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Chapter 3: Escape

The man pelts down the Paris street, his breathing hard and shallow, looking over his shoulder quickly, and seeing what he was dreading, the burly policeman, beady black eyes fixed on him in outrage.

Taking his eyes off where he's going costs him though, as his foot grants him no purchase on the rain slick pavement.

"SHIT SHIT SHIT! "

He yells, taking care not to slip over again while getting up as quickly as he can.

The policeman yells something at him in french, but he doesn't have time to puzzle over the meaning of the harsh bark, he's off up the street in a panic, rain water whipping off his hair and sodden, second hand clothes.

"rainy paris! I had to pick rainy paris didn't I ! Stupid stupid stupid!" the man pants to himself, while struggling to avoid the outraged tourists who plague the pretentious strip mall that they call the

 "Champs Elysees"

"get lost!" he shouts, exasperated at the policeman's disorganised dive to catch his heel, pulling  a pedestrian to the ground instead.

taking advantage, the man darts into a shop on his left that sells clothes of various degrees of frilliness on racks.

The man slides over the counter, trailing  mud behind him, shouting an apology to the shocked shop assistant as he goes.

Bursting through the back door, the man finds himself in an alley way, lit only by the distant cloudy sky. He races down the alley, finding to his horror, a dead end. His only choice now is the green envelope in his pocket. Use it when you need it, it'd said. He tears it open, and out falls a small photograph of a green roller door, maybe one for a garage or shed. Snatching at it like a drowning man at a life preserver, the man stares at the photograph, and concentrates, turning to see the policeman closing in on him, battered, soaked, but persistent. The policeman thwarts his quarry's attempt to dodge around him, and drives his fist into the man's jaw, knocking him clean off his feet.

The policeman ignores the grunts of pain issuing from the punched man and draws handcuffs from his belt, attempting to roll the man onto his front.

The man is unresisting as his wrists are pulled into the handcuffs, eyes scrunched up, breath held.

 The policeman feels something, a wave of heat, or electricity, seems to run underneath the man's skin. Then with a flash and crackle of sparks, the policeman is thrown from the man, so suddenly that he makes not a sound as he crashes to the pavement. 

  Dazed, he raises his head in confusion. The alley is empty! the only thing out of place was a pile of clothes and some handcuffs on the ground a few feet away.

Then In a flash, the man appears before him, stark naked.

"Ahhh-" the policeman's yell of shock is cut off by the naked man kicking him in the chin, knocking him out. The last thing the policeman sees before falling unconscious Is the man staring at a picture and disappearing, somehow cracking the ground in his hasty exit.