As I said, I'm no conspiracy theorist. I was learning to read and write when JFK was shot, when that Secret Service man turned in the passenger seat to see his President crumple, when he launched himself into the back too late to catch the bullet between his glinting teeth, when the car shunted and then accelerated away as if it would make a difference. I didn't sit there with my crayons to scrawl CIA on the foolscap. The lost City of Atlantis never existed. If the aliens have landed at Roswell, then I won't believe it until I can buy the lunchbox.

Man goes to the doctor. Doctor, he says, doctor, they're everywhere. They're following me all the time. Wherever I go, they're waiting for me. No we're not, says the doctor.

I've run out of options. There's only so much I can do, and so now you can see me standing naked in my bathroom. The shower head is drip dripping like a spent penis, and I've just finished shaving. You can see the little line of hair where the water in the sink was, you can taste the mealy emptiness of shaving foam. The towel is going to be rabbit-soft when I pat my face dry with it, like a pillow, big and fine. The aftershave isn't going to sting.

What did I forget? What did I forget? I can feel them sitting in the cabinet, waiting for me to forget them. I don't want to open the bottle. There's a genie of pain in the bottle in the cabinet. I don't want to have to swallow them down whole. They're too big to swallow whole. You can feel them going down down down. And then? And then, the headaches start, and I can feel myself rocking, and my skin crawls. I don't want them. I don't need them.

Boxers. Jeans. Shirt. Left sock. Right sock. Jumper. Jacket. Get it in the right order. Rituals create their own energy, their own power. Hat? Nobody wears hats any more, except for those ridiculous basketball hats that Johnny England sports. Sports, basketball. Haha.

By the door, I hesitate. There's something not quite right here, but I don't know what it is. All of a sudden, I'm everywhere at once in that house; naked in the bathroom, in the bedroom dressing, walking upstairs to meet myself walking down, a sandwich in the kitchen, and a bowl of soup, watching the television very late at night (film noir), on the toilet reading the Sundays, back in the bathroom, washing hands -

Everywhere. Then, just as suddenly, I'm back in the hall, waiting to go out with a cold doorknob in my hand. I feel hot, but it's probably just the jacket.

I step outside, swinging on the door lightly. It's a satisfying sound and when it clicks once, twice, shut behind me, I double-lock for security. It's a good door, a strong door on the front of my house. It's a fine day, chilled to perfection. The world in an icebucket, the world today is a bottle in an icebucket, and in the bottle is a message. What's the message? Don't ask me. I'm no connoisseur. Don't ask me any more questions.

I know, I simply know, that they will be here, today. It has a poetry to it, purely circumstantial as far as evidence goes, but inevitable. It only needs me to walk, what, four roads down towards the high street before I see them, a pair of them. It's not the pair that I've seen before, the ones outside Martin's house and then at Simon's, but that's not important. It could be any two of them and it would be the same. They're all Witnesses. They all know what happened to Simon, huddled in their little Kingdom Halls and trying to keep the truth from me.

It's the same road that we're on. The trees have no leaves, no blossoms yet, and there are six, evenly spaced, before I reach them. I tread on the cracks in the pavement as I go, crushing bad luck beneath black boots and cursing silently. Them, me, Simon. What about them, Simon? The world. This bottled-up world which will crack if we don't read the message. They're talking to someone at number - 68 or 70, I can't work it out, I'm walking fast. I take my hands out of my pockets and let them swing free, as free as I feel.

They finish talking to whoever they were talking to, thank them with little bows, and turn to go. The door closes behind them. I speed up, slightly. They walk down the garden path and open the gate. The first one to walk out is a woman. Late 20s, long brown hair, nervous manner, light trousers and a white jacket. A man follows her. This one late 30s, wispy brown hair receding, carrying a briefcase and we know what's in there. They go so slowly to their car. He goes to open the driver's side, she goes to the passenger side and waits. She is slightly overweight. I realise with a sickening inside that I can't attack a woman. I can't.

The man has the briefcase, he's older. He's in charge. I move between a Ford Mondeo and a Bedford, sidestepping into the street. He looks up, only for a moment, then looks down to open the car. I hear another car turn out of a street behind me and purr, off into the opposite direction. There are no pedestrians. I'm in a half-run now. The woman is looking off down the road, faraway. Before he opens the door, I have to reach him.

He looks up and his eyes wide I rush into him. He goes down. The woman looks at me across the roof of the car, uncertain as to what's happening. Somehow, in my hand, I have his briefcase. It opens easily but there's nothing in there, nothing except magazines and papers and some keys. He is trying to get up. I throw the briefcase into the middle of the road. Paper everywhere, trying to fly. Those magazines fly like angels. They're unholy. They get in my face.

"What the hell did you do to him?" I shout and maybe some other things as well. He doesn't know what to say, I think. Do they train them to never betray the organisation, even under duress? I hit him as soon as he stands up and he goes down again and this time the woman starts shouting and then screaming. He tries to get up again and I hit him again and he goes down again. Slapstick. Cartoon violence. He stays down this time, so I crouch by him and grab his lapels. What a mess his nose is. Blood everywhere. I have one thousand questions to ask, but I can't think of any of them right now.

My fingers hurt, all the fingers on my right hand. Oh. It's plain he can’t answer me. What's happened here? Then I hear a siren and that's all I can hear. He slumps painfully when I let go his collar and stand up to look around. A police car is pulling out of the side road, behind me. That's the sort of service I pay my taxes for, but now they're the enemy. Or am I theirs? I forget about the papers and leg it down the street. For a while I've made it.

At the end of the road, they still haven't caught up with me, so I turn to see what's keeping them. The car has stopped by the man fallen against his own car, and a police officer is kindly helping him to his feet, asking questions. Good. That's good. Nobody should get hurt. And the other policeman is holding a radio and close by the car staring at me and talking into the radio. He might not be staring at me: I look around, but I'm the only person standing in the street so I suppose it must be me. I start to run again, but I can't run forever.

There is blood on my right hand and a police car coming down the road quickly. I have nowhere to run to, and so I stop. I stop in the middle of the road, and then I walk to the pavement and I sit down, next to a motorbike. A Yamaha. The police car is apprehensive as it pulls up next to me. I had a thousand questions to ask and I couldn't remember any of them. I still can't. A policeman approaches me quietly saying something that I can't quite hear. Reassuring words. Does he think I'm dangerous?

Am I dangerous?

Paul Currion

"I am practising to become the greatest writer Croydon has ever produced, which I hope will be as easy as it sounds. At present, I support myself as a "freelance research consultant" (a job description that fails to describe my job).

Can I Get a Witness? is taken from the novel The Book of Simon, which was started during a research visit to Kenya and is a lot more comprehensible than this extract would lead you to believe. Inspiration came from the many con artists that roam Nairobi streets, and, although the story has since moved far from there, the theme is their theme; the difficulty of living comfortably in the gaps between what we are told, what we choose to believe, and what is actually true.

The book charts the breakdown of Tom Clapton, the narrator, following the suicide of a close friend - the Simon of the title. Tom begins to believe that Simon was murdered and that it is his task to find out who was responsible. The line between this fiction and reality blurs; in this extract, convinced that Jehovah’s Witnesses were somehow involved in Simon’s death, Tom snaps."