"Well, fuck me!"

He always said that. It was his thing. To have met him was to have heard him say it. With variations. Alternative stress-points, dramatised delivery, multiple exclamation points, the works.

After the initial shock/amusement, people just got used to it. They barely registered the actual words, but instead focused on trying to gauge the emotions that accompanied their expression.

Towards the end, he began saying it more frequently, and at the very last, that was the only thing he would say. It didn't matter if you bumped into him after months, or if you'd been seeing him every day, or if you were talking music, or discussing politics over dinner, or even just playing chess. That's all you would hear, those three words, again and again and again, the only notes emerging from the record as it wound down to its scratchy little end.

It was only later that they realised why.

Nobody ever had.