I'm going Outside.

I'm leaving the warmth of my room, the sensuous ease of my chair. I'm going Outside. It's cold out there. Cold and damp and grey. The dust and muck of without, airborne assailants stabbing at my eyes, raking at my nose, infiltrating my mouth to clog my innards - to take me as their own - steal about in desperate anticipation. If I turn my face to the window, I can feel the winter air reaching out to me through the glass, clawing at my cheek.

I reach over to the mighty one - the Radiator. I turn it up full. Within seconds the battle is over, the Radiator, as I knew it would be, victorious - the cold banished to its netherworld of... Outside.

But I'm going out there.

I can almost hear, carried on the unseen, fury-driven ghost of the wind, its cries; its Siren inspired lamentations luring me to my demise. And though I wish it were not so, though I yearn for another path, my doom is laid forth. I cover my ears to the call of the wind, but to no avail - it penetrates my defences, a haunting echo stripping me of the last shades of my sanity.

No.

It will not end thus.

My resolve hardens. No thoughts should I have for the safety of my physical being, for my soul is absolute. I will prevail.

I don my armour, in the futile knowledge of its inadequacies - my jacket offers little protection against the fearsome ruin I must face, my gauntlets less still. But I am unheeding.

I gather my wits, such as they are, and stand at the threshold of beyond. I do not look back as I cast myself over the brink of Chaos.

Hell of a time to run out of tea bags.