BILLY BULLSHIT

At first glance, you’d think he had it all figured out. He strutted into the room like he owned the air in it, his expensive boots click-clacking against the floor like the Newton’s Cradle on his shitty desk at work. Percussive and loud enough to demand attention. The slicked-back hair, the jacket stolen from the wardrobe of an era that had called up on one of those brick-phones to say it wanted it back. 

Confidence was his costume, charisma his weapon of choice, sleaze was his ammunition.

But first impressions lie. They’re easy to fake, especially when no one looks too closely. And Billy counted on that. He knew how to dazzle just enough to keep people from noticing the hollowness beneath. The thinning hairline, the lines creeping onto his face, the weary eyes he kept hidden behind thick layers of bravado—all of it was wrapped up and sold as confidence. But confidence doesn’t hold up when you scratch the surface and find yourself digging through an inch of expensive foundation.

The cracks were there for anyone willing to see them. His laugh—too loud, too forced. His stories rehearsed to perfection but if you listened to him for long enough, you’d realise he only had five of them and they were all shit. His drug-affected temper would flare up the moment anyone asked where his money went. The truth was simple: it went up his nose, straight into a void he’d never been able to fill.

Nights were spent staring at the ceiling in an empty flat, working on more ways to make money, get laid, win a minor battle of wills. The designer boots he could barely afford, neatly lined up by the door, ready for the next performance. He never once thought to ask why it felt like a performance, why it felt like no amount of applause could drown out the echoes of his own failings. The narcissist never does.

He lingered in spaces he didn’t belong. On trains, he forced eye contact onto girls young enough to be his daughters, a predatory smile scratched onto the front of his kite as they tried to understand why the slimy old cunt was staring at them. At work, he talked to the ears of his female colleagues, but stared at their chests, never realising his charm had an expiry date. What had worked for him as a young man in the 1990s had as much chance of succeeding in the 2020s as a fart in the wind, but in his head it was the world that had grown out of touch with him, not the other way around. 

The crux of it all was that Billy was a paradox. He was loud and hollow, arrogant and afraid, alive and decaying all at once. His days were spent weaving stories to paint over the truth, his nights spent alone with the cracks he couldn’t fix. He wanted to be loved, but he didn’t know how to love himself. And in his desperate pursuit of approval, he’d forgotten how to be honest, even with the people who might have forgiven him.

The grand finale always came in his gestures, the flourishes he relied on to keep people dazzled His smile fixed firmly in place as he handed over his gift to the next unsuspecting recipient.

And whilst it might have been tradition to present a dozen red roses, all he ever brought was a dozen red flags.