“Fuck you, you mediocre bastard,” she said, and the words echoed like the aftershock of an atom bomb through his whole reality, rearranging on a molecular level what it meant to be human and alive and in love with someone who did not love him back. 40 long mediocre years she'd been his, some 14,600 utterly average kisses every morning, twice that many dull conversations about unimportant things, roughly 7,000 dissatisfying sexual encounters where he thought he had been her everything and she had tolerated – tolerated! - him inside her, while he pretended not to notice like the bastard he was, had to be.

There could be no greater insult. Each syllable cut with the keen edge of truth, maybe not the truth but a truth, one that he could not help but believe. In one great instant of personal triumph a man faded, and flickered, and was no longer a human being. And like that, it was over.

But not for everyone...