EXTRACT FOR
The Underbelly Trilogy
(G. Stiles)

      Where you see chaos, I see order.  Where there are events, there are patterns.  And I recognise them.  That is what I do.  That is who I am.

      My childhood was satisfactory, my youth ordinary, until that fateful day that they subjected me to an IQ test for a university grant.  I had not excelled at school;  as a matter of fact I just got by with the barest minimum of attention and attendance.  Then I took the test and everyone believed I was a genius.

      You can only go into two directions from there.  You either become brilliant enough to dazzle everyone including yourself into believing that you can do anything, or you can become the loser that never lives up to his potential, and whatever you accomplish then is but a shadow of itself.

      If you fail to even make that choice, you are stuck with a limbo personality.  You embrace the Eastern Way to dispose of it altogether, only to find yourself alienated and susceptible to suggestions.

      A pattern is neither good nor bad.  It simply is, beautiful in its own right.

      A personality is a pattern.  The man sitting right opposite me had a disturbed pattern.  The empty page on my notepad vouched for my current inability to make sense of it.  His eyes moved in zigzagging motions, following an irregular geometric shape that excluded my location by design.  You can always tell when someone has been subjected to an overload of something, be that emotions, impressions, or questions.  This man had been pushed over the edge recently.

      They had found him naked in the woods not far from our institution.  Because of that, they had assumed that he was one of our patients already.  The blood all over his body didn't prompt them to hand him over to the police first.  He had not spoken a word since he was admitted.  That is why they got me involved.

      Whatever it was this man had experienced, it had scared him off his wits, every gesture and facial expression was constricted into flight.  He was running from something or someone.  He was beyond hope of escape.  Not much to go on, but it was a start.