was not a drill. Not a drill? No chance. It’s always a drill. But it wasn’t. That’s when the panic set in. What do we do? One man started to cry. It seemed premature. His reputation was ruined if it turned out to be a false alarm. A woman turned to Matsi. She’d ignored him all night. Now she wanted to know what to do. Finally, Matsi felt part of something.

He stood up and pulled out his Swiss Army knife. “Follow me,” he yelled. They did. He led them down the street. People everywhere. Running. Screaming. Crying. Hugging. Looting. He led them further down the street. “Don’t panic. Follow me,” he kept repeating. He had them in the palm of his hands.

He led them to his house. “Sit down, sit down,” he said. They all sat down. He turned on the TV.

“Here’s a movie I made,” he said.

They looked at him, confused.

He pressed play.

It was a pornographic movie that he had written, produced, directed and starred in. Naturally, he was looking for a distributor. Naturally, there was real concern around the room. Naturally, they were realising their fate. Life is a funny thing, but death is stranger still. If you want to read into something, read into this… As the nukes dropped, the last thing this group of insiders saw was the hairy arse of an embittered and desperate outsider, thrusting away, like a visual death knell, on a high-definition television.