Futile Trials

(23) Walk Along

You continue walking down the alley: quiet steps, silent breaths. 

You stop just before an intersection to grind your shoe against the asphalt, having stepped in something undesirable. 

A young man flits past, brushing so close your clothes roll against the air turbulance, trying to follow him. 

You step into the narrow alley intersection just out from behind the man, trying to see where it is he's running off to so fast. 

Perhaps, though, you should have been looking at what he was running from. A body slams into you from behind, and you both go tumbling down. 

You lay there a moment, trying to catch your breath. A man looking so similar to the first edges your vision as he gets back to his feet. 

He looks just as stunned as you, if not more. When you try to get to your own feet, though, he's backing away, scared.

That's when the pain hits. It spikes. It bites. 

A knot in your back; a strike to your pelvis. 

Gingerly, you feel down your spine to your hip. A blade is sunk there, firm and fixated like an anchor hitched on rocks. 

The man's panic grows as you slump back onto the ground. It was clearly an accident. He didn't mean to hurt you. But he was running. He had the knife in his hand.

He was running after the other man. 

Maybe he is a killer. Maybe he wanted to kill the other man.

But he didn't want to kill you.

He runs as your world grows hazy; he doesn't even retrieve his knife.

You're bleeding out.

You're dead.

Game Over