The remaining engine finally sputtered its last and blew out. The ground below beckoned. "Hmph. This is gonna hurt...", as I finally let go of the controls, calmly embracing my mortality with a casual smirk. Golby and Nithia had fought well and they fought wisely. They'd pulled all of their anti-aircraft guns well back to positions much nearer the target. This had given the false impression that the bombers were going to have an easy ride and they relaxed more than they should have as they approached the target.
On their final approach, with the bomb bay doors open, Golby and Nithia unleashed a wall of fire no craft could penetrate. In doing so they'd exposed their positions and suffered heavy losses but they'd gambled well. Only one of the bombers made it through to the target zone, it's deadly payload was dropped but struck the ground short of the target and failed to do any significant damage. All that was left was to guide the ailing crate directly at the enemy positions in a defiant one fingered salute.
Just then there was a knock at the door. An anxious rap, not the usual discreet kind of knock I'd come to expect in this leafy English village. I gathered up the Sunday papers that had fallen around my feet where I'd slept and shuffled slowly out of the room towards the hallway.
It was Golby and he was out of breath as if he'd been running. I say 'as if' because anyone who knows the man surely knows the one thing Golby doesn't do is run. Period. But that's besides the point, "Mike, what's up?" I muttered, feeling barely compelled to show at least some compassion for the guy, he did seem distressed after all.
"Shit Gary. You're not going to believe this but..." he gasped for air, fractionally wilting the plants in the hanging basket at our doorway, he continued "...you know all that crap that Sanders and I have been throwing at each other lately?". I nodded and let out a knowing sigh. "Well" he said, "I think I might actually be Mike Sanders". He stopped panting immediately.
"You'd better come in Mike" I stepped aside and showed him the way but before he crossed the threshold he looked left and then right, checking if he'd been followed. The guy was in a mess that was for sure.
Over four long hours he recounted how he'd once known this kid at school called Michael Sanders who'd constantly do whatever he could to make Mike look like an idiot. Whether it be in class, on the playground football pitch or in the dining hall at lunchtimes, Sanders and Golby did not get on. It was more than just a casual lack of connection, for Golby at least, it ran deeper than that. The worst moment came one day when Sanders had stolen Golby's English workbook and before replacing it he tore out all the pages that contained an essay Mike Golby had prepared for a particular writing assignment. When the teacher had asked Mike Golby to read out his essay in class the poor kid just stood there, frozen and speechless when he realised that his essay was gone. Sanders had started chanting "Golby can't write...Golby can't read....Golby can't write..." and the rest of the class picked it up immediately and the humiliation was enough to reduce poor Golby to tears. His teacher marked his report card that year with the words "Keep trying".
Once he'd left school Golby had gradually forgotten Sanders and that particular episode and settled into his life, got married, did the family thing, got a couple of lucky breaks in his career, nothing extravagant but certainly more than enough to be proud of.
In later years the name Sanders was to only make casual appearances in Mike Golby's life, once at a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Cape Town when a Col. Sanders advertisement on a wall caught his eye resulting in a short bout of panic and a loss of appetite which was to subsequently remove fried chicken from Mike's diet for ever more. There were also a couple of times when Mike thought he'd seen the name Mike Sanders on emails and websites but upon closer inspection, invariably it turned out to be look-alike names like Mike Sanderson or Michael S. Anders.
But lately Mike's wife had noticed that he'd been spending a lot of time on the Web, updating his weblog and reading others. Too much time in fact.
PageCount was undeniably a good blog, if a little wordy sometimes. But Mike had been harbouring a knack for writing for many years and this was finally a way for him to express the thoughts and feelings he'd stored for so long. More often than not PageCount was a joy to behold, soaring above and beyond the usual atmosphere of blogging into spaces nobody knew existed. Sometimes he'd take a break but pretty much every day he was in there firing away like a machine gun on full bore, 1500 words here, 3000 there. On more than on occasion I've pulled him up for the sheer length of most of his posts but I'm secretly jealous, well not that secretly actually, and I long for the staying power of the man.
He's expressed views on many subjects but he's also drawn much criticism for his lucid prose on controversial issues, most notably the Middle East conflict. Much of this criticism came from a fellow blogger Mike Sanders, who I now know to be Mike Golby himself.
It seems that poor Golby never really recovered from his humiliation at the hands of Michael Sanders back in his school days. Golby has subconsciously been living two different lives on the Web, in one of them he's Mike Golby, upstanding citizen of South Africa and keeper of a long blog by the name of PageCount. When he's not being Mike Golby he secretly maintains the fake persona of Mike Sanders, an fine and upstanding Eastern Seaboarder and keeper of another blog by the name of Keep Trying. I realise that you are finding this hard to believe but it is true, I heard it from the man himself. Mike Golby is Mike Sanders and vice versa.
Just as the innocent Anakin Skywalker becomes the Lord Vader, so too does Golby tear himself apart in the enduring fight of good against evil. How long has he been living like this? Who knows, but I reckon it started long before he announced his arrival on the blogging scene. He has the Mike Sanders character off pat too well, there's too much detail there for this to be a recent thing. He's cunningly tried to suppress any suspicion by ensuring that the average PageCount post is about three to four times longer than the Keep Trying posts and I guess this would fool most people.
The fact that he's chosen to come out about it now suggests that, like most serial killers and people with pathological disorders, he has ultimately been wanting to get caught or found out. I guess that's the boost for people like him.
Why did he tell me? Well I don't truly know the answer to that one. Perhaps as his foil lately, I've taken the place of that old schoolboy demon and he sees me as the only person who could finally vanquish the ghost. Only time will tell. He asked me to blog this on his behalf, which I'm happy to do, but for reasons best known to himself, both of him, he's going to keep quiet about it as much as he can. He say's he'll keep updating the Keep Trying blog and will deny any knowledge of the truth.
Apart from all that he's the nicest bunch of guys you'd could hope to meet.
On their final approach, with the bomb bay doors open, Golby and Nithia unleashed a wall of fire no craft could penetrate. In doing so they'd exposed their positions and suffered heavy losses but they'd gambled well. Only one of the bombers made it through to the target zone, it's deadly payload was dropped but struck the ground short of the target and failed to do any significant damage. All that was left was to guide the ailing crate directly at the enemy positions in a defiant one fingered salute.
Who is Keyser Sose?
Just then there was a knock at the door. An anxious rap, not the usual discreet kind of knock I'd come to expect in this leafy English village. I gathered up the Sunday papers that had fallen around my feet where I'd slept and shuffled slowly out of the room towards the hallway.
It was Golby and he was out of breath as if he'd been running. I say 'as if' because anyone who knows the man surely knows the one thing Golby doesn't do is run. Period. But that's besides the point, "Mike, what's up?" I muttered, feeling barely compelled to show at least some compassion for the guy, he did seem distressed after all.
"Shit Gary. You're not going to believe this but..." he gasped for air, fractionally wilting the plants in the hanging basket at our doorway, he continued "...you know all that crap that Sanders and I have been throwing at each other lately?". I nodded and let out a knowing sigh. "Well" he said, "I think I might actually be Mike Sanders". He stopped panting immediately.
"You'd better come in Mike" I stepped aside and showed him the way but before he crossed the threshold he looked left and then right, checking if he'd been followed. The guy was in a mess that was for sure.
Over four long hours he recounted how he'd once known this kid at school called Michael Sanders who'd constantly do whatever he could to make Mike look like an idiot. Whether it be in class, on the playground football pitch or in the dining hall at lunchtimes, Sanders and Golby did not get on. It was more than just a casual lack of connection, for Golby at least, it ran deeper than that. The worst moment came one day when Sanders had stolen Golby's English workbook and before replacing it he tore out all the pages that contained an essay Mike Golby had prepared for a particular writing assignment. When the teacher had asked Mike Golby to read out his essay in class the poor kid just stood there, frozen and speechless when he realised that his essay was gone. Sanders had started chanting "Golby can't write...Golby can't read....Golby can't write..." and the rest of the class picked it up immediately and the humiliation was enough to reduce poor Golby to tears. His teacher marked his report card that year with the words "Keep trying".
Once he'd left school Golby had gradually forgotten Sanders and that particular episode and settled into his life, got married, did the family thing, got a couple of lucky breaks in his career, nothing extravagant but certainly more than enough to be proud of.
In later years the name Sanders was to only make casual appearances in Mike Golby's life, once at a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Cape Town when a Col. Sanders advertisement on a wall caught his eye resulting in a short bout of panic and a loss of appetite which was to subsequently remove fried chicken from Mike's diet for ever more. There were also a couple of times when Mike thought he'd seen the name Mike Sanders on emails and websites but upon closer inspection, invariably it turned out to be look-alike names like Mike Sanderson or Michael S. Anders.
But lately Mike's wife had noticed that he'd been spending a lot of time on the Web, updating his weblog and reading others. Too much time in fact.
PageCount was undeniably a good blog, if a little wordy sometimes. But Mike had been harbouring a knack for writing for many years and this was finally a way for him to express the thoughts and feelings he'd stored for so long. More often than not PageCount was a joy to behold, soaring above and beyond the usual atmosphere of blogging into spaces nobody knew existed. Sometimes he'd take a break but pretty much every day he was in there firing away like a machine gun on full bore, 1500 words here, 3000 there. On more than on occasion I've pulled him up for the sheer length of most of his posts but I'm secretly jealous, well not that secretly actually, and I long for the staying power of the man.
He's expressed views on many subjects but he's also drawn much criticism for his lucid prose on controversial issues, most notably the Middle East conflict. Much of this criticism came from a fellow blogger Mike Sanders, who I now know to be Mike Golby himself.
It seems that poor Golby never really recovered from his humiliation at the hands of Michael Sanders back in his school days. Golby has subconsciously been living two different lives on the Web, in one of them he's Mike Golby, upstanding citizen of South Africa and keeper of a long blog by the name of PageCount. When he's not being Mike Golby he secretly maintains the fake persona of Mike Sanders, an fine and upstanding Eastern Seaboarder and keeper of another blog by the name of Keep Trying. I realise that you are finding this hard to believe but it is true, I heard it from the man himself. Mike Golby is Mike Sanders and vice versa.
Luke, I am Your Father
Just as the innocent Anakin Skywalker becomes the Lord Vader, so too does Golby tear himself apart in the enduring fight of good against evil. How long has he been living like this? Who knows, but I reckon it started long before he announced his arrival on the blogging scene. He has the Mike Sanders character off pat too well, there's too much detail there for this to be a recent thing. He's cunningly tried to suppress any suspicion by ensuring that the average PageCount post is about three to four times longer than the Keep Trying posts and I guess this would fool most people.
The fact that he's chosen to come out about it now suggests that, like most serial killers and people with pathological disorders, he has ultimately been wanting to get caught or found out. I guess that's the boost for people like him.
Why did he tell me? Well I don't truly know the answer to that one. Perhaps as his foil lately, I've taken the place of that old schoolboy demon and he sees me as the only person who could finally vanquish the ghost. Only time will tell. He asked me to blog this on his behalf, which I'm happy to do, but for reasons best known to himself, both of him, he's going to keep quiet about it as much as he can. He say's he'll keep updating the Keep Trying blog and will deny any knowledge of the truth.
Apart from all that he's the nicest bunch of guys you'd could hope to meet.