So the blowjob that supermodel gives you in exchange for the core of your anima had better be a pretty damn good one.

Having said that, it's not all doom and gloom. Sure, people might be morons for turning over that one thing which everyone pretty much universally agrees is a bad thing to give away. On the bright side, all that energy I collect makes me ridiculously powerful. I don't want to brag but I'm almost certain that if I really wanted to I could start a pretty huge natural disaster. Wait, sorry, I forgot who I was writing for. You have no idea how hard starting an earthquake is, do you? Maybe one day I'll get to tell you from firsthand experience. Watch this space.

How did I get to know all this I hear you ask? Well I suppose it started for me during high school, shortly after discovering that social skills were not my forte. Physics, math, literature, art, music: all of those things I could get the hang of. Joking around, small talk, and anything involving physical activity did not come quite so easily.

As you may have noticed I've since come out of my shell somewhat, even if I still don't understand the appeal of football.

I'd like to tell you that bullying drove me to dark acts to get a little empathy going between us, but the truth is I wasn't really bullied all that much. I was just your average Loner who kept his head down and tried not to attract the attention of the larger and more unhinged set of future delinquents in the playground. A lot of my time was spent in libraries since by that age my parents seemed to notice me as much as my teachers.

So it was then, that when I was thirteen, I came across something interesting in the local public library. Apparently some old man had recently died and left no one to inherit his things. As a result, they'd carted off his impressive collection of old books down to the library to be sorted out. By then I was such a familiar sight to the people who worked there that I was practically a part of the furniture.

Seriously, one of the chairs was perfectly moulded to the shape of my ass.

I turned up as usual after school to do the day's homework and pick something up in which to bury my nose for a few hours. When I walked in the door and found the enormous stacks of strange books settled over two of the big tables in the study area I was instantly curious. This was mostly due to the fact that I'd read everything in the place that I was interested in twice already and for the previous six months I'd been reading such fascinating offerings as The Gardener's Guide to

Pests and Royal Weddings: A Retrospective.

Seeing the stack of new material drew me over Like a moth to the flame.

The librarians obviously hadn't paid that much attention to the books themselves when I first got to them because if they had then they sure as hell wouldn't have been left out in the open. I think that they must have believed them to be books about occult practices. Historical accounts of magic and mystery through the ages. I looked around to make sure no one was watching me and then, once I was sure I wasn't about to be interrupted, I reached out and pulled open the thick black Leather cover of one of the tomes.

It was obvious from looking at the first page that this was no mere history book or any new age hippy crap. This was an instruction manual on the subject of dark magic. Honestly? I know it sounds corny, but it really was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. The ebon cover was utterly blank and yet, once opened, the book displayed finely shaped words set in jet black ink that weaved their way across luxurious, thick pages that were yellowed with age. An intricate, hand-drawn border lined every page with dark patterns that vaguely resembled long, thorny vines, interlacing together in wicked shapes.

I looked at the words but couldn't make any sense of them. I'd come across many different styles of writing in different Languages, even at thirteen. By then I could already speak decent enough French to get by in Paris, and I'd started to learn German and Spanish. As I said, I had a lot of free time back then. So it came as something of an insult to my efforts when the one thing I'd found in months that I wanted to read wasn't in any language I'd ever known.

You know how they say curiosity killed the cat? Well, meow.

It was the first time I'd ever broken the law, but looking through those glorious pages made me want to know what those words were saying more than anything. For my first attempt at thievery, things went rather well. Within five seconds the big book was in my bag, and shortly after that my fear of getting seen caught up with me and I ducked out of the Library to rush home.

Home, in case you're wondering, was settled in the middle of a terraced row of council houses on an estate so rough that you could turn a wooden square block into a wooden ball just by throwing it through the air. You couldn't turn a corner without seeing a used needle on the ground or a soggy condom draped over the twigs of a dead bush. When I walked inside my house there was usually the immediate sense of slow decay. My parents didn't talk to each other and they sure as hell didn't care about home improvement. The essentials worked and everything else had been slowly falling to pieces ever since they'd moved in.

I heard the usual sound of the TV in the Living room and the usual Lack of any kind of greeting from either of the two people who brought me into the world. It didn't matter to me since I wanted to be left alone.

I rushed up the stairs to my room and closed the door. I pulled my newest acquisition out of my school bag and let it fall open on my desk. I was hoping that I could copy down some of the words and solve the mystery of the Language with a quick trip to cyberspace during the next day's dinner break at school.

My plans were soon shattered when I discovered that most of the words had completely vanished except for the two settled in the centre of the page.

Hello, Wilfred.