I decided I'd had enough. Too long trapped in a stifling room as the first teardrops of winter floated down and stuck to the ground outside.Too long imprisoned without freedom and dignity.It was time to escape.I was alone in the house bar one of the older,angrier men who was busy occupied upstairs.Without a moment's hesitation,I took my chance and reached out and opened the door, my entire body being greeted by a wall of cold,the agonised howling of the wind and a light coating of icing sugar like snow.In the distance,children could be heard screaming in the snow,enjoying the last hours of daylight without a care in the world.How I had longed for so many years to be as carefree as they but instead I lay bound in a cesspit of slavery from which now I was free.I ran out into the street with the wind in my hair and the icy ground teasing my feet as I hopped my boots on without stopping.I heard the loud echo of a car horn as I ran blindly across the road in a haze of wintery euphoria.As I stumbled on,my eyes locked onto the pale skeleton of a tree cowering in the snow.Manic on pure instinct,I leapt up at the tree and climbed to the top branch.Here I looked out over the never ending suburbia coated in an omnipresent blanket of feathery snow.The loud screech of a police siren echoed throughout the road.They knew I was gone.I took a deep breath of the cool night air and clambered rapidly back down the tree,landing awkwardly and sending a shooting pain through my left ankle.I limped rapidly across the field to the bus stop and pulled up the hood of the scruffy brown jacket I had been wearing as I fled the house.A sinking feeling entered my heart as I realised I had left my wallet back in the house.I made a split second decision that the bus wasn’t going to get me where I needed to go and that it was time to run-run as fast and far as I could,so I did.I ran right round the corner,carrying on running for what felt like an age of pure energy.I knew it couldn’t last,that they’d find me soon,but I didn’t care,because I was free for the first time in eight years.As I heard shouts and clamours of the police and my captors,I was spurred on around yet another corner in this never ending maze.I opened up suddenly into the park where I had heard the children playing and stopped,breathtaken.Before me lay a field,enveloped by snow and populated by but a single lone rabbit.Darkness had now descended upon the area,driving all the park’s previous inhabitants home and leaving me alone.A whoop and a scream of joy exploded from my mouth and echoed all around me,suddenly cut short by a single,penetrating,unbearably loud shot.At me.I collapsed slowly to the ground,blood pouring from the wound in my neck and transforming the pearl white snow to a dark,ruby red.Agony consumed my entire body as I slowly drifted away.My attacker came to tower over my corpse as the last ounces of strength were drained from me.In a voice so faint I could barely hear it,I believe he began to pray.Praying for the slave he killed.Only he didn’t kill a slave,he killed a free man.
