Spiked by his doctor with dubious E, Tommy Udo spurns salvation only to find himself amidst an evil chaos that'd make the Book of Revelation read like The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck

So having rejected heaven and the light, all that awaited me was the darkness (not the band). A few " subjective " days later Paul announced that he was leaving to become a private security consultant. I don’t know if nursing to private security is a normal career path but there you go. The rest of the staff congratulated him but I knew something was up. Then I overheard him on the phone, plotting. They were planning to jack the rest of the senior hospital staff up with this dodgy E " it turned out that Paul was actually behind its manufacture and was selling it on council estates " which would make them go absolutely mental and start killing each other. Paul and his security team would take control, restoring order.

I desperately tried to warn someone. There was Anna, a Scottish nurse. She’d sort it out. I tried telling her but it was then that I realised that I was lying unconscious on a bed and couldn’t actually communicate. Then of course it transpired that Anna " and indeed all the rest of the staff in the ICU " were in on the plot. And what is more, they were going to pin the blame squarely on me! “The environment, the war, pick your nutty cause,” Anna said sharply. “Nobody will give a fuck what a drugged out basket case’s reasons are.”

She produced a letter with my signature and pinned it to my lapel. Then she injected me with something. I sat there and listened as mayhem (not the band) erupted around me. Gunshots, screams, explosions, planes falling from the sky. Surface to air missiles roared up from the hospital roof (they may not have MRI scanners but they all have SAMs on the roof) as cops and doctors gunned each other down in the corridors. And although I knew that it wasn’t my fault, I still felt responsible, that I should have found a way to stop this.

The next day things had gone from bad to worse: the walls of the hospital were daubed with Satanic symbols " sun-wheels, pentagrams, various other images plundered from the back covers of old Dennis Wheatley novels " and there were strange clones walking around everywhere. Anna returned to tell me that Paul’s family name was Satana (uh huh!) and he had at last claimed his earthly kingdom. In the chaos " which had actually engulfed the whole world " the antichrist had seized power. From now on, I was told, the world had begun anew. The mass of humanity would be slaves and food for the Satanic elite. “But isn’t that how it has always been?” I asked naively. And everyone laughed. Ha ha ha, what a sucker. It was all an elaborate put-on. There are hidden cameras everywhere. The hospital produces its own successful prank series and I’d been game for a laugh. Ha ha.

At this point, though, I think I realised the truth: that I was lying immobile, unable to speak, whacked out on drugs.

I actually was, I realised, trapped in a movie. But was I a character or was I an actor? That really is one of life’s big questions, isn’t it?