A dog is barking violently as a police car races through the dense fog of the early morning in Manhattan's East Village. 

Screeching to a sudden halt, the sirens blaring, lights flashing, cops are interrogating a vagrant that had reported finding a woman's body in a deserted trunk. Left sitting on the cluttered sidewalk, it was found on the corner of East 13th Street and 3rd Avenue. Opening up the old steamer trunk, the victim lay curled up like a rag doll, her glassy eyes staring like ice-cold marbles at the officer. Her identity unknown, the case was shrouded in mystery. 

The chilling discovery was made by a homeless man, earlier that morning as he stumbled upon the trunk, searching for food. As detectives, uniformed officers, and members of the medical examiners staff converged on the scene and cordoned off the area, a curious crowd was gathering fast. Whispering in hushed tones, only describing the drifter who made the discovery as white adult male, police were not willing to discuss further details with anyone. Partially hidden from view of pedestrians walking on East 13th Street, when the victim was found, the truck had been left standing upright between a chain-link fence capped with razor wire, next to an overflowing trash bin. 

Bitterly complaining about the deserted lot, a bystander said it had been vacant for more than a decade, and was a constant source of irritation. On that shadowy, semi-dark corner, garbage was being dumped on the sidewalk daily, making it an ideal hangout for all sorts of criminals, prostitutes and drug dealers. Finally, seeing the victim being taken away, wrapped in yellow plastic sheet and tarpaulin, the crowd thinned out quickly. 

Scouring the area for hours, shortly before dark that night, investigators had been seen opening a plastic magazine distribution box nearby. Removing a white towel, tied in a loose knot , bearing what appeared to be a bloodstain, they were collecting the towel and distribution box for evidence. No immediate arrests in the case had been made.  

Next day, passing the scene of the crime, walking further to the middle of the block between 2nd and 3rd Avenue to 222east 13th Street, haze drifted over the skyscrapers as I stood outside the dilapidated, three story brownstone. As a furnished room sign above the entrance door still rattles in the wind, the past resonates of such deep despair. Remembering intense crystallizing moments of fear and disgust, I felt my heart tighten with irrepressible sorrow and rage. A lead weight in my stomach, shaking my head in disbelief, deep in my soul I felt a burning shame over the injustice of it all. 

For more than thirty years my Aunt Elisabeth Berg had called this cursed place her home. Now , shrouded in it's deep darkness, filled with bone-chilling memories, a dreary-looking shell, a sad reminder of my aunt's life as a landlady. The house now empty since 1992, it's windows permanently cemented shut, splashes of paint, graffiti, vile curses sprayed across the brick facade, the building looks more like a combat zone  than the once treasured home of my beloved aunt. 

Surrounded by a ten foot high chain link fence, topped with rings of razor ribbon to keep the squatters out, the site is more frightening than ever. Barricaded shut for more than a dozen years after the city of New York took it over, wild trees are now sprouting between the cement cracks by the front gate where once my aunt stood proudly. 

Lost in the past, staring into space, the emptiness before me stretched out staggeringly deep. "Damn it, how could this all have happened?" Like a movie playing over and over again in my mind, in a picture of horror frozen in time, for a brief moment, I relived the terrible past, as the demons of yesteryear are still riding me. 

Recalling the screaming headlines of the New York Post, "As a City Dies", with a picture of 222 plastered all over the front page, I felt sick inside. I felt cold and dirty, and most of all I felt deep anguish over what horror my aunt had to endure. Unable to escape her destiny, fallen into the clutches of the devil himself, victim to a family curse in its' most violent spins, out to destroy everything in her path, she lived the last chapter of her life in haunted misery. 

 For years, existing in a cesspool of crime, prostitution and police corruption, flowing together in a seamless maze of drug induced illusions, there was no escaping. Living on the edge of the abyss of the dangerous lures of the underworld, as violence took over the entire block of East 13th street and 222 was known as the biggest drug bazaar around, her fate was sealed. 

Turning back the pages of my mental scrapbook, recalling a drug-related murder that took place right here on auntie's front stoop years ago, still so vivid in my mind, I could almost hear his deep, grunting breathing as the victim lay dying, face down on the sidewalk in a pool blood. God only knows how my aunt had managed to survive that long. Barely existing over the last few years, she was mourning the past and fearing the future, as time and circumstance had robbed her of her dignity. 

Refusing to leave her beloved house , at 88 years old, a frail little old lady with steel-pinned aversion to compromise, she sleepwalked through her days and fearful of her safety, she lay awake at night listening to every sound. Even today, so many years later, in a spine-tingling setting of human trash, East 13th Street is a block booby trapped with humiliations, neuroses and prejudice. Now in the year 2004 , not much had changed. 

The scene strangely familiar, a hooker sits on the sidewalk on some old cardboard boxes, laced with vodka and pot, a supped-up freak, her mind on money, not death, she tries to make a deal with a worn-out looking loser. An old shoe, some discarded clothes next to garbage bags piled high, a rat zooms by. 

Next door, lying between empty beer bottles and lipstick cigarette butts, a homeless man is reading the newspaper. A slightly rumpled Fedora on her head, wearing a tight sweater and worn jeans, a disheveled looking lady curses at him and screams, "Get a life!"

Yes life, so fragile, so easily taken. 

Barely surviving under those violent circumstances, my Aunt Elisabeth, could have easily been that lady found murdered in the steamer trunk. For having to live a cursed life, mentally tortured, stripped of her dignity and most of her worldly possessions wasn't really a better destiny. 

As haunting images are still flashing in my mind, I can still see her laying there as she clung to life with gritty determination. Holding on to me, with her last tortured strained breath, in a horse whisper she muttered her last angry words, " God damn, sons of bitches."