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    The Fourth Step - A Dream Sequence
    Unavailable
    The Fourth Step - A Dream Sequence
    Unavailable
    The Fourth Step - A Dream Sequence
    Ebook113 pages1 hour

    The Fourth Step - A Dream Sequence

    By Al Lucas

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    In book four: "The Fourth Step, A Dream Sequence," Paul Undres is a man bewildered at the unfolding intricacies of life. He plots and plots imaginary constructs, then plops down for a long snooze, and dreams about conceiving children who do what he cannot: make a go of it in an unforgiving world. Upon reawakening, he charitably accepts his situation as a welfare recipient, noting that he is lucky to be alive and cared for. It's a truth even he can accept. Al's series of books are whimsical spoofs of things found in the circumstances of life. Even his name Paul Undres, is an overt pun from Al's toying imagination. An interesting read of things perceived, perhaps not real? You decide!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLulu.com
    Release dateSep 18, 2018
    ISBN9780359079827
    Unavailable
    The Fourth Step - A Dream Sequence
    Author

    Al Lucas

    This is the original 1st person version called High Steppin' off da Crack, first submitted as a 3rd person account under the name of simply Hi' Steppin' years ago. This 1st person version is more in keeping with an autobiographical style while still using fictional names as characters and was created before the 3rd person version, but lost, only to be found later after the 3rd person publication. It opens with an emaciated man standing on the day of 9/11 in the VA lobby, awaiting hospitalization for crack usage. One bizarre incident after another occurs leaving his sanity no longer in question. Being a Vietnam-era vet, he is screened and then followed up by two psychiatrists of Oriental persuasion who treat him rather realistically, to his chagrin. He is discharged with a nursing plan to attend Avon Park, a renowned dual diagnosis center in Sebring, FL, but first must go to SafePlace, a transitional housing facility in Tampa to protect him from the dealers while he awaits an opening in Avon. First, however, Paul decides to go home and have one more bout with crack, to get the high he never had, using his car as leverage. It doesn't work out so well. He thus attends SafePlace without a car. It should be noted, he has read to one of the psychiatrists his ongoing novel and continues to read or have read to any and all its contents. One person, a roommate, at SafePlace is so moved, he blows his brains out. At Avon, he is assigned a class coordinator, Manfred Mundane, an ex-military pilot, who is unsympathetic about Paul's writing skills. Getting kicked out for bumming cigarettes, Paul comes home with new verve. He will in fact attend AA and does. He fights his way out of bankruptcy and foreclosure blindly with no help from family or friends and miraculously incurs twelve years of clean time. The book ends with a surprise, reserved for the reader. It should also be noted, the narrative weaves between Paul's acid days in Morocco and his current plight. His journal is in the past tense; the book's outcome, in the present with both coming to an end in Paul's bedroom where reality merges in a sexual farce.

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