Melvyn is dead, and he is really fucking pissed off about it.

This all came as a bit of a surprise, as when he was alive, he would spend a lot of time thinking about committing suicide, but he never really had the guts to do it. And now that he is dead, it is a mighty inconvenience to say the least. Melvyn never really did anything with his life: he just existed for a time, used up some oxygen and then he was snuffed out. No more breaths to take, no more beats of his heart, no more catastrophe and sadness and empty, aching loneliness: no more Melvyn.

Melvyn would often find himself staring out windows at the homogenous, drab landscape, watching the thin droplets of drizzle accumulating and chasing each other down the surface of the glass; preoccupied with pervasive thoughts of how he might finally do it. He didn’t like the idea of gradually bleeding out: drip drip drip, or taking an overdose of prescription medication, or choking his last breath, entangled in an autoerotic sex accident: that all somehow seemed too decadent and clichéd. He didn’t like the idea of being found by strangers, perhaps partially decomposed, hanging by the neck, bloated, pale and flabby, just to have designated medical professionals chuckle and snigger at his shrivelled and apologetic genitalia, as they zipped up his generic, one-size-fits-all body bag.

He used to think he would like to kill himself in a dramatic way that would make the nightly news. Perhaps, he would throw himself off a bridge on a motorway overpass, so that he would be splattered ostentatiously across the windscreen of a passing truck.  He would often find himself lost in languid daydreams of the lurid images of his bloody entrails entangled in the axels of a minibus filled with disabled children. His untimely demise splashed across the headlines of the local paper, with weeping, uncontrollably horny widows aplenty.  At least then he would go out with a bit of glamour and people might remember him, for a time, before returning to indolent small talk over their organic, responsibly sourced quinoa risotto.

Melvyn spent a lot of his time sighing. Every night he would drive home and get stuck in the same fucking traffic jam on the same fucking road, surrounded by the same fucking horrendous, sanctimonious cunts in over-priced cars. He would try and burn holes in the head of the driver in front and he would sigh as he watched the precious seconds of his life dripping away into the glowing red of an endless, meandering river of tail-lights.

He was so fucking sick of feeling unfulfilled and enraged; he was tired of desperately seeking more from his pathetic, meaningless life. He would punch the steering wheel and inwardly scream when the car in front would let that ignorant fuckwit in the Audi (of course with a personalised number plate) in from the outside lane, when he had been patiently and obsequiously queuing for 35 minutes. Politeness, manners and decency get you nowhere, as seemingly a traffic jam brings out the worst possible traits of humanity.

He would silently seethe with clinging white knuckles on the wheel and concoct vivid fantasies of disembowelling the offending drivers with the tyre iron in his boot. People just constantly disappoint him, and the incandescent dials in the dashboard are laughing at him. Melvyn adjusts his polyester tie and smoothes his ever so slightly thinning hair in the rear view mirror. The car behind is a Range Rover, more an immense mobile monument than a vehicle, and the glaring LED headlights blind him. He sighs yet again, as the petrol gauge incrementally sinks downwards towards empty.

It was never meant to be like this. When Melvyn was younger he had dreams of being a glittering success: a rich footballer or a groundbreaking scientist, or a virtuosic musician with nubile, curvaceous nymphomaniacs slurping up and down his genitals. He always thought that he would make a difference: fix something, cure an incurable disease, build something that would touch the sky, or sculpt a breathtaking, sinewy masterpiece.

Melvyn used to have a voracious desire for possibility and he once knew the tantalising frisson of optimism, but now he has been worn away and ground down into nothing but a shadow in a cheap sweater. He never had any ambitions of being a data entry technician, drinking flavourless, sterile coffee, forever trapped in a grey, monolithic concrete block with mindless, mouth-breathing automatons. Melvyn didn’t really get a chance to achieve anything, and now his head has come off. How very unsightly.

Melvyn never had the chance to experience true love. He didn’t get the opportunity to feel the mystical embrace of satisfaction and contentment, tinged with the deep, aching scorch of lust. Melvyn didn’t get to skip gleefully, hand in hand, traipsing through flower sprinkled meadows, waving to the violets and crocuses winking and smiling with joy, sparkling with a halo of dewdrops. He has known a few decent women in his time; there was that one who was obsessed with florid nylon jumpers, and a little pinkie finger in the arsehole, and that other one who sat and did crosswords in her slippers and enjoyed occasional artificial asphyxiation. He finally couldn’t stand her incessant sniffing when they were watching Countryfile. She had to go.

Melvyn has finally had enough. He has decided that he can be just as contemptible and selfish as the rest of these bastards. As a man of principle, he maintains lane discipline instead of mercilessly swerving between lanes, and Melvyn is aware that if everyone took the same altruistic, utilitarian approach by regulating their speed and staying in the same fucking lane to ensure the traffic moves smoothly, then they may reach their eventual destination more quickly. Melvyn looks over to the car in the middle lane and the woman has left her indicator blinking away merrily, while she stares blankly at her glowing phone screen, vacant and servile. She eventually pulls away after the cars behind impatiently blast their horns.

Melvyn checks his mirror, signals in proper time and carefully and efficiently begins his manoeuvre into the middle lane, before another fucking cunt in an Audi lurches into the middle lane from the fast lane. Melvyn is a cauldron of unbridled fury as he rolls down his window and leans out to remonstrate with the driver of the Audi, and he may even go as far as shaking his fist because of this rampant injustice. He is a champion of the downtrodden, mild-mannered man in a cardigan, a bastion of hope and a heroic talisman of righteous indignation: he is a Titan of courage and fearless retribution. He is a vitriolic warrior, reborn.

And just then, a thunderous 18 wheeler truck screams by and instantly decapitates him. His moment of unencumbered rebellion ends in splattering, bloody glory, just like he always planned it.

That night, a painted mannequin sex doll in a yellow polyester pant suit speaks of Melvyn in hushed, respectful tones, trying in vain to disguise her thinly-veiled ecstasy over relaying the gory details of the incident with an explicit and sensational headline news story of a “MAN DECAPITATED ON MOTORWAY IN RUSHHOUR HORROR”. There will be reports from the scene as Melvyn’s brain matter and fragments of skull are scooped up and placed in plastic bags, ready for the incinerator.

Finlay and Margo sit at their polished IKEA dinner table, scarcely speaking over indiscriminate vegan smegma as the shocking images of Melvyn’s downfall flash over the screen of their curved 4K LED Samsung television. Finlay takes another sip of his chilled Sauvignon Blanc and luxuriates in the memory of when his young, shapely colleague bent over to adjust the straps on her high heels at the morning planning meeting. He fantasises about roughly sexually assaulting her in the tastefully furnished breakout area, over the frothy dregs of a cinnamon soy latte. Finlay is a depraved, sadistic pervert. Margo is blissfully unaware, and she doesn’t know about the sordid contents of his laptop, or the debauched extent of his business expense account.

Finlay looks over in disgust at the wrinkled corners of his wife’s acidic, pinched mouth as she chews on tasteless, but beautifully presented slop on delicate porcelain plates that they received as a wedding gift from her Auntie Deborah.  Finlay secretly dreams of brutally murdering her, just for something different to do, as he glares at her in the shimmering candle-lit dining room. The gratuitous images of Melvyn’s triumphant, symphonic extermination go unnoticed, as this is just another tiresome instance of sickening misfortune to befall an irrelevant stranger. The painted sex doll on the screen effusively orgasms over the pictures of blood soaked tarmac, as a stern looking police officer officiously raises awareness of careful and competent driving and decries the dangers of road rage.

Melvyn is dead, and he is really fucking pissed off about it, because his death went uncelebrated, and he continues to languish in obscurity. As the ambivalent plastic people live on, Finlay takes another sip of apathetic Sauvignon Blanc, and Melvyn sighs for the final time.