The scream

You’ve been straining for too long. The wind is lashing rain into your face now, coming down in leather straps across you. You can’t hold it in. You unleash the scream.
Drenched shoppers, already bewildered and straining to see under their hats and hoods spin round deliriously to locate the source of the sound.
Their dread faces pale when they see you, all tousled hair and see-through clothes. A child weeps, but he was crying before the tumult.
The scream, a success. Not so powerful, because you were already out of breath from your struggle with the elements, but impressive all the same. It got you what you crave more than anything else. Attention.
You flop down now, at the corner of a department store, where the rain falls in bitter torrents. The noise it made as it hit the pavement in one continual tubular splosh was heavy handed, powerful, so the excitement builds as you put your head under it. The water knocks at your skull, trepanning a hole into your soul.
You sit down for a moment, wondering how long you can take it. Your vision fades momentarily. Maybe this is the end? Ah, but someone is shouting something at you. Come on, wake up, get up, clear off.
You’re scaring people. You. You’re the scary one. And as you are kicked to your feet and moved along, your wretched vision returns and you catch your reflection in the store window, standing aghast, between two perfectly tailored shop dummies.
You really are a wretched thing, making yourself so sick. You realise now the error you made. You were inside, you were sheltered and safe, before the rains came. But you couldn’t stay in. You’re sick of in. In is the old out.
So you took the only clothes you have in the world and you paraded them across the half-empty streets where you live. Sassing through soggy gutters and tangoing down gushing alleys, you sang a song to the blind twins who threw flowers at you from their open window. It all seemed so magical back then.
You’re shivering now and you can’t feel your feet. You’re shunting disgusted people, heading for underground trains and early evening assignations. They probably hate you more than you hate yourself.
You figure you’ve got a window of opportunity of maybe twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to somehow sneak onto the underground and then get back to the room and get naked. Get undressed before you pass out somewhere, an action which will bring with it the unfortunate consequence of almost certain death.
At the barrier you hesitate for a moment. Your mind wanders. Do you really want to jump the gate and run for a train? Do you really want to go back to that room and save yourself for another night? Do you really want to see what the sky looks like in the morning?
Only you know the answers to those questions. But, whatever they were, however you tossed them around in your mind, you’ve hopped the barrier, you’re running and you’re feeling warmer already. The train has stopped and its doors are slowly sliding open for you.
This instinct, this will to survive. It’s still so strong.