Word Count: 415
I’ve read about this, how your heart beats so loud and so fast it feels like it’ll burst out your neck. How the world can hear it because it bangs inside on the drums of your ears. I keep my mouth open to help breathe. I can smell my own sweat, wet and hot on my body. They’re chasing me and I’ve just managed to slip them and hide.
Not for long; they’re bound to check out this alley and find me. I’m so scared and I desperately need to pee. Finally my breath slows, my chest isn’t heaving with the effort to hold in my heart. I dare look around.
There’s a dumpster but I know it’ll clang like an alarm if I try to open it. Then I notice one half of it is flung back to the wall. I look up to a fire ladder I’m sure I can’t reach, and where would it lead anyhow? The alley yawns to the street where I ran in, and closes like teeth at the other end.
They’re coming closer. I hear voices, footsteps, sounds. I need to hide better. Hide somewhere. If they find me…
My hands shake so bad I hardly can pull myself up and over and in. I don’t dare pull the cover down. The garbage smells rank but I must, I must burrow in deeper. Silent as a mole, nimble as a rat, I layer myself under wet cardboard boxes cold as dead skin. Half-open bags of garbage, slimy with spills of old rotted food and moving with maggots. I try to settle my stomach as I tried to settle my heart.
Voices flash through the alley, bounce off the walls like the lights. Someone jumps up on the dumpster, pokes through the top layers. I hold my breath for what seems like forever. A shout somewhere far away and they scuttle away.
For a while I can trust myself to breathe normal. I know I must be patient, think of a plan. Where to go, where to hide, who to turn to who won’t turn me in.
It was just an old lady, just some broad I’d no thought to kill. She screamed and she fought and she held onto her purse like a crab. I saw fear in her face as I raised my arm and she fell. But I was one man against an old lady. Now I have half the city cops chasing me down.
I kept reading, trying to figure out if he was the “good guy” or “bad guy”. Then I figured “Knowing Susan, it is the good guy. He’ll jump into the trash and as the bad guys run off the truck will come to empty it and he’ll be crushed to death in those metal jaws.” But nope. I was wrong.
Oh good, I finally “gotcha!”