Chasing Imagination

Amy

‘RUN!’ Casper yelled, jumping down the last few rungs and shoving me towards the steps. Like a machine, I did as he said, sprinting full pelt down the stairs, putting one leg in front of the other as fast as I could. There were so many flights to go down. My icy lungs burned to the point of breathlessness before I was even halfway down and every part of my chest ached. I kept going though...just one foot on one step, then the other foot on the step below. Over and over and over again. I swung round corners so that I zigzagged my way down the height of the building, Casper’s clanging footsteps showing that he was only a few paces behind me. How had things been so beautifully right just a moment ago? How had things gone so wrong so quickly?

I could hear the sirens still. Even when I put my hands over my ears to escape the roaring of the wind, I could still hear them, piercing holes in my brain. They were getting louder, and there was more than one of them. So many...so close.

I reached the bottom, only knowing that I had done so when my feet touched noiseless concrete instead of clanging metal. The change in pressure threw me off balance and I staggered forwards, losing control and falling forward onto my knees.

Before I even had a chance to catch my breath, I felt hands under my arms, hoisting me to my feet, righting me faster than I could right myself.

I was staring into Casper’s face. His coal coloured hair had been thrown into disarray and his cheeks were pink from the cold. Most of all, though, his eyes were overflowing with terror.

‘We have to run, Amy,’ he said, and as if on cue I heard the sirens start again, closer than ever.

‘Where?’ I croaked, my voice having been lost to the chill of the wind.

‘Just run,’ he said, ‘try to get underground any way possible. Stay to the back streets and small roads. And if I fall behind or you lose me, just keep running. Don’t stop. Don’t wait. And if I tell you to leave me and save yourself, you do that, understand?’

How could I ever abandon him like that?

‘Ok,’ I rasped.

I hadn’t even stuttered the last syllable before he had grabbed my hand again and was pulling me down the alleyway into the darkness.

I continued to run, and I could hear sirens growing closer and closer until it felt as if they were chasing me. I knew the path was too small for cars to fit down, but all rational thought had left my mind the second I’d heard the screaming. I tripped and stumbled over cracks in the paving stones and my insides were begging for mercy. My eyes were watering and my nose was streaming. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t think. I was a machine now, and all that I had been programmed to do was run.

Casper veered sharply to the left so that I had to skid and nearly fell over as I tried to follow him round the corner. Already I could see him getting further ahead. He had prepared me for what to do if he got left behind. But what I didn’t know, and what was also becoming the more likely outcome, was what if I got left behind?

It was at this point, deep in my thoughts, that I began to hear the shouts.

I couldn’t make out individual words, but they were coming from behind, and they sounded angry. I heard a ‘stop!’ and a ‘halt!’ and quite a lot more that all blurred into one terrifying maelstrom, but all I could do was carry on running. Their footsteps were thunder on the concrete, and I had no idea how many of them there were, but I wasn’t a fast sprinter, and my insides were screaming, and they were going to catch me.

I was going to be thrown in an Institution before I’d even had a chance at fully being a Dreamer.

Just when I thought all hope was lost, Casper stopped so suddenly ahead of me that it was like a video clip that had been paused. In my confusion, I crashed right into his back, and he whipped round, almost but not quite knocked off balance, and he gripped me with both hands so tightly that it hurt, even through the thick sleeves of my jacket. Then, before I knew what was going on, he practically threw me into a tiny alleyway that I hadn’t even noticed.

‘Run, Amy,’ he commanded, his voice so severe that I did so without question. I began to hurry off, clumsy and off balance in my haste, stumbling and crashing into the wall, practically having to feel my way through the blackness. I expected at any moment for hands to reach out and grab me; for the sound of a gun to pierce through my brain and the feel of it to pierce through my chest.

But it did not. And as I slowed down at a fork in the road, waiting to see which way to go, I noticed that Casper was not following me.

Panic surged into my blood and I instinctively began to run back the way I’d come, but I saw dark silhouettes block the entrance of the alley. I had no idea whether it was Casper or the police, and if it was the police, had they seen me come down here or not?

Nevertheless, I had no time to find out, so I turned back and sprinted the way I was supposed to be going. This time, however, the only thought in my mind was of Casper.
Where was he? Instinct told me to run, but in which direction? Should I go back? Could I go back? Was I even that brave?

He said to leave him and save myself. I would have argued if, at the time, I’d had the voice to do so. Now, though, it seemed I had completed his request without even intending to.

I crashed round a corner that I hadn’t been able to see in the darkness, and I emerged onto a darkened street. I was near the high street, and this was not where I wanted to be. These were wide roads, and that meant that police could get round here.

Casper...oh God, where was he?

My only hope was to, like he said, get underground. But where? How? I knew the subway entrance we’d come from, but that was way across town—I didn’t realise we’d run so far.
In a split second decision, I took off up the road towards the high street, dodging through the narrow walkway, hoping that this would slow any police cars down a bit, and ran out onto the pedestrian zone. Darkened shops lined each side, and the area was eerily silent. Shoppers and friends out socialising had all long since gone home, or at least moved to a side of town more appropriate for nightlife.

My insides burned and no matter how many breaths I took, I still couldn’t breathe properly. Looking forward to the gargantuan, glass-fronted shopping centre, then to my right down the wide, developed street and left up to the main road past the department store, I realised that I was alone. Alone was good. Alone was better than surrounded.

But where was Casper? Oh God, where was he? If he was in trouble, then there was no one left to save him. And if something happened to him because I hadn’t gone back and helped, then how would I ever live with myself? He could be trapped now. He could be in the back of a police car, riding off to an Institution. He could be dead for all I knew.

Even though I had been still long enough to regain a little of my breath, it was all sucked from within me in an instant as that final blow came to mind. I staggered forwards, almost falling from both exhaustion and fear.

I waited, but no gunshots came. I moved away from the walkway into the high street towards the side of a shop where I pressed myself into one of the alcoves and sank to the ground. I had to think. I had to find him.

And that was when the sirens started up again.

As though the wailing hypnotised me, my sudden instinct was to get to my feet and run. I couldn’t tell which direction the sirens were coming from, but I knew I had to keep moving. If I kept moving, at least I had a chance. If I stayed here, even if I remained curled in the shadows under the darkness as I was now, they would find me eventually.

My heart began to hammer once again, and my mind spun dizzily. I couldn’t think or concentrate properly. I just dived out of the alcove, not caring who, if anyone, saw me, and began to run down the little alleyway that led round the back of the supermarket, pressing myself into the shadows, but not stopping. My feet relentlessly pounded on, separate from my brain which screamed at them to stop, and no matter how much I hurt they kept sprinting on, completely detached from my sanity...just one foot in front of the other.

Shouts shot through the air towards me—I couldn’t tell where they were coming from, but they weren’t too far away, and even being in the narrow space behind the shop there was a chance that they could still see me. I scrambled without hesitation into the claustrophobic little tunnel that ran in between two high buildings, not stopping for a moment to worry about what terrors could be lurking in the darkness, and ran on through, feeling my way on some occasions for lack of light.

The shouts died away, and I thought I was ok before I ran straight into something cold and hard, screaming instinctively. If the high-pitched shriek wasn’t enough, the thing, which sounded like a bin, clattered with an ear-splitting, metallic clash to the ground, the lid falling off and dancing in twirling circles before rolling away.

My heart went into overdrive; I was genuinely convinced I was going to have a heart attack.

I heard more shouts coming from behind.

Shit.