#19 Christmas Outing

It started badly.

I was walking down a corridor to my room, when I was thrown a disparaging comment by one of my Christian co-residents about my belief system. he then followed me down the corridor and continued to hassle me. which is when I went for him. I did NOT think this was fair of him, we were all there to be 'helped'. so after being pulled off him, I decided to go out for a ciggie. I asked a guy if he had a light and all he said to me was 'Witch', and it was then that I knew I had to leg it from there.

I tried to find someone who had a lighter, as I had my ciggies, and knew I'd want one if I could get out. Nope, so off I went, over 2, 9 foot chicken wire fences, bare foot, which was a blessing - gave me a good toe hold.

managed that without being spied, the only people that saw me were other patients, and they weren't that motivated to tell on a fellow patient showing initiative.

so, off the grounds I got, and onto the road that ran just beside the hospital. this road has a dead end but a pedestrian underpass so you can get across the motorway onto another piece of road. I decided to go that way, because 1) they wouldn't be able to follow me in a car, and 2) it was quicker. so I got through to the other side, and thought, Yay, still no sign of any pursuers. good, but surprising.

where to, I thought? couldn't go home as that would be the first place anyone would look. so I thought, if I can get to the main shopping road nearest me, where I knew there was a phone box, I could ring my uncle, using the calling card number that I had memorised. it would charge any calls to my home address!! yay, a plan!

got to that phone box, made the call, and he suggested that I come over to their place for Christmas dinner, and that he would pick me up from where I was. so I sat down and waited. nice seat for me to sit on, and I scored a light for a ciggie from a passerby.

about 10 minutes later, I spotted my uncle's car coming up the road and he flashed his headlights, in true espionnage/escape style.

I got to their place, helped prepare dinner, ate that dinner, had drinks/'smoked', and had a pretty pleasant day.
afterwards, when we thought yep, time to move on, they gave me taxi fare and I decided that I would go home.

when I got there, there was no-one home, my sister had gone out for Christmas dinner, and never returned till quite late. so I just toddled off to bed. cats were happy to see me.

when I got up the next morning and trotted to the kitchen for a coffee, my sister got a HELLUVA shock. What are you doing here?!!!!! and returned me to the hospital.

but at least I got to have an enjoyable Christmas Day with family rather than a shit day and a shit dinner surrounded by psych patients who were after me.

-Houdini De Gekkert