It was the most frightening moment of his young life, those first few steps! Barely 25, he knew little of the world outside his little world of concrete and wire. He took a deep breath and looked back one last time at his home of four years. "Free," he murmured quietly as he finished his cigarette, flicking the butt of it back through the wire gate onto gaol grounds like a parting gift between friends.

The sun beat down on him, its warm touch, alien to his skin. In slow drawn-out steps, he wandered down the road, meticulously noting every small pebble and tuft of grass he passed. His jeans scratched at his legs with a cold starchy vengeance, his cotton shirt chafed him; it rubbed at his skin in all the wrong places and in places that had forgotten the touch of stitching. His body felt light and queasy as if his soul had just leapt into it and was merely adjusting to the dynamics of physical being. All in all he just did not feel right being free.

He slowly opened his yellow government issue envelope and carefully looked through his worldly possessions - a lighter, a packet of cigarettes, three letters his friends had sent him, legal documents and a social security cheque for $330. "Cooter!" he thought out loud.

It was almost midday when he finally managed to cash the cheque at the Commonwealth Bank in Auburn. He pocketed the money and made his way to the station. He waited patiently for the train to Cabramatta, at long last he was going home. The train arrived at the station, its automated door slid open and the crisp air-conditioning flooded his senses, the smell clean and free of the heavy, ashen film he had grown accustomed to. He made his way down the stairs of the carriage and found a seat to himself. Two businessmen in suits glanced up at him briefly, a pregnant lady sat behind him, a bunch of noisy schoolkids sat in the corner of the carriage, obviously truants; several other blank expressions filled the rest of the carriage. A couple of stations down the track a couple of thin, pimpled teenaged lovers got onto the train and sat down adjacent to him, their lanky frames, angular in placed that should have made it painful for them to sit so close to each other. "Junkies," he thought to himself, "definitely addicts ... yep, I'm nearly home."

The walk home from the station at Cabramatta felt unusually long. He did not recognise his home town any more - he felt like a lost tourist. The traffic lights had been wrongly placed, young entrepreneuring addict-dealers ran amok, large black spherical security cameras peered accusingly at him like the pupil of some large mutant shark, dull yet full of menace. Policemen hunted in packs of two and four, savage in defence of their territory, eyeing any newcomers suspiciously as if any minute now a new pack would invade their hunting grounds. The dealer-kids flee like startled gazelles, aware of an impending danger from predators.

It was on his way home that he noticed a girl, no more than his age, slim yet with a fairly well filled body and long jet black hair with a typical Asian appearance.

He felt himself thinking all sorts of crude, fantastical thoughts and he found it hard to fight down his oncoming erection. He promptly turned around and headed straight back to Cabramatta and straight to the nearest brothel. It was well into the afternoon when he finally made it home ... and found it abandoned, empty and the lawn overgrown ...