Wind through Black Trees.

I stumble out of the Eureka Rescue Mission - guttural coughs and hacks of halitosis from the hobo populace - old man stares with glassen eyes into the cold grey. Just had dinner - puke on a plate - after the obligatory speech from Jeeeeeeesus. The store shed was supposed to be secure, I guess not. I was rolled for my luggage - almost everything I own. Well, clothes wise anyway. I still have my laptop and satchel with the essentials.

I curse God - I curse him for me coming here, I curse him for the weather, I curse him that there were no beds, I curse and I curse.

The black void in my mind opened and I stumbled through the Norman Rockwell scenery - happy white people dash laughing to and fro getting into the holiday spirit. I gaze up into the sky with the color of a dead television channel and I wonder. I wonder out and down through these mad streets engulfed in my seething anger. Walking through the edge of night and it gets dark I can tell you here - the stars a blanket of glittering glitter across a black velvet sky. I wonder till I have no road left - until I reach Highway 101 and I wonder onto that.

Somehow I come across an overpass - a lonesome fog horn blows.

"Mr. Blasini, why did you abandon us?" Hissed a voice out of the darkness. I whirl and it is an agent from Control. "All agents defect and all resisters sell out? Isn't that right?"

"And a writer lives the sad truth like anybody else - the only difference is - he files a report on it." I whisper over looking the over pass - below me the cars roar by. There is no safety rail on the bridge.

"You lost everything now." The agent hissed. "You're family, your possessions, your mind. You have finally hit - how do they say? Rock bottom. You know what you have to do - you are no longer any use to us."

I stare down at the concrete thirty feet bellow - that swirling vortex hits me.

"Do it! Do it! Do it!" Started the chanting like some obscene game show. I burst into uncontrolled hyperventilation, sobbing, screaming. Nothing made sense. I howled in despair at the empty lonely uncaring sky. "Do it!! Do it now!!"

"No!! You are not real! Don't make me do this!" I scream into the night.

"All that pain all the madness will end with one step - do it!"

Screaming, howling like an animal my mind overloaded with millions of tiny images, chest hurting from lack of air, eyes stinging from tears and sweat. I stumble to the far end of the bridge repeating no,no,no. I see in the near distance a grocery store shrouded in fog and reach the pay phone dial 911.

Sobbing I stutter out that I have attempted suicide and try to explain why. The lady on the other line pleaded, "It will be all right, sweetie. Help is on the way - it will be all right."

Behind me I hear the agent and we both state simultaneously, "No it won't It will never be all right."

A rush of black wind and I pass out. I awaken in the Eureka Psychiatric Ward with the night nurse standing over me. I am lying in some cot. Smell of chlorine and unwashed feet - some cadaver hacks phlegm into a filthy napkin - the moans of demented anguish and confusion echo in the halls. She feeds me pills and checks my vitals and I sleep some more.

Next morning, I am right as rain. See the shrink and fill him in on what's what and where. He releases me. I come out of the institute refreshed and vitalised - not physically but mentally. I have metamorphosed into something else. No more will I dwell in the past and let it haunt me. No more will I care for those who do not - no more will I placate worthless shits who do not like me for me. I am on my own from here on out till the end of my years and I will definitely live them the way I see fit. It is my life, it is my struggle and it is my adventure.

And I like it.