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Masterminded

The man held his breath, holding down the laughter struggling to escape as his daughter walked towards the door. This was his biggest yet, he could not wait to see how his family would take his death. Wellnot a real death, just another one of his many jokes!

Old Jim Riley loved to play jokes on people. Getting smiles and laughter from people who were victims of his jokes was however another thing. Most of the time, people got upset and were hardly ever amused.

However, he had not always being like that. Jim was one of those people who was nobody's favorite. As a child, he often cried himself to sleep from the pain of longing and loss. No matter how hard he tried, everybody seemed to turn away from him.

As a teenager, he was good looking, came from a wealthy home, dressed well, belonged to the right groups and behaved in all the cool' ways. Yet when he spoke, he either got distracted looks, bored yawns, out rightly rude responses, sometimes rejections and disbarment from that group.

Even at home where he was treated like king, it was not quite enough.

Watching the sudden pandemonium caused by a boy who fainted in a supermarket, Jim had an idea.

He would suddenly go still and fall down twitching and convulsing. Each time he had one of his fits', it was guaranteed to get him the panic and worry of his parents; the heady broadcast of an emergency with the ambulance racing to save his life and the frenzied sights and sounds of the Emergency Room.

His condition puzzled the doctors until one day while he was having one of his fits', told everyone to leave him alone and snapped at him to stop the theatrics and get up!

Jim had been shocked to silence and had managed to save his face crying to his mother that the doctor had been cruel.

His parents threatened to sue the hospital refusing the doctors' diagnosis that their darling Jim's condition was psychosomatic; an imaginary ailment all in his head. His parents did not wait to hear the rest of what the doctors had to say, they would have been told that people who did this to get attention.

Jim continued to crave attention and would do anything to get it.

The first time he got a date from a girl whom he knew in his heart had only agreed to go out with him because he promised to introduce her to a family friend who was a famous musician; was a humiliation he would remember for a long time afterwards.

They were going for a movie and then dancing afterwards. Jim arrived at her house at the agreed time to meet not one, two

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