Murder Day [The Novel]

Chapter 8

After stabbing Terry, I decide to run home. This isn't for me, I'm just not cut out for Murder Day and I've always known it. Now I have proof though, now my parents will see…oh no. It's as if the adrenaline pumping through my veins made me forget about my father's death.

Thinking about it slows my pace, but I hear hurried footsteps behind me and take off running again. Turning down one street I see a man with a shopping cart full of tin cans, he's trying to hide behind an antiquated old mail box but he's not doing a good job. Another, more well dressed, man comes up from behind and stabs the homeless man in the back. The rattier man screams and falls to his knees before the fancier one turns his gaze to me.

I can see fire in his eyes, I can feel his stare burning through my flesh. He bounds toward me and I turn to run in the other direction. In a darkened alley I climb a fire escape and lift the metal ladder up after me, half way though the man leaps up to grab the lowest wrung and it slips from my grasp. There's nowhere to go but up.

I scale the fire escape, children in the windows of apartments stare wide eyed and excitedly as I zoom past their homes. In one window a mother reaches out to take her child away, it looks like she's scolding him but I don't take the time to figure it out. 

"I'm coming for you!" The man behind me calls out and I hoist myself to the roof. We're five storeys off the ground and I have nowhere to go.

I notice a small structure, it looks like a shed and I assume it leads to a staircase inside. I try the door but it's locked and rusted shut, as the sound of the man climbing higher reaches the roof I quickly make my way to the other side of the structure to hide myself from him.

"Now where'd you go?" He says with a sing-song tone. I can hear his footsteps growing closer and squeeze my eyes shut, "I'm going to find you, and I'm going to slice you open and skin you," He sounds like he's restraining his laughter and I hear the sound of his knife dragging across the the opposite wall. The sound changes as he scrapes the blade against the door and reverts back to the resonance of steel on brick as he makes it to the corner.

While holding my breath, I inch to my left as he approaches from the right. I slip around the corner, back to the wall, and hear him exclaim excitedly as he jumps out from behind me, I panic and run without thinking but he follows me. I make it to the edge of the roof, there's another building beside us, should I try to jump?

A quick glance over my shoulder reveals the man growing closer, I don't have time to think, I turn right and run to the other edge of the roof. The man laughs, he knows he has me trapped and he closes in quickly. He's faster than I am, I'm more agile.

As I grow closer to the edge, I can almost feel him reaching out behind me to grab hold of my shirt. I make a last minute decision to duck and roll to the side and he can't quite slow himself down enough. His feet slip along the tarpapered rooftop and he tumbles over the edge of the building.

After a short scream I hear the man hit the ground and grow silent. I feel warmth spreading from my groin and smell urine. I look down to see the stain covering the front of me and sigh, I can't believe I've wet myself. The sky is growing lighter, the sun is coming up, and I decide to stay on the roof of the building until I hear the trumpets that signal the end of the celebration.

With a heavy heart I climb back to the street, I have twenty minutes to get home before the curfew is in effect. With a stride longer than my usual, I make it home just on time and move silently through the building to get to my apartment.

In the dark and smelly stairwell something feels wrong. My heart is still pounding and my skin tingles as I push open the door to the second floor; I can still smell blood. I try to push the thought away, obviously the smell is coming from my clothes, I'm covered in the red sticky liquid, it must be the source of the odour.