RUN

Just when I thought I was safe I felt somebody following me. I stopped in my tracks, letting my heart pound against my ribs. My breathing got heavier and louder. I heard a crunch of the dying leaves littering the ground and I flipped my head around only to see a large dark figure. His oval face was tilted down as if to hide himself from me. I breathed out seeing a lightly colored cloud of breath in the cooling air.
The figure, definitely a man, looked up at me with eyes cold as a stormy winter’s night and as dark as coal. The panic in my throat wanted to burst out into a deafening scream, but it transformed into a lump, and I couldn’t. They had sent somebody for me.
I turned, looking down at the out-stretched road which lay in front of me, wishing I had a place to hide. But there was nowhere. No buildings, no tunnels, no safety, nothing to hide me. The sky was a blue-gray that warned everyone that a storm was coming. The howl of the wind in the trees lining the street made my stomach jump and turn into a tight knot.
I could hear the footsteps getting closer, but I was paralyzed with fear in the middle of the road. They couldn’t get me yet, not yet. I couldn’t leave everything that I had worked for behind. I had done too good of a job blending in to just disappear.
The thought of me sitting in a tiny cell without any light, with prisoners claiming their innocence, with the trickle of water falling aimlessly in the middle of that small, cramped room, made my stomach churn. I couldn’t go back. I’d escaped from that nightmare once and I didn’t plan on going back anytime soon, even if I was guilty. There was only one thing left to do.
Run.