Henry's Similes

A man's quickening step can easily cause alarm among the dampened minds of mind-numbed plebs, and the man who invented the word "like", surely his quickening pace would cause greater alarm, for no other man could have more enemies.

This unassuming young man had all the hallmarks of a person. His two legs propped up his massy body, out of which grew two arms. All limbs were real and not made of plastic. His Romanesque nose ran regular gamuts of emotions, more so than his eyes. When he was angry his nostrils flared wider than 1970s bell-bottoms and when he was sad his nose seemed to grow pointier by the second. His eyes were both round and square, and he had so much hair that it would be pointless to count how many. Anthropologists guess over 197. All the same colour. Brown like wood.

Henry was his name, and he was much kinder to others than himself. Incurably selfless, he had a smile that painted tones of tranquility on peoples hearts. Unfortunately he had much reason to me angry and sad recently. For this reason his nose was both flared and pointy.

In 2022 when he was a student he often thought thoughts. Big ones, squidgy ones. Ones skirting politics, others downright fucking them. Some thoughts were hard and unrelenting, like hard unrelenting objects. Others soft like those ultra-balsam Kleenex tissues, although they didn't leave a thin film of soothing balm upon the mind. A shame that, because when a mind as brilliant as Henry's starts a-thinking, it can be difficult for the mind.

He often liked making comparisons in his thoughts, so he usually employed the word "as". "As" was invented ten years earlier in 2012 and was revealed to the world in a slogan for the London Olympics - "The London Olympics - As exciting as Thorpe Park". Thorpe Park being very exciting at the time, reaching its zenith in 2011. The word was a resounding success and from that moment the English language deepened, as speech and writing could now use comparisons. But the eager and fresh mind of a universitied Henry sort more. For him "as" was as uncouth and short as a racist dwarf, and he thought he could coin a new simile like as, as like when liking as, to like as is sometimes not enough.

His invention had the double-quaffed benefit of having another meaning, similar to that of the meaning of life - "agreeable, satisfactory, finding pleasure in". But this was beside the point, like the last letter in a word at the end of a sentence.

Anyway, as a student, in his last year, the word came to him in a dream as vivid as the London Olympic logo (ironically something Henry rather disliked). And the next morning he had it! Like. Like. Like. Likes growth to international fame mirrored that of a dyspraxic pensioner - slow and with difficulties, but soon the word spread like the super-bug MIRS, and ten years later in 2032 the word "like" became a staple among the world's 3 billion people (half of the population having been killed off in the MIRS pandemic of 2029). It also joined the ranks of "uni-words", words used globally in all languages that were invented by students at uni. Like "bum", "propinquity", and now like "like". But such an invention, like poorly designed cutlery, can have disastrous consequences.

It was these disastrous consequences that Henry was now experiencing as he broke into a run, looking back at the armed strangers that were chasing him.