The Last - - -

THE LAST - - -

I often thought I knew what thoughts others thought. It is called being a seer or medium - or even a prophet whereby I can predict the thoughts someone was about to think a few seconds before they thought them. But the real art of such telepathy – yes, that’s the word I was seeking – was to know when the last thought had passed through their mind, or knowing when it was imminent, a last thought that would thus complete the whole sense of everything they had thought up to that point. To clinch the gestalt of the moment.

So, when I was visited by someone who showed me an embossed card of officialdom I thought this was the optimum time to test out my skills in reading thoughts to see if such thoughts contradicted the words coming out of their mouth – and then crystallising their last thought as a sort of joining up of whatever circle they had in store for me – the plan, I fear, of removing something from me because they were about to claim that all these years I had been telling lies about my circumstances, such as when or where my last thought was likely to reside.

But then I thought: what if they can read my own thoughts? I had better stop thinking my thoughts, thoughts that were sneaking upon me even now, thoughts that I really did not think, such as the doubts about whether I had been eligible for the upkeep I had been receiving all my life, and this was still the case going forward. But then I thought I should keep my thoughts rolling on and on so as to prevent myself reaching the last thought that would confirm my lies, because the last thought is always out of the control of the person thinking it, and this is why I am thinking these thoughts, on and on, interminably, but knowing it is too late to change the thoughts I have already thought about receiving upkeep that I did not deserve because of the circumstances I had withheld about my life.

On and on, I keep thinking, thinking with some hope that continuing such thoughts will bury the thoughts I’ve already committed to thinking. So busy thinking I seem to have failed not only to scry the thoughts in the real-time of the other’s actually thinking them from beneath their vast bouffant cloud of officiousness, but also I have failed to listen to what they had been saying to me aloud, or to pay heed to the questions they’ve been asking me about my circumstances and I now wonder if my silence is incriminating. And who is really keeping their last thought so close to their chest, to eventually bring it forth, me or them?

It is too late to wonder about anything, and my regathered concentration on their thoughts has shown me that they are about to have their last thought at the precise same moment when I am due to have my last thought. A last thought being the clincher in any pattern of thinking, often not a last thought at all, I hope, but the predictive beginning of another pattern of thoughts to set beside what the thinker says out loud. And who is fooling whom in this game of cuts by a thousand thoughts, and which of us is thinking thoughts at all? Each last thought cancelling out the last - - -