The sound of children singing the Ashtray Song, my daily serenade, drifted in the bedroom window. I looked at my deformed hands. The loneliness I felt was unbearable.
I sat listening to the song as my sorrow sank under the alcohol and cigarettes flowing in my dirty, grey ashtray:
Poor leprosy with a dropsy body
face is hollow , clothes are shoddy
your color is grey, like a dirty ashtray
for tomorrow your ears will fill the ashtray
It never ceased to stop torturing me no matter how much I was used to the melody. My life was not only trapped by the leprosy, but by the Ashtray Song that was sung by the kids every morning back to school.
I was addicted to alcohol, alcohol for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I couldn’t control my frequent urges. I was drinking to avoid my problems, not to find a solution to them as there was no solution, but it made me feel better so I carried on drinking.
There are people who somehow lose their way, the meaning of our own existence, I was one of them. It can happen to anybody. It may well just happen to you or someone close to you. It happened to me.
It all started in 1945. I came back to England after we won the war against the Nazis.
I went back home to meet my sweetie wife. It was not like any other house when I came to open the door, there was a creepy aura surrounding this house. An unpleasant wind unsettled the hairs on the back of my neck as unseen ghosts were gliding past me. A dreadful known moan howled through the thin walls, and a chilling scream echoed, leaving an unknown silence in front of my eyes. I came from a war, slaving away, running from death to find another more cruel death, the death of my heart as I found my wife screwing another man.