Left foot. Right foot. Left again. Right again. Stop. You hear footsteps behind you. You turn around. No ones there. You quicken your pace. Left. Right. Left. Right. The sound echoes all around you and you don’t know if you’re alone anymore. You run. Left right left right left right. But then you trip. The toe of your converses gets caught on a piece of sidewalk not laying right. You fall forward. You scrape your knee. And then he’s on you. It’s happening so fast. You fight back. You kick him in the groin and try to crawl away, but he makes a grab for your ankle. You look back at the man in all black, and break his nose with a swift kick. You hear the crunch. He shouts in pain and lets go of your foot. This is you chance. You stand. You run. Left right left right left right left right. You turn the corner and find yourself in an alley. No, this can’t be right. There’s supposed to be a street right here. You turn around and there he is. Blood rushing down his face, nose bent at a peculiar angle, and you don’t know whether he’s grimacing or smiling at you. He takes his time. There’s nowhere you can go. You turn around frantically the painful emotion of panic finally setting it. This is it. This is where you die. He finally closes in on you, slamming your head back against the concrete wall. This is the end. This is when your life flashes before your eyes. He finally has you cornered. There’s nowhere to run. He would find you. He would catch you. Just like every time before that. You feel hot, sticky blood drip down your neck. Your back slides down the rough wall as he lets you go, and walks away laughing.

***



You open your eyes. It’s bright. Your senses are alive with the smell of bleach, the decaying smell of old people, and the sweet taste of IV fluids rushing through your arm. A hospital. You try to turn your neck, but it’s restrained. You try to pick up your arm, but the pain is too much. You hear a door open behind you, a soft muttering of reassurance. A body dressed in a dark blue scrubs shouts that you’re awake. Suddenly you feel claustrophobic as what seems like hundreds of people pour into the room you know not to be very big. Your chest falls and rises too fast. Your eyes get watery, and it’s hard to hold them open. You pass out.



When you wake up you’re all alone again. The room is dark, but the hallway illuminates the open doorway, and casts your shadow along the wall. You’re facing the window. Your eyes accustom themselves to the darkness, and you stare out the window at the tree whose leaves have fallen within the first month of fall. You try to find the moon, but instead, you find a pair of eyes staring back at you with longing and anger. It’s him. You know it’s him. Filled with fear, you’re also filled with another feeling. Longing. You don’t understand, and almost as if he knows what you’re feeling, he smiles. You see his white teeth in the darkness. That’s all you see; the whites of his eyes and his teeth. Jagged, chiseled to a point, stained with red. That’s when you scream. That’s when the lights fly on and people file into the room, and he’s gone. He’s gone so fast, you start to think he was never really there. Only you know he was, and no one would ever believe you.