A Picture's Worth a Thousand Lives [Being rewritten]

Rivers and Photos [1]

Make it....make it.......

My mind was screaming internally as I sprinted forward.

I was running. Running and screaming. Panting violently for ten minutes down these poorly constructed sidewalks. I have only a few seconds to stop this.

He was in sight.

And I was going to make it.

"Stop!!!!!!", I screamed as loud as my lungs would allow me to, and then looked down at the picture again, double checking that the man I was screaming at resembled the man In the photo.

He turned around and shot a confused look at me.

"You can't go in there!" I stopped right in front of him, my lungs burning.

"Why not?" he asked looking up at the restaurant, "tell me!"

I remained silent after that. I simply grabbed his wrist and jerked him toward the curb, accidentally causing him to fall backwards onto the street.

"Who do you think you are!?!" he snapped.

Thats when the back of the restaurant spontaneously went up in flames.

His eyes widened at the sight.

I jolted into the restaurant and grabbed the arms of as many customers as I could and led them outside to safety.

"She's the one! She saved my life!" I heard the man from moments ago say to someone.

I glanced back to see a couple local cops chatting with him, as a witness. By this time sirens wailed in the distance.

"Hey lady!" one of the officers shouted my way. That was my cue to hit the road.

I darted out of there as fast as possible. By now I've perfected the art of escaping these situations. I hated attention; I wanted nothing to do with it. I would cope horribly if I was famous. I preferred being a wall flower, it's much safer if you ask me.

I kept on running; looking back a time or two; just to make sure I was out of everyone's view.

One I felt out of sight I found myself near the creek on the edge of town.

Out of habit, I looked down at the Polaroid picture that rested in between my fingers.

Anger and resentment flowed through my veins, not towards the man who was in the picture, but to what the picture meant to me. I hated it, after a moment of thought I began to cry. No one was around, so I didn't care.

I grabbed the picture and ripped it up into tiny little pieces, then threw it into the creek, watching as it flowed down the rushing water leaving me with a feeling of satisfaction. It was as if a huge weight was being lifted off my shoulders and washed down the stream.

I fell to my knees in the mud I was standing in.

"Did your boyfriend just break up with you?" a male voice asked from behind me.

My head shot up. I scanned the area looking for the voice's source.

"Sheesh, calm down I didn't really mean to alarm you", the voice edged out from behind a row of bushes.

I examined him carefully. He looked my age, give or take a year. He was skinny with washed out jeans that hugged him tight enough to probably get him made fun of. He wore a t-shirt that had a band name I've never heard of printed on it and his dark brown hair fell into his green eyes accompanying a complexion that seemed almost flawless. Not the "bad boy" type of guy, but definitely trying to pose as one.