Where am I? I’m in the middle of some street in my neighborhood, several blocks away from my house.
I look down. No shoes. Or socks. I wiggle my toes a bit. Everything seems normal. I notice I’m wearing blue pants. Not denim. Cloth. There’s a white stripe going down the side of each leg. I follow the stripe until I’m staring at my foot again. I look at my torso. I see a green striped shirt and I notice I’m wearing a jacket the same color as the pants. Maybe a few shades darker. It’s unimportant, everything seems normal. I look around to observe my surroundings. There’s houses, bushes, lawn ornaments. The regular garbage. And myself. Just myself. I begin walking down the street. A cold wind begins to blow.
My jacket makes me immune. I keep walking down the street. The wind blows harder. Harder. Harder. I’m beginning to get cold. I walk six or seven more feet. The wind stops. Abruptly. I hear a long creak. A door opening.
I shift my head to the direction of the sound. A man walks out of his house. Blue shirt, khaki shorts. Lonely looking. Very big. He put’s something in his pocket. I can just make out that it’s matches. Wonder what those are for. The man looks at me looking at him. We stare at each other. He is very big. Slightly obese. His eyes burn into mine. They seem pitch black. He starts to slowly walk toward me.
I turn and walk away. I look over my shoulder. He continues to follow me at the same slow pace. His eyes
catch mine. I look forward and walk a bit faster. And faster.
And faster…








I still hear him following me. His thick shoes make loud thumps against the ground. I look over my shoulder once more. His eyes fixated on me, unmoving. He still walks his slow pace. I turn my head forwards. I concentrate on the thumping. Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
It’s almost rhythmic, hypnotic. It dazes me. But I quickly snap out of it. The thumping grows faster.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. I become worried. I start to walk even faster. I’m almost running. I hear the thumping.
Thump. Thump. Thump. THUMP. The horrific sound is evil upon my ears. The thumps grow louder. Angrier. Faster.
I begin running, the jags on the street hurt my bare feet.
But I have no choice. I can’t stop. This man is not my friend. This man is not my parent’s friend. I have never seen him before. I keep running. His thumps are even quicker.
He is running also. I dare not look over my shoulder.
I keep running. Even faster than before. I don’t want to be caught. I turn at intersections to try and lose him. I fail. He still trails me. I keep turning, running twice faster now. I can’t lose confuse him. I can’t outrun him. What do I do?
What do I do?! I keep running. No direction just a turn at every corner. I run straight instead of turning at the next corner. I see a girl on the street. She’s my age. She is facing the other way so I can’t see her face. But I recognize her. I’ve known her for years. I run past her. I forget to warn her. I look over my shoulder to tell her to run into her house. I don’t want her to get caught up in this.
Too late.








The man comes up from behind of her. He puts his arm around her neck and thrust her to his chest with his large forearm. She’s locked. She yells for help. She yells and yells and yells. But the large man is oblivious. His black eyes still fixated on me. Why? I can’t answer this. He stands still. She tries to squirm but it’s no use. He’s too large. She’s too small. I run in his direction. I turn left. I am running to her parents house. The large man does nothing. I stumble on some gas canisters on my dash to the door. The gas spills. I open the door to the house and slam it shut. I look out of the windows next to the door. He walks up until he’s a few feet away from the door. He’s right beside the gas canisters. I yell and yell. Her parents come rushing out. I explain the situation. Her mother begins to get scared. Her father is still trying to process all of this. The large man bangs on the door. Loudly. Bang. Bang. Bang. You can hear her crying on the other side. A commotion stirs. The mother begins to cry and scream. Her father yells at the man. The man still bangs the door. Bang. Bang. Bang. The sounds are disrupting my thinking. Their voices ring in my head. I can’t take it. I jump out of the window. The glass shatters, halting all the sounds. I land hard. Fragments of glass pierce my forearm and palms. It doesn’t hurt, I tell myself. Get up. Get up. Get up. I do.
The glass scrapes my feet. I run away. I look over my shoulder as I run. The man is entering the house. He looks at me as I run. He disappears into the house. I notice the disappearance of one gas canister. Strange. I keep running. I feel like I’m far enough. I stop. I turn around.
No. No. NO!! I see a large cloud of smoke. I see flames.
He set the house on fire.




I begin to tremble. I fall to me knees. How could the man have done this. I remember now. The matches I saw him put in his pocket. The missing oil canister.
It’s all my fault. All my fault. All MY fault!! I yell to myself.
I should have turned at that corner. I shouldn’t have run past her. I should have warned her. She didn’t have to die.
It could have been prevented. I lay on the ground. That man. He is evil. He is evil. Then I remember. He started the fire. He wanted to kill those people. But not himself. He wants to live. He’s still alive. He still wants to catch me.
He saw in which direction I ran. He’s still coming after me.
I shakily get up. My trembling won’t cease.
I try to keep running. I fall. My ear is to the ground. I hear the thumping of his thick shoes. He’s close by. I get up.
I begin to run again at full speed. I’m still trembling. I look over my shoulder once again, still running. There he is. Pitch black eyes and all. Pitch black eyes. The devil’s eyes.
I keep running. My trembling has stopped. I run faster now. The man slows down a bit. Then a bit more. The thumps slow. And slow. And slow. Yes. Yes. Yes!
I begin to run even faster. The man slowly comes to a halt.
He has to catch his breath. Wait. So do I. No. I refuse. I keep running. I see cars off in the distance. I’m reaching the end of my neighborhood. I run into the middle of the street. The drivers slam on their brakes and the cars skid to a halt. The drivers begin to yell at me. I could care less. I see the man begin to jog to me. He is still very far. I quickly begin to run down the road. More drives slam their brakes.
More cars skid to halts. I try not to look over my shoulder. I fail. I look over to see the man several yards away from me. He’s still on the chase. He won’t give up until one of us is dead. But I won’t die by his hand. I turn my head forward. And a car slams into me. It screeches to a halt.
I fly back at least 9 feet. I get up. I have a broken ankle, and several cuts and scrapes. I won’t let it stop me. I can’t.
The man is gaining on me. I try to keep running. My ankle screams in pain. Ignore it, I tell myself. Ignore it.
IGNORE IT!! I begin to run. Not at full speed. But
I don’t care. I run for a few more yards before I see a black square in the ground. I hobble to it. I look inside it and see a stairwell leading down. I look over to my left and see the man is running faster now. He’s not to far away. I climb down the stairwell. I’m immersed in darkness. I see a dim light farther down. The light get’s brighter as I approach it.
I finally reach the end. My ankle screaming and burning in pain. I look to my right and see a long hall. Look to my left and see another long hall.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. I hear him coming down the stairwell. I have to choose. Left or right? Left or right?!
Right. I hobble as far as I can over to the right. On the walls I see several posters for old movies.
London After Midnight, Boris Karloff‘s Frankenstein,
Bela Lugosi’s Dracula. It’s appears as though I’m in some sort of gothic museum. Unimportant. I need to reach the end of the hall. I do. It’s a restroom. I weigh every possibility in my mind. Do I go back and face the large man? He’s too immense and I’m injured. Do I hide? Possible. Where, though? The stall? Best option. I quickly hobble to the stall, for the pain in my ankle has become too great. I go into the last of the five stalls and stand on the toilet. I put my weight in my other ankle. My injured ankle feels relieved. I hear the thumps. The man has entered the restroom. He opens the first stall. I hear him growl at seeing I’m not there. He goes to the second one and opens it. He growls louder. He walks over to the third stall and kicks it open. He’s become impatient. Agitated.
More dangerous. He sees I’m not there. He roars. He walks over to the fourth stall. He also kicks it open. Then he chuckles. Maliciously. He now knows where I am. No question about it. He walks over to the fifth stall.
He begins to open it. Slowly. He is clearly enjoying it. That sickens me. My muscles tense. My right hand forms a fist.
He opens the door. My arm shoots out of it’s position and punches him dead centre in his chest. He cringes and with my un injured leg, in kick him in the face. He falls back. I jump out of the stall and proceed to run out of the restroom. But as I land he grabs my ankle and I fall to the floor. With my other leg I kick his hand repeatedly.
He finally let go after the ninth or tenth kick. As soon as he did I got up and ran out of the room. Ignoring the pain in my ankle. I walked down the hall I came from. I quickly turned and walked back up the stairwell. I could hear the man’s thumps as he quickly tried to catch me. But I had already left the museum by the time he reached the stairwell. I ran even though the sun was a bother to my eyes. But they adjusted. I kept running. I had an extensive lead on the large man. I ran into a construction zone.
I bumped into seven of the workers quickly came to a halt.
There was a deep ditch in front of me. Ten or eleven feet deep. Six or seven feet wide. If I fell in there it would be all over. I refuse to accept that fate. Maybe I could run back and go a different direction. Wrong. The large man was about twenty feet away. Was I done? Is this it? No. I won’t die by his hand. I won’t. I faced the ditch and looked left and right for something of use. I was in luck. Finally.
There was one board that reached from one end of the ditch to the other. I quickly dashed to it and began to walk across. As I walked across I decided to look over my shoulder. The man was only nine feet away. I began to walk across a little faster. The man was at the board.
I still had two feet left to cross. The man reached for the board. I had no choice. I prepared to jump the rest when the man turned the board over.



I fell before I could jump. Into the ditch. The deep ditch.
Failure. Failure. FAILURE!! I told myself. I managed not to land on my broken ankle. I heard the man cackle. He thought he had won. I noticed the board was down here with me. I must have brought it down. The man jumped into the ditch. He walked toward me. Twisted smile on his face. I grabbed the board and hit him across the face with it. He toppled. I continued to beat him with the board and when I was done, I dropped the board on him. I had to get out of this ditch. He wasn’t going to be down for long. I clawed into the dirt and began to climb out. I made it. But I hadn’t climbed out onto the side with the construction zone. I had climbed out on the opposite side. The large man roared. He was blind with rage. I began to run away in the only direction I could and I kept running. Running.
And running. And running. I heard the man roar loudly. He was out of the ditch. And he was coming after me. I ran through a colossal forest of trees and bushes. I ran through thorns and fell on jagged rocks. I didn’t stop. I had come too far. I kept running until I had reached the end.
Forests don’t have ends. I know. But as fate would have it to be, I was on a cliff. And the large man was catching up.













How is this possible. How could I have gone through my whole life not knowing my city was on a cliff. I looked down the edge and saw an even larger forest than the one I thought I had run through. I see a train in the distance.
I wish I was on that train. I would never have to worry about that horrid man. The large man. He was still following me. But what could I do now? It was over.
My body was in horrible condition. My pants are ripped up from the thorns and my legs scratched. Not to mention my broken angle and thousand other injuries. I was in horrible pain. Then I heard the thumping. That HORRIBLE,
HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE thumping. That sound had followed me throughout this horrid venture. I will never get that sound out of my conscious. I will never cease to think about the girl who’s life I had destroyed. I will never forgive that horrible man. I saw him slowly walk up. His face red with anger. This anger was quickly turning into satisfaction. He knew he had beat me. He thought he had beat me. I won’t die by his hand. I won’t give him his horrible thrill. I looked at him, my face unreadable.
I turned around to the cliff. I took to steps toward the edge.
I heard him begin mumbling something. I looked down the edge. I was at least fifty feet high. I took one breath. A loud, loud breath. I jumped.











As I plummeted down I heard him yell and scream.
I told you I wouldn’t die by his hand. I won’t give him his sick satisfaction. As I will never cease thinking about the life he and I destroyed, he will never cease thinking about how I destroyed my life. As I will never get the sound of his thumping out of my subconscious, he will never get the sound of my final breaths out of his. At this point I felt weightless.
I felt perfect. I felt invincible. But this feeling will only last a mere seconds. As do others when the person who feels them jumps off a cliff. I see no point in thinking about that horrid man. I had beat him. I had won. I had won.

I had won.


The End, my friend.