Blue Butterflies and Yellow Roses

Once In A Lifetime

One breath. Two. Three and three and three and two again.

One two three. One, two, three, four, five. Six, seven, eight.

One and ten. Two and three– ah blew it. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Pounding feet press off against the concrete pavement of the winding and tunnelling streets, the boy struggles to breathe, and he's tumbling over and over again. Oversized shirt sitting half-tattered off their body, limbs bloodied and hanging only half-useful against his sides, if there's anything keeping them conscious right now it's the adrenaline of the chase.

The thrill of being prey.

An ebbing pain penetrates his cranium, plaguing his ears with a terrible sharpness that causes him to have to pause and just shudder for a second, he feels nauseous but he can't stop now. God no. God no. If he stops now he'll certainly die.

His lungs wheezed out, shallow intakes of air being the only supplement for the oxygen his body was so deprived of, his blood courses like a boombox speaker on full volume and he must certainly have looked dreadful right there in that moment.

It was like him, silly thing, in the mornings and evenings to worry about his appearance. Even at such a time he thought about such silly things.

The boy lacked a name. And a pretty face with no-name is prepped to be the up and coming fussed-about John-Jane Doe case. What an idiot.

The air clung thickly with the smog of heavy traffic, taste ruined further (or perhaps improved) with the irony tang of blood that ran down the side of their face. Trickling into their mouth every time they inhaled through it; breathing through the nose was not an option.

Did he have much of a choice but to run down into the nearest alleyway? Perhaps he did and perhaps he didn't. But surely you can always trust the mental-state of a boy who had nothing else left to lose.

Well... More of a rat in a labyrinth than a human.

All he could focus on between the newly starting rain, the pounding of his feet, and the goose bumps raising steadily along every surface of their skin was that of the occasional frustrated yell amongst the tidbits of upset chatter coming from his pursuer. His nerves burned with discomfort.

As they ran, puddles forming on the murky pathways began to show a very different person to what the boy would usually recognise as himself, how worrying.

Life was bizarre... But sudden hair loss was not what the boy had expected for that day's agenda. Coming out in thick, brunette clumps, that clung to his wet hair and lead a strange trail behind him.

The change was incredibly odd, a rapid progression that rivalled the speed of puberty, and the hair wasn't all. Their eyes had suddenly become strangely sensitive to the street lamps, blinking harshly due to the lack of glasses, but also squinting due to the new severe glare that each of the dimly dancing city street lights held.

Also. A weird hunger had settled awfully in their stomach.

And it wasn't one that they were used to.

So it become much harder. Navigating a street when you're visually impared in the first place is hard enough, but with the added injury, already poor sight worsening, and hair falling out of your head made it near impossible for the boy to realise where he was going.

So of course he bumped into something. Or rather. Somebody.

"Shit! Sorry!" he exclaimed, the other caught him, firm hands against bare arms. Face colliding with the other's chest, he pushed back a little, trying to make the best eye contact possible.