I rolled over the edge of the sofa in my sleep, landing face-down on the floor. The floor was stale with the dog’s forgotten fur, clinging to the sweat on my face—everything here bore the scent of neglect.

It was mid-July, the house hot, still, and thick with the weight of things left undone.

My dad hadn’t combed the dog’s fur in weeks, a task he’d once handled regularly during morning and midday walks.

Even the dog seemed to feel the weight of his fading energy, as if the whole house was succumbing to a kind of inertia that no one wanted to fight.

My dad's strength had lessened with each experimental treatment, his hands now trembling with the fever that gripped him.

I was sick too, but my fever wasn’t just physical. It was a fever I fed day after day, nourishing it with my own doubts, until ambition had become its own form of madness.

The internet had sold me a dream, and I’d bought it completely, with every ounce of reason I had left. What had once been a symptom of American culture had spread across the globe through the vast reach of the internet.

The Entrepreneur Virus.

My shirt was drenched with sweat, my lips dry and cracked. Shapes, fragmented and fractal, clawed at the edges of my vision—a world breaking apart, fragment by fragment.

I was on the edge of a mental breakdown. Not the first time. I recognised the signs.

Dragging myself upright was like moving through molasses, every motion slowed by a weariness that had sunk into my bones.

I staggered over to the kettle in the corner of the kitchen.

I’d been living in my parents’ living room for the past year, and any attempt to recover from my financial catastrophe felt futile at best.

For the last six months, I’d spun myself into a kind of maniacal orbit, convinced it was a good idea to restart my company, ignore my debts, cycling through all the wrong moves, like I was addicted to the momentum, no matter where it took me.

I’d chosen, deliberately, to dance with disaster, each ignored bill and overlooked deadline pulling me deeper, until I no longer cared where I landed.

I moved with an anxious swiftness across the dusty vinyl floor, each step stirring up layers of stale dust that hung in the air, shimmering with static.

The air was charged, a subtle ringing through the particles, the whole room held its breath, waiting.

“Today is the day,” I muttered, words sticking in my throat, a mantra I’d recited so often it felt like worn-out currency.

But was I feeling disgust? Shame? Maybe both, maybe neither—just some cold, sinking feeling lodged deep inside, defying a name.

Shaking it off, I sharpened my focus on the competition for today, knowing it was a dagger aimed at my own self-worth.

I chose this day to “contact those standing on my square, to discuss the potential of working together.” Or so I told myself.

Really, I’d struck a match at the base of my own Tower of Babel, igniting the kindling of my misaligned ambition. This would the genesis of my ego’s Flood—a deluge my unconscious welcomed.

I called a company whose details I found online after searching "gardeners near me".

Let’s call it Verde Opus, a gardening firm of one. “I need help,” I said, half-meaning it. “Too many jobs to handle.” But the truth was, the jobs I had barely filled a day.

I was the king of false urgency, building walls to lean on. The truth was, I was tangled in my own self-indulgence, reaching for help, as if reaching could fix the arrogance of my ambition.

Truth was... I was way over my head. Truth is...I didn’t, and still don’t understand the truth of what happened...

And maybe I never will.

Because maybe, the truth is just one person's story among a thousand conflicting ones.

All I can offer is my story, a version inked with doubt and feverish bald baked memories.

In the end, perhaps only silence holds the whole truth— But nobody values that. Rambling over.

I scheduled to meet. Not now, but a few days away. Striking the iron while it’s warm, or maybe just stalling with style.

Haste over Speed—a quiet mantra in my head, driving me forward with an urgency that somehow missed the memo. I was good at this—sticking my nose where it didn’t belong.

My business was to mind those of others, a skill honed from years of quietly cataloging other people’s ambitions, dreams, failures—all the things I hadn’t done myself. Comparison is a loud killer.

As I sit here, striking these keys, doing my best to carve a notch in my subconscious to avoid future self sabotage. This isn’t the first time I’ve chosen this path.

Have you ever seen a dog tethered to a stump, circling until the earth gave way, a trench born of compulsion, not choice? Freed by some pitying hand, only to return to that same death march.

Like another poor insect in a doom spiral, looping toward some end I couldn’t see but sensed all too well.

Fuck. Let’s get on with this story.

We met, Joan and I. Joan, an Albanian gentleman with a worn face and a faint smell of cigarettes, greeted me with the same casual air as a man lighting his tenth cigarette of the day. “Excuse my lateness,” he began, cigarette already between his fingers, “just back from the doctor. Kidney problems.” A flick of his lighter, a small match struck in my mind, an omen smoldering in the smoky air.

A flag, neither red nor green, but pale and weathered, stealthed. Uncharted territory, yet somehow comfortably familiar, the same unsettling familiarity as an old wound reopened. This character, my conscious knew, was the type I fell for. Like any abusive relationship.

We spoke about our experiences, the usual back-and-forth. I was brief; Joan was anything but. He had that knack—the way some people do—of spinning a single moment into a whole tapestry. I listened. I paid attention as he delved into his work in horticulture, his voice taking on a reverent edge.

It was his passion, apparently. Something about it felt performative, but I couldn’t be sure. I listened. And listened. I knew then that this man's head was rotten. Living on autopilot like some zombie. The sweet smell of decay laced his every word.

The man spoke so much yet at every 10th word there would be a subtle sting of dopamine. Indescribable. Later I would behold the toxin of this man's social engineering in awe. In respect. Fear. Pity. This record you're reading now is my effort to acquire it and wield it. Or everything I suffered was in vain.

I mentioned a job I’d done, a throwaway detail, to me. Joan blinked, his expression sharpening with the kind of curiosity that borders on suspicion.

“Where, exactly?” he asked, his tone edged with something I couldn’t place.

I told him. A site just on the outskirts of town. He paused, watching me intently before pulling out his phone and calling someone—“the manager,” he said, his thumb already dialing.

His voice raised as he exchanged familiar words with a man who, it turned out, remembered me well enough to confirm my work there.

Joan, nodding, his mouth in a thin, unreadable line as he tugged at the cigarette, then again began the soliloquy. After what seemed longer than a casual catch up call he handed me the phone.

I took it, feeling a strange mix of surprise and delight at the casual exchange - I was prepared to get the point proven so I could move closer to ending this exchange.

But, I felt like a subtle sense of camaraderie, a lighthearted moment shared between near strangers was taking me unwittingly.

Little did I know, this was Joan’s edge, the way he set the pieces in place without ever letting on what game we were playing. Not even himself. He was, I would come to learn, a masterful engineer—of the social kind. However one whose time was past yet he refused to be swept away.

This was a rare man. A man who has lived multiple lives. A man of powerful will, a will keeping him alive beyond his physical capacity. Here was a survivor.

This was only the beginning.

The first encounter in a journey together where I’d play the pseudo-captain of a ship navigated entirely by his hand.

What followed would show me the depths of human connection, the art of persuasion, and the ways people shape their world with a look, a gesture, a single word.

Joan would reveal to me the fallacy of logic when set against loyalty, the silent power of unwritten laws and allegiances, the invisible threads that bound him to a loyalty that cut deep.

Our partnership would draw blood—not literally, but close enough.

The cuts would slice through the flesh of trust, exposing layers beneath, full of danger and unspoken codes, dictated by unseen forces that hovered like ancient gods—cold, indifferent, capricious.

It was in this space, where words warped and trust twisted, that I’d come to understand society’s true form.

How fragile it was, a microcosmic echo of the greater world, bound together by loyalties sharper than any blade. As they say, it's not what you know- but who you know. And Joan knew 'everyone'.

It was a lesson to be learned the hard way. One I couldn’t see yet, but that had already begun to unravel.

To be continued...