Sometime after, I don't know how long or how far, I stopped and vomited again. As my breakfast that morning had been the usual two slices of toast, undercooked eggs and tepid coffee (they know how to look after you in that mental home), my previous efforts at throwing up had relieved me of the contents of my stomach. Dry retching was about all I could manage, but my body had a good attempt at more.

I'd left the beach behind a while ago, not noticing as the sand gave way to rough brush, which in turn transformed into grass. At some point the grass had met up with a road, maybe for a few drinks and a pizza, and I'd automatically turned along it, my feet taking me along their own path without actually letting the rest of me know. Perhaps they fancied pizza as well. Pepperoni, probably. Or maybe a meat feast. Just no tomato on the base please. I hate tomato.

I walked in a daze, feeling amazed, phased and, sadly, not erased. For a long time, I didn't actually think anything. I didn't notice flies on my face, though I perhaps brushed the odd one away. I didn't hear squirrels scooting along branches of trees or rabbits scurrying through the long grass. I never noticed any cars driving past, except for the one with the music blasting out. Music, nowadays, is a phrase that gets thrown on any pile of notes chucked together, however loosely. This particular harmonic car crash consisted of a bass beat I could feel in my bones, and someone swearing in rhyme, shouting to be heard above the relentless drums. The car was a pale metallic blue, small but with a rear spoiler so disproportionately large that, if the car hadn't have been doing 80 miles an hour, it would surely have tipped backwards. As it was, I expected it to achieve lift off at any moment, its escape velocity taking the vehicle into near orbit.

I didn't see the driver, but I assumed he wore a baseball cap, the peak curved down, frowning at the fact it covered the head of an idiot. He'd be on his mobile phone, shouting to be heard above the guy on the CD who was swearing at the top of his voice above the beat. He'd drive like this whether he was on the open road, or whether he was driving past a primary school. It was cool. He was invincible.

I vomited again at that point. Or tried to.

I hadn't seen the small dent on his bonnet. But I knew it was there.

I hadn't seen the single strand of strawberry blonde hair that was still, no matter how well he'd tried to clean the evidence away, trapped in the arm of his wiper blade. But I knew it was there.

He hadn't seen the girl. He was reading a text message on his phone from one of his drinking-smoking-drugging buddies. He hadn't felt his car hit her. The only thing he could feel was the beat driving its way into his soul. It wasn't until he'd pulled into his mother's drive and was walking away from the car that he saw the dent and he saw the hair and he saw the blood. I think he probably vomited then, but it was a club I didn't care to share membership of.

Up ahead the road curved to the right around a small copse. I saw the blue car with the enormous, phallic spoiler take the curve way too fast. The driver drove this way normally, so he could, most likely, have handled the skid. He would have laughed as he turned into it and accelerated away. Adrenalin, food of the yobs. Except he wasn't laughing. He didn't get chance. I'm quite sure the tree didn't leap into the middle of the road. I'm equally certain its branches didn't reach down, snatching the car off the road.

I didn't see the crash, but I heard it. I couldn't smell the smoke but I knew it was there. I couldn't see the strange angle his bloody head was hanging at, or the way his right arm didn't seem to be fully attached at the elbow anymore. But I knew. I knew.

I didn't run to the accident. I didn't believe it was entirely an accident. And when I rounded the curve in the road, I looked at the wreckage just as I would have roadkill, although for the squashed remains of a hedgehog or pheasant I would have felt something. Here, I felt nothing. No sympathy and no sorrow. I didn't feel numb, as I thought I might, I just felt nothing for the man, little more than a boy, who had driven too fast for too long and had mowed down a young girl on her way home from school without even noticing. I felt nothing for the person who could clean his car, polishing till his arms ached, to try and hide the fact. I felt nothing for the mangled corpse of someone who, the next day, could climb back into his car, turn up his music, talk on his phone, and forget it had even happened. The expanding pools of blood and oil, merging together like a ying-yang pictogram were just something to step over.

It would seem that, apart from our mutual queasiness, we also shared a lack of guilt.

I looked at the wreckage and continued to walk. I didn't stop to see if I could help - it was obvious I couldn't. I'd be hard pushed to say which was in a worse state - the car or the body.

It had been, apart from that spoiler, a nice car though.

Leaving the shattered remains of man and machine, car and corpse, fillet o' fish, behind me, I continued to let my feet take me where they wanted. I felt detached as if the only thing keeping me in contact with this world was the touch of my feet on the road. If I'd jumped, separating me from the tarmac, perhaps I would have winked out of existence faster than His Royal Deceasedness back there could take a corner. I didn't jump, to test my theory, just as I didn't feel bad that I could make light of what had just happened. I maybe felt bad about not feeling bad, but that was a bizarre spiral I didn't want to get tangled up in.

It dawned on me, like the sun rising refreshed after a good night's kip, that, as well as being still in the land of the living, I didn't actually know where I was. I hadn't recognised the beach I'd arrived on, washed up survivor of the shipwreck called my life, but that meant nothing. Apart from the glorious golden stretches of Majorca's Alcudia or mainland Spain's Costa Dorada, as the brochures insisted they were, I'd only really been to Cleethorpes. Golden, it wasn't, but it was all we'd had as I grew up. There were infrequent visits to the seasides of Skegness and Mablethorpe, and even less so to Scarborough or Bridlington, but none of the sandy stretches had any distinguishing marks to stick in my head. They all looked, like the grains of sand on their very own beaches, pretty much the same. They had pubs, they had souvenir shops and they had tourists. If it wasn't for the much hotter weather and the fact that the Mediterranean Sea is a tad cleaner than the River Humber, you could have been sunning yourself anywhere.

I'd been walking with no sense of direction and no sense of destination. Even if I'd had a destination, somewhere to rest my weary bones and, under the circumstances down a few neat vodkas, I wouldn't have known what to do once I got there. Except down a few neat vodkas, of course. That in itself raised a problem or two. I didn't have any money. The slacks they dressed us in were the poor relation of hospital scrubs, and were pocketless, not to mention styleless. With the asylum to bleed us dry of any finances we might have, residents, patients and grunts together were provided with their every need so personal money wasn't an issue, nor was it a temptation to anyone else. Providing us with our every need meant feeding us slop and doping us up, but that was just incidental. No need to be picky is there?

One thing Joy had done for me was make me comfortable. I don't know how she'd managed it, but she must have been a far keener financial wizard than I'd ever hoped to be. Because she'd taken her own life, her life assurance, to the sweet tune of £100,000, had not paid out, but her shares and various other monetary wotsits certainly had. I knew nothing about tax and accounts and bonds and such myself. I'd never had the money to warrant me finding the knowledge. As far as I was concerned, a bank account was somewhere to pay your wages into before everyone else leeched them out. My future-thinking financial security extended to a limited stakeholder pension, but that was about it. Everything else seemed as complicated as Sudoku, so I kept well away. Joy, it appeared, didn't have that problem. She'd invested extremely wisely, in such a way as to ensure her standard of living well into her twilight years. It was a pity her twilight had come so fast, like a candle snuffed out by an errant breeze.

More surprisingly, though, was the fact that I was named beneficiary of the whole shebang. Not because I wouldn't be, don't get me wrong. Joy and I were as close as any brother and sister might be. Granted she never, ever wrote me a letter, except one in particular, but we always shared a bond. I always thought that bond was one of simple sibling love. Naturally it wasn't. Joy was joy and I, Sin, was sin. I found out too late how closely we were connected. Too late to save her and, perhaps, myself. But whip-de-do. At least she made sure I could afford Dr. Connors' rates.

I think, sometimes, I sound callous and uncaring. I make light of the deepest, darkest subjects, as if I couldn't give a rat's banana. That's not the case, though. I might joke about my sister jumping off the Humber Bridge to take a little dip in Pollution Central, but it doesn't mean I think it's funny. It doesn't mean it didn't tear me apart. It doesn't mean it doesn't still.

Perhaps it's because that's exactly what happened. It tore me apart, just as everything else I've caused has done. The bus smashing into the post office. The seagull ending up as if it had been supper for a pack of hunting dogs that had somehow mistaken it for a fox. The boy, a young boy, driving his car into a tree. Each time something happened, I was fed through the shredder, then stuck back together with a great, hefty staple gun and a few rusty nails. With some blu-tac and spit to make sure I didn't come apart at the seams. After so much of that you either deal with it or you end up insane.

No comments about my previous residence, please.

So that was my way of dealing with it all. That was how I bit the big cookie. I took the piss, just a little. It was either that or gouge my eyes out with a rusty fork. They didn't give us metal forks, rusty or otherwise, in the mental home, so I didn't really have that option. Humour, however inappropriate, was my only course of action, my only weapon and my only form of defence.

So, I wasn't rich, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I was comfortable. I couldn't buy a twenty seven bedroomed, eighteen bathroomed, ten kitchened, six garaged, one partridge in a pear treed mansion, not could I fork out for a Ferrari or two to run about town. I couldn't afford eight cruises a year. I couldn't afford one really. Well, maybe I could, but Dr. Connors' vampiric fees made sure I didn't take it. But that was OK. It was all well and fine and dandy. I'd voluntarily incarcerated myself into Hell's Kebab House and accepted the fact that they'd bleed me like a leech, all nicely bloated and disgustingly fat.

It was a good job their standards of care were right up there with the monkeys. I imagined Dr. Connors performing lobotomies with a steak knife and a knitting needle, giving the knife a quick wipe before he sat down for a nice bit of sirloin, chips and peas, hold the mushrooms. Was I being unkind? Perhaps. The good doctor might well use a clean knife for his dinner. Was it deserved? Yes. It was. Dr. Connors was like Stephen King's It. All smiles and happiness while he eviscerated you.

Apparently he liked Chianti too.

My problem was, although I had money in the bank - assuming that it hadn't been totally siphoned yet (and we know that assuming anything turns me and you into a right donkey's arse) - I didn't have access to a bank. I didn't even know if there were any banks around here, not knowing precisely where 'here' was. I could have been in my home town, or I could have been in Outer Mongolia. Both options were pretty much the arse end of Nowhere to me, but at least Grimsby had its fair share of banks, building societies and those cash-point machines that rip you off a couple of quid every time you make a withdrawal. I knew that Outer Mongolia had come a long, long way since the days of Genghis Khan, but I was sure trying to get hold of any cash, if indeed that's where I'd landed, would have presented me with one or two wee problems. All I could do, in my current situation, was keep walking and see where I ended up.

I just hoped I'd end up somewhere fairly soon. Dark clouds were looming ominously not too far away. I could see them planning their attack on me, making bets on which would manage to drench me the quickest. I wished I'd brought me brolly.

My thoughts, drifting like a strait jacket on the water, returned unbidden to the crash scene I'd left behind me. I'd trained myself to not dwell on the things that happened, that I caused. 'Trained' might be too structured a word. It wasn't really that conscious, or that regimented. It was more a case of I'd learned, through instinct or pain or sweet self-preservation, to not think too much about the deaths and the screams and the things I knew. The fact that I had wanted to turn myself into a strawberry Pop Tart might decry that admission, but, while I could want to rid the world of Me because of everything I'd done, I didn't concentrate on individual atrocities. The situation as a whole made me want to, let's be blunt, kill myself, not because of anything specific, but because I was a monster ass-ay-hole.

I think that makes sense. I could turn a blind eye to causing the death of a family, but not to the fact that I'd caused death.

I looked back, briefly. I couldn't see the remains of the car. The scene back there seemed as peaceful as if it was an autumn's day, just before the rain. The trees and hedgerows stood out in stark relief against the blackening clouds. The air felt charged as if the sky was winding up a dynamo ready for a lightning display. I certainly didn't want to be caught in any downpour but didn't see the point in quickening my pace. I could be 100 metres from sanctuary, just around the next gang of elms, or it could be 100 miles, over the hills and far away. Who knew? I, for one, didn't, so why bother breaking into a sweat when it might be pointless? If the heavens opened, as they surely were planning to, I'd take shelter under the branches of a tree and wait it out.

The car. The boy. The blood and the broken glass and the crushed metal.

I flashed back to him flying past me. He'd been a blur, but I saw more in retrospect than I had at the time. He was driving on the left hand side of the road. He was sitting on the right. The number plate was a UK one. FX56 something or other. A new car. Nice one. I wasn't in Outer Mongolia, nor was I in deepest, darkest Africa. Darkest England was a fairly safe bet.

I smiled. It had been a long time.

There was a body. There was a wreck. There was death. But hey, there was also the chance that I might be able to find a pub and have a few neat vodkas. "Yippee-ki-yay, you mothers," as Bruce Willis might say.

I blotted the crash out. What could I do, that I hadn't already done? Come on. I'd rid the world of an idiot driver, one that had gotten away with running down a young girl? Was the world a better place? Was it sweeter smelling and fresher? No. Not to my nose anyway. Not to my senses. Not to my heart. He was an idiot. His idiocy had resulted in the death of a girl. Who was I, though, to dictate that he should die? I didn't wear a great black hooded cloak and swing a scythe like Tiger Woods does a nine iron, or my old mate Tony tries to. I don't live on a cloud, have a long white beard and lightning shooting from my fingertips, having to be careful if I wanted to pick my nose. I was just me, Sin, a mortal more mere than most.

But anywho-be-doo. Hi-ho, it's off to wherever I go.

The light was fading and the distinct lack of any street lighting meant it was becoming much darker than I was used to. I hadn't thought enough time could have passed since I left the hospital for the day to be leaning towards night. I knew I'd been walking for a while, but I had nothing to track the hours by. Watches weren't allowed - yes, you could possibly hang yourself with the strap if your shoelace happened to snap, and I didn't have Tonto's skills in telling the time by the position of the sun or the song of a cricket. If I didn't have my Pulsar or my mobile phone, an hour could last five minutes or be about five days long. It meant the few years I'd spent in Dr. Connors care had lasted about six millennia. Even so, I would have guessed that only a couple or three hours had loped by since I'd blown apart that gull. Even in September it doesn't begin to get dark until around seven-ish. The clouds, my Reaper's cloak made real, were dragging across the sky, as if they were readying themselves to wipe us all out, although that was perhaps wishful thinking. The sun had disappeared, either behind the cloak or beneath the horizon I didn't know. Still, it didn't feel that late. It didn't feel like I'd been walking seven hours instead of two.

I wasn't hungry, nor was I tired. My legs weren't heavier than a mobster's hit, concrete shoes and all, and there were no stitches in time to save nine digging their wee ways into my side. So why was it getting darker than Dr. Connors' mood the time Bender Benny told him he (Dr. Connors) was the crazy one and everyone else was saner than a rattlesnake on ecstasy? I didn't quite get the rattlesnake analogy, but sometimes Bender Benny talked a lot of sense. Mr. Shrink-o-matic 2010 didn't appear to think so though, and had made sure Benny had realised the error of his ways.

We didn't see the Bender for a few days after that. It might have been about a week. He was quieter.

I figured that, if I could have been plonked on a beach somewhere when I'd intended on ending up in the belly of the dragon, I could, I supposed, equally have been plonked a few hours later. Maybe teleportation included a slight risk of time travel. Perhaps it was the equivalent of turbulence on an aeroplane flight. No oxygen masks were there to drop in the case of an emergency, and no air stewardesses were on hand to show you the wheres and whyfors of a life jacket. If you hit a cosmic air pocket on your teleporting way from one place to another, maybe you hiccupped a few hours into the future. Hey, if we're walking in the realm of Star Trek, why not add in a dash of Doctor Who for good measure?

I was new to this. Even I didn't entirely believe, deep inside, that I could teleport. Even I still thought I hadn't done exactly what I had done. It was all madness. Maybe I was in my padded cell, strapped up tighter than Scrooge and doped up to Alpha Centauri. Maybe none of this was real and I was a pigment of Bender Benny's emancipation.

But the death told me it was real enough. All the souls, torn from their bodies like giblets from a chicken, en-masse screamed at me that it was real enough.