`ONE TWO THREE BANG!’
`One Two Three Bang!’ The words have reverberated through my mind many times since the day it happened. They are words that now have a special meaning for me. They keep me in focus, stop me from veering off course and making the wrong choice. I have a tendency on occasions to make bad decisions, especially when the chips are down, and everything looks hopeless; above all, when I have been drinking alcohol………
I’d used the alley and Walkway crossing many times before. I was streetwise enough to know that the area had a dangerous reputation, but I’d never had a problem going that way. The alley was a short cut. It saved at least thirty minutes’ walking back to Infinity Gateway along the main highway. In Globopolis it was always a good idea not to be seen loitering on the streets too long after dark. I’d been out for a few hours with Max drinking vodka in a local bar.
The alley itself led to a narrow footbridge across the central rail line, the Turboplex. The footbridge had been nicknamed the 
Danger Walk Turboplex after its designer Dangerous Walkway. It was a pretty apt nickname. There had been one or two suicides with people throwing themselves under on-coming high speed trains and several assaults and robberies.
This time though, I sensed that there was something wrong as soon as I set foot inside the Danger Walk. Everything seemed much darker than normal, much more spooky: ominous shadows sliding across dank ceilings, wailing sounds of speeding turbo-star trains in the distance, the eerie, incessant dripping of water down slime grey-green wall.
And then he was at my throat, pointing the gun in my face, threatening me with a painful death unless I handed over my wallet, cash, credit cards and wristwatch…
He grimaced through black, rotting teeth as he repeatedly spat out the words: `One Two Three Bang!’ `One Two Three Bang!’
Normally, I’m slow to take offence. I’m a great believer in minding my own business and letting others get on with theirs. I keep myself to myself. But this was different. This was a complete stranger attempting to force himself uninvited into my life.
The brutality of his approach combined with the alcohol coursing through my veins provoked a more dramatic response within me. I lost control. His words had angered me. I never respond well to abusive orders at the best of times. Add vodka to the equation and you see a different side of my personality, a strange fascination with extremes. Dormant antagonistic responses were activated in my soul. So, I decided to throw caution to the winds and to risk my life on a roll of the dice.
As I stared down the barrel of the gun, I made up my mind at that instant to launch myself at him and risk all in a desperate attempt to grapple him to the ground.
And then, just as I was about to pounce on him, he collapsed to the floor seized by the spasms of an epileptic fit.
I’d been saved by pure chance. I was so lucky still to be alive. How could I have foreseen that my assailant would be brought to the ground by a congenital spasm over which he had no control?
It’s only now that I realise what a fool I’d been. At the time I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t thinking at all. I’d given no thought to any of that. I was so intoxicated by my own anger, so inebriated by the alcohol coursing through my veins that I’d become someone else. I’d been so dramatically transformed by my rage and pent-up antagonism that I’d wanted to smash away everything in my path in a cataclysmic act of retaliation and purification against the Anticlock authorities…
I did not sleep well that night. My head was filled with morbid thoughts – not just that I’d been close to death, but that I’d chosen, actually chosen, to risk all in what amounted in effect to a game of Russian roulette with a half-crazed gunman. What did that say about me, about my relations with Tia, Max and Clancy? What kind of deranged lunatic had I become in Anticlockwise where death was preferable to this life of incarcerated misery?
And as for the sad wretch who had threatened to kill me, I had not a shred of sympathy for him. I cursed him a thousand times and did not regret leaving him writhing in agony in the midst of an epileptic fit. He deserved no less, threatening me with his gangster words: `One Two Three Bang!’
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