S&S

Limping and still frightened, unable to shake the terror he had experienced, David continued to distance himself from the main road and scene of the accident. Glancing back occasionally, as he marched through the field he saw the police car parked all the way back, on the road - with its doors still ajar - next to the abandoned wreck.

He had already recognized Inspector Jones by his voice - it was him who had shouted for David to stop. That terrible little man had left a greasy, indelible mark on David’s memory from their very first encounter that morning. Regardless of how their lives would unfold from then on, the acrid memory of the policeman wouldn’t leave him anytime soon.

Staring back, he could see the Inspector now, standing next to his car, as if he were a statue, or, some imposing character in a military portrait painting, his right hand firmly planted on his hip, he left, shading those fiery eyes of his, as his gaze followed the fleeing offender now disappearing further ahead into the distance. David then noticed the Inspector leaning over to his colleague and muttering something into his ear, appearing very displeased, while the latter - who was already highly annoyed with his partner’s desperate shouts ­- frantically gestured towards him. The colleague appeared furious, frustrated, yet the Inspector seemed to ignore him completely, evidently preoccupied with other matters which, to him at least, were far more important.

For a moment, David thought he had reached a safe distance, so he stopped to catch his breath. He turned around towards the road again and, to his horror, noticed another vehicle - a van this time - which pulled up next to the police car. In a second, several armed Special Forces began to exit the van in rapid succession. Without waiting for further instructions, the masked troops immediately set off the road and started running determinedly after David.

Despite the distance he had already covered, David heard the Inspector’s desperate shouts, loud and clear. He ran - and didn’t halt his frantic sprint, which was already taking a toll on him, but he did glance back over his shoulder, and saw the Inspector gesturing more wildly than before, trying to call back the heedless officers who had pursued him without orders.

The Inspector berated them with an inexplicable fury, right there in the middle of the road - just as he had done to David that morning. The sound of his screams, even from hundreds of meters away, made David flinch in fear once more.

What could he have told those cops to make them stop in their tracks like that? David wondered. Those guys were hammers - and he was but another flimsy nail in their tracks, nothing should have stopped them from pursuing. They were bloodhounds - one whiff of fear or disobedience and they would charge upon anything in their sights, with unstoppable force. Could that tiny little man really exert so much influence, even upon an army of the best trained officers that the mob - owned city of ‘The Stad’ could produce?

Maybe he told them I’m armed? That I’m dangerous? In movies, at least, that’s what such characters often claimed, in these situations. He remembered Billy’s bootlegged VHSs- the grey, blurry films, in which the main character was always some weary, alcoholic policeman, or some rebellious detective, chasing the typical antagonists, who were often much more charismatic than the heroes themselves, and with whom he would inevitably empathized much more. Then he remembered those other tapes that Billy always hid at the back of the living room bookshelf, the special ones, which he only pulled out when his parents weren’t home - the vividly coloured scenes, where David had seen the sun - kissed beaches and blue waters, and the fancy homes and cars he endlessly dreamt about. And those angelic women, doing things on camera with other men (Or sometimes even other women ….),O things that many of the gals he’d met in his short life, so far, couldn’t even fathom - let alone perform themselves.

Those badly dubbed Chinese films and the associated nostalgia, which he’d always linked to a childhood that ended way too abruptly … Those relaxed moments in the dark, stuffy living room, with a Russian - made TV set and a broken down VHS player, in Billy’s parents’ apartment, where they’d while away their time together, whenever Billy had the place all to himself… Those finite memories, as well as the policeman’s inexplicable gesture of recalling his men, gave David an unexpected surge of energy which he immediately channelled into his RUN!

Suddenly, filled with a torrent of vitality, he saw this new opportunity, practically handed to him from out of nowhere. He finally allowed himself to imagine a happy resolution for himself, to believe that maybe he was no longer in the imminent danger of being caught, in which he thought he was - at least for a while. It felt as if the universe had finally granted him a reprieve, a second chance, and the time he needed to capitalize on it.

He didn’t have to rush as much now, he thought, trying to maintain a steady jog towards the patch of forest in front of him. No one was on his tail anymore, he could slow down, allowing his energy - drained body some respite. He no longer felt the overwhelming fear from before. That exhaustive dread, which had seeped into him like venom from a snake bite, constantly urging him to stop running.

But he needed to …. He had to stop, even if for just a minute. To force himself to take a break. If he wore himself out now, he might not be able to cope with any unexpected situations later, he figured. Already traumatized by the day’s events, he felt he could expect almost anything at this point.

It must have been past noon by now, several hours had certainly passed since he had left - a time completely and uselessly lost to the accident and its aftermath. Yet, the sun seemed to have remained static. The weather hadn’t improved as he’d hoped, nor did it show any obvious signs of doing so, anytime soon. The heavy clouds hung low overhead - if he were a tad taller, he mused, it felt like he could just reach up and pluck them out from the sky with his own bare hands.

He tried with all his might, but no matter how hard he focused, he couldn’t concentrate on anything. His mind was engulfed in an overwhelming emptiness, a black hole that seemed to swallow any attempts to form any redeeming thought. There was only room inside him for the next instinctive step and his ragged breathing, which was growing increasingly tiresome.

In extreme situations like this, humans would possess an incredible speed of thought, he pondered with a hint of frustration.

Your survival instinct should autonomously conjure up some sort of way out - like when you trip and fall and instinctively throw your hands forward to protect your face. David expected that this instinct would have kicked in by now and gotten him out of this mess already. However, he couldn’t for the life of him come up with a clever way out of his situation, always wary of his pursuers who, even if not physically chasing him at the moment, were surely plotting to capture him shortly.

The Inspector wouldn’t have called them back for no reason, he was surely plotting something else, he thought. What if they were laying an ambush?

Perhaps the very same troops who had tried to track them before, were now waiting on the other side of the forest. That’s what he would have done, gotten into a car, encircled the forest, and waited with a large group of men, spread out across its entire width on the other side, and ensured that no one could escape that way.

But good, he thought with self - mockery, good that I’m thinking of how they’d catch me rather than how I would escape them….

After what felt like an eternity of exertion and mounting fears, he grasped the distance he’d covered. As he drew closer to that patch of woods that had seemed miles away from his car’s vantage point, he suddenly felt lonelier than ever. He stopped abruptly, overcome with an unjustifiable fear, and glanced back, half - expecting to see someone following him once again. Then he realized there was no one there to worry about … The wreck was still out there, on the road somewhere, but all the cop cars had gone. Dead silence had overtaken his entire surroundings, his entire surroundings, once more…

A wave of dizziness and nausea swept over him. He looked down at his wounded leg. Though it wasn’t bleeding as much now, it did not look good at all. The wound was congealing into a mess of dark - red and brown, suggesting it wouldn’t heal easily, or any time soon. He urgently needed help - the wound needed help - the wound needed cleaning, he needed rest, he needed food. He hadn’t eaten all day, thinking that every minute, every second saved, would be crucial to completing his task on time ….

No wonder he couldn’t think straight. He was tired, stressed, wounded and hungry, dehydrated. This is how those horror stories he had heard of always began. With inexplicable fears, with the absurd conclusions drawn by irrational people in moments of physical and emotional weakness. There was no one out there chasing him, he finally conceded - so he needed to just calm the fuck down, and think for a second!

He continued with a slow, resigned walk, feeling that his legs and body would soon give out, forcing him to stop completely. He reached the edge of a dirt road, surrounded by flat, parched fields. From that point on, nothing was visible in either direction, nothing to the left, nothing to the right. And straight ahead, just a few steps away, was the thick, unwelcoming forest he had been approaching all this time.

He paused, trying to catch his breath. As his muscles began to relax, the pain in his leg intensified. He took several deep breaths and tried to sit down on the grass. He grimaced, as he planted his butt on the ground, his face contorted in pain and discomfort, and then slowly stretched out his injured leg.

Breathing a sigh of relief, he began to take in his surroundings.

And only now did he really see the true extent of the wild emptiness around him - through a different, more pragmatic lens. His fear of the police and the inevitable legal consequences that were waiting for him at home were quickly getting overshadowed by a growing dread of the unknown, and the eerie silence that increasingly enveloped the desolate field he had rested in.

Everything around seemed to be cloaked in an uncanny solitude, and a shadowy aura of strangeness hung freely in the air. He tried not to think of the horror stories they used to share, late at night, behind the apartment block. He tried not to think of the movies… He attempted to recall his Biology, or was it a Geography lesson. English Maybe, ‘Mr Ants Fortein’. Where was he now? And what kind of wild animals might lurk in the suspicious woods of this region? He wished he had attended classes more often when he had the chance … A wave of frustration struck him, he never particularly disliked a choice, he would have arrived three hours early and left three hours later every day. He would have devoured the entire school library, then moved onto the country library of his town. But he never had time for study, his hours were always consumed by the need for money and the various opportunities to earn it, which always arose at the most unexpected of times. School was but a guilty pleasure, yet one that his misfortune forbade him to partake.

Perhaps if he had been born into a more privileged family, or at least a more educated one - with different interests and preoccupations, maybe then he would have chosen a more academic path. One of learning, of working with the brain and not with the shovel. But someone had to supplement the family’s meagre income… He would have preferred to teach in a classroom or work in an office - to be another bored and boring public servant, like those assholes he always saw in the town hall, or at the post office. He was confident he was smarter and more competent than many he had interacted with. Yes… he would have preferred working indoors, in warm, comfortable surroundings, rather than battling for survival on some desolate field, out in the middle of butt - fuck - nowhere, in a ditch, by the side of a road, the length and endpoint of which could have been anyone’s guess. At the edge of a looming forest, trying to deceive him with a vague suggestion of a settlement nearby... Almost visible between the lying trees. seemingly not far away from where he was sitting.

Rain clouds were swiftly darkening the field around him, and the cold breeze in the air intensified. The onset of winter was palpable in the sharp draft that blew through the trees ahead. The sun began to slowly fade. It was only mid - afternoon… But the pale light that had guided him, with its muted shaded of grey and blue, had long vanished, suggesting now, not subtly at all, that night - time would arrive much sooner than expected, in those strange, forgotten parts of the country.

He instructively patted the pockets of his jacket. A relieved smile crossed his face as he hurriedly pulled out a cigarette pack and lighter. With trembling fingers, he lit one of the few remaining cigarettes in the pack and took a deep pull, standing on the road’s edge, glancing left and right at the dirt path which stretched endlessly in both directions.

Ahead, the horizon was obscured by the forest, and faintly, in the distance, were the hazy outlines of tall, blue - grey hills. He pulled out the money from his jacket and quickly rifled through the stack of bills.

This should be enough… he thought, but wasn’t entirely convinced by his own words. A few days and he would be home, with this money and with a well - crafted plan in place. Rumours of the accident would have surely reached ‘The Stad’ by now, both his family and the loan shark would have heard about it.

They would undoubtedly assume he was dead, that someone stole the bag, or even that he had run off with it and the whole thing was just an elaborate ruse for him to escape with the money.

If they believed he was dead, that would be for the best, it would buy him some time, at least. The loan shark would stop searching for him, and his family… Well, his family might eventually forgive him for the temporary shock of the awful news they were about to receive - especially when he’d return with some extra cash to throw around.

He tossed his cigarette aside and slowly stood up. Treading lightly over the dry grass and fallen branches that crunched under his boots, he reached a slight clearing among the trees. He closed his eyes and gently touched the bark of a tree. The cold feel of the smooth grey wood seemed to communicate with him in long. Forgotten words. Through its almost imperceptible breath, it conveyed and cold - but also of calm. A serenity that felt like a void, of awareness, yet also of forgetting….

He opened his eyes and looked ahead. Indeed, not far from there, through the trees, there was an opening where light intruded more aggressively - a detail that hinted the patch of trees ended right there, in that spot. Perhaps it was just a small patch of trees after all, and not an entire forest like he had hoped. Just a thin strip of trees - and not one of those dense, tangled jungles he knew existed, where many a curious traveller got lost, never finding a way out.....