Tonight, I'm going to knock you over.

I stare into my bowl of strawberry and chocolate Cheerios regretting my poor impulse control. I am the plaything of some marketer - one of the mindless consumers they likely joke about over cocktails I likely paid for. Shopping on an empty stomach is a dangerous game. It makes you more susceptible to their tricks. One small misstep leading to existential crisis. Daytime television doesn't help either. I turn the TV off.

I pick up my phone. God forbid I exist for one second without a screen. It prompts me for a pass code. When did it stop recognizing my face? Had it been weeks or months? This is the reddest of flags. I try holding it above me at arm's length. The classic shot from above that helps people look thinner. Begrudgingly I type in the code. There's a message. It's probably mum wondering when I'm going to come visit. I open the app. It's from an unknown number. I try to hold my finger on it but accidentally tap it instead. 

Tonight, I'm going to knock you over.

I'm a chronic mouth-breather, a pariah to those with good hearing. I'm not sure if my mouth was open before I read the message, but it positively gapes now. Laughter seizes me, my chest compresses, and I begin to cough. I make a mental note to get that checked out. I grab a toffee from a bowl on the table, becoming conscious of my subconscious. It's precisely these kinds of actions that are making us fat, I tell it. 

Who is this? I type. I'm left on read. There's a number and I look it up. Nothing.

I stand up and my smart watch congratulates me. I wrack my brain, going over all the possibilities. What bothers me the most is why forewarn me? 

The talking heads yammer on about us living in an age of instant gratification but it feels like the opposite, the devices in our hands transporting the outside world inside. It's hard to switch off and I begin to type. 

This isn't funny. Tell me who you are or I'm calling the police.

And breaking the three-text rule.

I'll knock YOU over. Twat.

Tonight is board game night. Normally it's a perfect evening. We get together every other week and take it in turns to host and tonight is my turn. I should cancel. No, if it's one of them then that's what they want me to do. It's probably Berry, that cretin.

I look around my abode. I really am a filthy creature. I've let too many things slip lately. I need to clean this shite-hole before people arrive. I rearrange the blanket on the sofa and feel a pathetic sense of accomplishment. I take my hand and begin to wipe the dust off the side table, curving around the various pictures and ornaments. I stop when I discover a small trophy nestled behind an empty plant pot. The trophy features a golden cowboy, with an inscription underneath that reads 'Not my first rodeo.' That's truer today than it was when she first gave it to me. I wonder where she is, it has been months.

BANG.

My spine tries to leap from between my shoulder blades. I turn quickly towards the commotion and wobble. Frodo stares back at me from the counter, his little ginger face expressionless and while his metal bowl lays on the floor. I march over, noticing the pain in my feet as they slap on the hardwood. He recoils from my touch. I lean down to reach into the cabinet beneath him and blood rushes to my head and my chubby cheeks droop and pulse. I scoop some food into the bowl. That little ginger is getting fat too. His fur is doing a great job of hiding that belly.

"We're going on a diet after tonight buddy," I say. Frodo doesn't respond.

---

Later that evening my potential assailants begin to arrive. Bennie is first as always. Recently retired, she's always complaining about people her own age and refuses to believe that age is catching up with her too. 

"Hiya Brody," she says as he pushes past me, a four pack in one hand and a gigantic water bottle in the other. Bennie is a big believer in hydration.

Berry is next to arrive with his pronounced mustache which he twists at each end. I lovingly despise Berry. I despise his company, but I know he is an okay guy, and the others like him.

"Hullo Brody pal," he said as he passes empty-handed, "I hope I'm not the last to arrive."

"Not at all," I say, rolling my eyes "come on in and help yourself." The door creaks loudly as I close it followed by a dull thunk and an "ow!" as it springs back. Jason stands on the other side, shaking his skeletal hand back and forth in pain. 

"Do you normally close the door that hard?" he gurns. Sinead stands behind him beaming.

"Sorry Jason, I didn't see you there, otherwise I'd have closed it harder."

Jason is...vampire-like for lack of a better term. Slender, with dark hair and angular face all he lacked were the fangs. Sinead is the personification of perfection, as if created in a lab by an Irish tourism board that lazily assigned her long flowing red curls, too many freckles and a pair of sparkling green eyes. 

"I'll stick your head in that door Brody if you hurt him," she laughs. Head strong is too weak a description of Sinead. I wonder whether she intentionally goes out in stormy weather and walks into the wind.

Before long, we are all squeezed around my kitchen table. Sinead is talking to Bennie about the latest American she snagged, while Berry is busy showing Jason something on his phone. Whatever it is, it has Jason convulsing violently.

"I got a strange text today." Sinead gets up to go to the fridge. "Do any of you recognize this number?" I write it out and pass it around the table. Bennie puts on her reading glasses.

"No," she says, holding it at arm's length "but it reminds me that I had text from an unknown number recently, I called them, and it was my bank."

"Bennie, please tell me you didn't..." says Berry. 

"Someone picked up and wanted me to secure my account from fraud. Well, that's serious, I said. I don't want anybody stealing what's left of my husband's estate. They said, "oh no madam, we'll get that secured right away."

Everyone is looking at her in horror.

"So, they passed me to a nice young man, and he was going to help me. We spoke for twenty minutes about what was wrong, about how my account had been compromised. Madam, he said eventually, I need access to your computer in order to secure it. I said of course, how I can help you. He asked me to download a program. Download a what? I said. And so, he talked me through it. Click here, do this, do that and I agree although he's really lost me. Then after about ten minutes he asks for access. Access for what? Your computer ma'am. But I don't have a computer, I say. Oh, he was very mean indeed after that." she laughs.

We all join her out of a sense of relief.

"I ain't some old dolt, you trickster, I said. If I was yer mum, I'd smack your bottom real good. And he was gone." The others pass the number around and have a look. No one gives anything away. 

Sinead comes back to the table. "What is it?" she asks. "Did she forget to give you a name?" I'm flattered she thinks I'm capable of getting a girl's number.

"Do you want Bennie to handle them for you?" laughs Berry. 

"Forget it," I say, it's just someone winding me up.

We set up the board for a game of Monopoly. And people start to take their turns.

"What's the matter with you tonight?" asks Jason, taking a swig as he waits for a response.

"I don't know. I get a strange anxiety when I get a call or text from an unknown number. That's weird right?"

"A bit, " he says, "I just don't answer anyone. I turn off all notifications and reckon that unless you leave a voicemail, it mustn't have been that urgent."

"I should try that. It feels like something is catching up to me. Like I forgot something, and that it's going to swallow me whole."

"Are you on the run from the peelers or something?" he asks.

"As a kid, I broke into a car lot with a few friends. We were nine, I think. While in the lot, we broke off the hood ornament of a Mercedes. I worried about that for weeks, wondering when the forensics would come back to land us in jail. Like that's not normal."

"We got him," Jason says, lifting the lapel of his jacket to his mouth, "they're on their way you sick f-."

"It's your turn mate," says Berry, placing his hand on my shoulder.

I look down at the board. I take the pair of dice into my hand, and idly roll them between my fingers and thumb. I begin to shake the dice in one hand. One casts itself from my grasp into the chasm beneath the table. Sinead hands it to me. Women always have icicles for hands. I roll. Three. Well, that's my game over. I grab my little bowler hat between my thumb and middle fingers, and curtly tap-tap-tap it to Whitechapel Road.

"You give up too easily," says Sinead.

"It's annoying when you're stopped in your tracks right out the gate, especially when Berry is halfway around the board."

"Maybe if you'd thrown properly the first time -"

"Piss off Berry," I interject, and I'm flooded with energy. Sometimes when you're in the wrong it just feels so right sometimes. 

"Do you need a time-out?" asks Bennie.

"No, " I begin to growl, "let's just drop it."

"You've been short with us a lot lately," says Berry, "like when are you going to snap -"

"Let's drop it, as he said." says Sinead.

Its Berry's turn to roll. Doubles. He rolls again. He takes his car and audibly zooms it around the board passing Go and stopping on the same square as me.

"I think I'll buy it. Luckily you don't have to pay this time round Brody."

Maybe I'll knock you over Berry, you absolute git. I wondered if anyone had ever told him he looks like Nigel Thornberry with that stupid mustache.

The doorbell rings and my stomach growls. You're a major part of the problem, I tell it, apparently conditioned to growl at a doorbell. I shimmy and squeeze on my tiptoes between the chairs, and the recycling box which is overflowing with dozens of plastic takeaway containers that are precariously perched atop one another. I slip out into the hallway and open the door. The delivery driver hands me two massive paper bags full of greasy goodness. I go to close the door with my foot. Without speaking he barrels into me, and I topple back into the hallway arse overhead. I hit the ground hard as a chicken ball erupts from its sweaty bag and slaps me in the face. 

"Who?" I mumbled, the unmistakable feeling of thick curry on my shirt. "Who the hell are you?" The man said nothing. He towers above me, and smiles.

"Brody, do you need help with the Chinese mate? someone calls from the other room.

"It was you," I say. I try to rise but my hand lands on escapee noodles and slides from under me.

"I've been doing therapy," he said.

"What kind of whack-job therapist do you go to man?"

"My therapist said I should confront rude customers instead of bottling it all up. You don't remember me, do you? You never bother to look up, yet I see you every other day. Yet you never say thank you. Even tonight you were going to close that door in my face again."

"Well thank you, I guess" I say, sarcasm dripping like gravy from my voice.

"I didn't want to lose my job, so I said nothing. I put in my two weeks today."

"Do you really need to give two weeks as a delivery driver?" I blurt.

"I wanted to put it right. You should eat less take-aways by the way. Anyway, I'm going to go now."

And so, he left, with an unmistakable spring in his step, reaching the front gate he closed it gently behind him. Had he really hated me that much? I'm sure that had felt good, to release that pent up energy. I'm his Berry I realize, and my own energy is gone.

"What the f..." I stand up carefully, place my hand on the door frame to steady myself and leave a stain.

"If you don't say thank you..." I flinch, and turn to see him at the garden gate, "for your deliveries in future, I'll knock you over again. Sorry I forgot to mention that bit" he said, backing up slowly down the street. "I'll be watching." And he is gone, the delivery driver turned vigilante lost to the night. What an arse I've been.

I reenter the room with the debris of our meal.

"What the hell happened to you? cries Bennie.

"You've got something here," says Berry, drawing a circle across his entire body. Jason is on the floor in vampiric convulsions.

"Have I really been such an arsehole these past few months?"

"A colossal one," says Sinead. The others voice their agreement.

"We were hoping you would dig yourself out of it," says Bennie, diplomatically. 

"It's been a lot."

"For us as well," says Jason, having pulled himself back together, "I'm sorry but I was in two minds to come tonight." The others nodded.

"You missed my husband's memorial, Brody. We've tried to be there for you, but it's really only gone one way love," says Bennie.

"You've been fine to me," interjects Berry, "no worse than usual. We've all been there, and Sinead has been going through the same but that didn't even seem to register."

"I didn't want to bring it up. I'm fine, I just caught up with the car," says Sinead evidently trying to play it down. 

"I'm sorry," I say, not really finding the words. I'd let everything slip lately, thinking I was at rock bottom when I was barely below the topsoil. 

There's a long pause, as everyone debates what to say. Berry is the first to speak.

"Well," he says, slapping his thighs and standing, "did you save any of that Chinese for us mate?"

Hours later, I wave the last of them goodbye and close the door. Bennie had won the game by a landslide, and we figured she must be old enough to have invented capitalism never mind Monopoly. Frodo creeps out from under the sofa and stares at me and I begin to clean.