Manhattan Night

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The golden hues of the sun as it set over Manhattan cast long shadows down east 33rd, an ethereal dance to celebrate the end of the day, Jason Cutter had a sip of his Jack and cherry coke as he stared down at the people hurrying home. He had been sitting in his windowsill for the best part of two hours, having finished his shift in the canteen of the New York state psychiatric hospital, just watching life pass by on the street below. His apartment, situated between Kostas cleaning corporation and the Prestige car rental, he had lived here for eight months. Jason ran a hand through his shaggy black hair and scratched the day old stubble on his chin, he looked round the room, most of the furniture in the apartment was threadbare, the wall paper peeling in places and the smell of cabbage and fried onions permeated from the hallways, Jason didnt mine this to much as he had put up with more unfavourable surroundings in the past. Returning his gaze back to the window he stared with silent eyes. Jason was not thinking of anything in particular just letting random thought s pop into his head like so much flotsam. Doing this to prevent turning his thoughts to the nightmares he had been having recently. Demons with fiery eyes, probing his mind and body, had invaded his sleep. He shuddered as the thought entered his mind. No, he did not want to think about that.

The rising and falling sound of a police siren distracted him and he watched as the cruiser flashed past and turned into Lexington and dissapeared from view.

Feeling the need to urinate he headed for the bathroom, closing the door he examined his face in the mirror above the sink. Haunted eyes stared back at him, lined at the edges in a face that showed his thirty-three years....

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... New Family Mart where he usually got his groceries, that would not be happening again, no more chats with Gurnam the funny little Sikh shopkeeper who made him laugh with his jokes aimed at himself and his religion. Hunching down, wishing to be invisible to the myriad faces that passed him going about their nightly business. He knew most people went about there daily lives with their eyes wide shut, if they only knew what really went on in the world the truth of it would not set them free but scare them to death. Reality was not what you see around you but what went on behind closed doors and in the minds of the powerful, just like the film The Matrix, where the hero lived in a world of illusion. The makers of the film will never know how close to reality they came.

Jason waited for a gap in the traffic before crossing the street and headed off into the night.

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