As soon as I plugged my leg in I couldn’t stop the convulsions, kept flipping the finger while my knee jerked in tempo. They had to prise me away with industrial machinery; the sound of the jackhammers alone was deafening, and ended with me lying there disconnected at last in a big pool of my own and other people’s sweat.

From any other perspective it was nothing, but inside the nothing is like inside the whale, gassy and claustrophobic, you never know what shores you’ll be spat out on to.

After that it was certainly touch and go for a while - a certain tentativeness about everything, and flashbacks too at unwelcome moments: queueing in the supermarket and then SEX SEX SEX with terrible blackouts and the shame of that moment captured on CCTV and headlining the local newspapers. After a while they stopped reporting it; there were a couple of murders, and then a new sports shop opening, so who cares about whose pants are down and who’s gesticulating obscenely next to the deli counter?

What was he shouting about?

Also I think I must have aged about a hundred years during those few months, which in practical terms meant becoming more and more invisible, not to mention permeable by medium-sized particles of all varieties. You see the human body simply cannot absorb such intensities, although strangely persons struck by lightning often appear remarkably youthful for the first six weeks after the event. Spontaneous crumbling-into-dust and transmutation into a pillar of salt is not unheard of after the initial period of youthful effulgence however. The sickness unto death can mask itself temporarily as regeneration, but I guess the message is don’t be fooled even for a moment; and that message is above all a message for today.

I won’t bore you with details of my recovery, although if you want the number of a good masseur I suggest you consult the phonebook. The numerous books and articles on alien abduction were one good thing to come out of the whole experience. If I get the time I may write them down one day. I have evidence that the aliens are using abducted humans for therapeutic purposes, salving their psychic wounds with whatever balm they can extract from our unspeakable night-terrors and thanato-erotic paralysis experiences. I hypothesize accordingly that the upsurge in abductions over the past two decades corresponds with a period of considerable social anxiety on the aliens’ home world. This is a civilisation in deep emotional trouble, and we should be glad to be of assistance in whatever way we can.

Regarding my penis, it is not noticeably larger than it was before I started paying for your product. I am mildly aggrieved but not especially surprised: the real purpose of the exercise was the leap of faith that was involved in responding to yr advertisement to begin with. I have re-established an essentially trusting relationship to the unknown, and if my penis has derived no contingent benefits thereby it is but a small matter, as it always was. I can confirm a moderate thickening of the semen, although it is essentially unaltered as to taste and luminosity. Please send further samples notwithstanding; as before, I waive all possible rights and protections under the laws of this or any other country.

All I really have now are these old tapes, the violence that used to surge through my living room having dissipated into the walls themselves, their peeling wallpaper. The whole building is accursed, with erratic magnetic fields wiping the few tapes I have left - nowhere is safe, not even the basement which I tried to shield with tin foil and egg cartons. It is like something out of Lovecraft, sometimes I play one of the tapes and out of the hiss and silence comes a terrible low whine, my own voice straining and cracking in miserable exertion, and then the most horrible obscene words one after another. I think they are incantations, but to whom? It’s very hard to persuade any women at all to stick around with that sort of thing going on: even the women on the tapes are long gone, faded into hiss and static or replaced by a stream of obscenities that sounds computer-generated somehow. I wonder if my next-door neighbour has a computer that is generating these obscenities, and transmitting them into my tape archives? No doubt this is a still too rational explanation.

So I am plugging back in, although I know only too well now the risks to which this exposes me - surely the worst now is past? Humiliation is the price you pay in twelve manageable installments, beginning Saturday next. See you there then? Bring masking tape and cheap liquor, we’ll make an afternoon of it. You will look over my shoulder, won’t you? It doesn’t feel safe by yourself, even with the firewall running and the anti-virus software barking self-importantly about how effective it’s being and demanding to be updated every twenty seconds or so. Finally I am moving beyond shame and anxiety, reaching inside for the new person that has been incubating throughout all these horrible experiences, the ideal me with a backbone of steel and yet compassionate withall. You’ll see, things will be different from now on. If I can’t promise that, what is there left to promise?