The golden hues of the sun as it set over Manhattan cast long shadows across East 33rd Street, an ethereal dance to celebrate the end of the day, Jason Cutter took a sip of his Jack and Cherry Coke while he watched the people rushing home. He had been sitting on his window sill for nearly two hours, after finishing his shift in the canteen of the New York State Psychiatric Hospital, watching life go by on the street below. His apartment, located between Kostas cleaning company and Prestige car rental, he had lived here for eight months. Jason ran a hand through his shaggy black hair and scratched the stubble on his chin, he looked around, most of the furniture in the apartment was threadbare, the wallpaper was peeling in places and the smell of cabbage and fried onions permeated from the hallways, Jason didn't take too much advantage of this as he had endured a more adverse environment in the past. Returning to the window, he looked out with silent eyes. Jason wasn't thinking about anything in particular, just letting random thoughts pop into his head like flotsam. Doing this to avoid turning his thoughts to the nightmares he had been having recently. Fiery-eyed demons, probing his mind and body, had invaded his sleep. He shuddered as the thought occurred to him. No, he didn't want to think about it. The rising and falling sound of a police siren distracted him and he watched the vehicle pass and turn into Lexington and disappear from view. Feeling the need to urinate, he headed to the bathroom. closing the door, he examined his face in the mirror above the sink. Haunted eyes stared at him, rimmed with a face that showed his thirty-three years....... middle of paper...... New Family Mart where he usually shopped, it wouldn't just be it happens again, no more discussions with Gurnam the funny little Sikh trader who made him laugh with his jokes directed against himself and his religion. Bending, wishing to be invisible to the eyes of the myriad of faces that passed him going about their nocturnal activities. He knew that most people lived there daily with their eyes wide closed, if they only knew what was really going on in the world, the truth would not free them but would scare them to death. Reality was not what we see around us but what happened behind closed doors and in the minds of the powerful, like the film Matrix, where the hero lived in a world of illusion . The makers of the film will never know how close they got to reality. Jason waited for a break in traffic before crossing the street and driving off into the night..