It ate my heart and soul out with its ugliness, its loneliness, its emptiness.

A little while longer and I would have died.

Then the thing happened that brought me away.
Can you guess where it was ?" He shook his head, "No." "To all the others it was a beautiful place, Montreal." "You were at school there ?" he guessed.
"Yes, the Villa Maria.

I wasn't quite sixteen then.

They were kind.