Adrenaline can be really helpful sometimes. I can’t say it wasn’t for me at that moment, seeing as I was certain I would’ve stopped running a long time before without it. Well, I had been running long enough to have had my shoes torn up back on the paved road and to have left them there and forgot all about the scrapes on my feet and–
I didn’t think about the pain. I only thought of the two possibilities I was running from.
The first possibility was that I found a stranger in my home that made me bleed, but I lived. But I only met more brutality if I walked outside (which, for sure, I would) because I would see a girl dancing on corpses that would quickly see me. She would’ve screamed “survivor” and a knife would have made sure my heart stopped. So, in the end, it was a fruitless few more hours of life.
The second possibility was that I would warn the protectors and rulers of my city of the impending attack, but they did not listen to me. They refused to believe me. Then I would try to leave the city only to meet the attackers at the gate. Had that possibility became true, my heart would have been arranged a fatal meeting with a blade.
Those were my only possibilities. But, then again, there was this. To not warn, to not stay, to not care about anyone else. So, when I awoke for the third time I took my sneakers and my red rain coat and just… left. To put it somewhat poetically, I was running from what I knew to be my city, my death, and any other possibility than the one to come. Maybe, though, I shouldn’t have made the third possibility. I mean, this possibility meant I lived, but it was no better than five years ago… The only person’s life I could ever save was my own.
I think I started to get tired, but I couldn’t really know, everything just seemed so endless –so many trees, so many flowers, and that dirt path (with so many rocks to cut up my feet)… I thought it would never end. But that was the only way to get to my grandmother’s house. She was the only one left besides me. Well, after the accident. Before that I lived with my parents and my older sister. Then alone because my grandmother thought I should go to school and not have to only learn from her (in her words “the little bit” of what she knew). And that I should interact with children my age. Not that that worked out very well.
And finally, my legs gave out and dropped me to the ground. I tried to break the fall with my arms but all it really did was dirty and bunch up the bandages on my wrists. I would’ve fixed them but I was just so tired…
It started to rain. I didn’t put my coat over myself. I just didn’t want to move… I put my head between my arms, my face on the ground, and closed my eyes.
I fell asleep in the rain.