A Day in the Life

Samson is blocking the front door, he’s trying to keep me here.

“You can’t leave, if they don’t get you they will kill me. They won’t hurt you, they promised!” He steps forward to try and grab me so I throw myself over the banister to try and escape. I don’t stick the landing as my trainer lands on a broken piece of ceramic and I fall. My hand lands in a shard of glass and I yelp in pain.

Samson tries to throw himself on top of me but I turn just in time and the shard of glass in my hand carves a deep cut in his cheek. This pushes the glass further into my flesh but causes Samson to back off long enough for me to get up and run.

He crawled so his back is against the front door and is holding his cheek and crying. I never realised how weak Samson really was, after all I’ve suffered in the countless retries of this god forsaken day. Here he is betraying his only friend. And for what?

I find my feet and without a second thought I make my way to the back door and fly through it leaving it wide open. I sprint at full speed to my car and when I make it there my legs are aching. The adrenaline is finally leaving my body and my hand is shaking as I try to put the key in the ignition.

As the engine starts I pull away sharply and the smell of burning rubber enters my car. I drive down the road going away from my house and just before I get out of sight of Samson's house I look in the rear view mirror and see a white van pulling up on the street.

A mere few seconds later and they would have got me. The tears are falling before I even realise it. I wipe my face and allow myself a few seconds before I get my composure back.

What is my plan now? All I think I need to do is get past this day and then the cycle is broken. Right?

I head towards the motorway, let’s see if I can just drive through the rest of this day. I check the clock on my car screen and it's only 4:32PM. I’ve almost made it to 6PM once so I have time.

I come onto the M74 towards Carlisle and start the long drive away from my hometown. I feel like I’ll be safe as soon as I see the “Welcome to England” sign. No one is going to come looking for me this far away from home.

Less than an hour it takes driving at 70MPH on the dot to see a road sign for the Scottish border, five miles to go. Traffic seems to be a lot heavier down here so I need to slow right down.

Four miles to go and I’m barely hitting 50MPH, why is everyone fleeing to England with me?

Three miles and we are at a stand still. My car only moves about 6 feet of distance every minute or so. When we get to two miles to go I can finally see why everyone is at a stand still. There is a border control officer blocking the motorway and checking every car before letting them pass on.

Other cars in the line start to beep their horns to try and get the line to pass by faster but I have a gut feeling that I am what these people are looking for and I’m not sticking around to find out.

Just over a mile left to go and I put on my left indicator to enter the hard shoulder before turning into it. The gap my car left instantly gets filled by the car behind me. I grab my phone, 5:29PM seems to jump out of the lit up screen at me as I step out of the car. I walk to the motorway edge and climb ungracefully over the metal barrier. Just before I walk into the tree line I look back at the border and see a man looking in my direction. I turn my head sharply and pick up my pace.

He definitely spotted me so I need to put as much distance between me and them as possible. That’s when I hear sirens and shouting following me, they are chasing me into the woods and they are much faster than I am. It’s hard to think about how many people are in the woods looking for me but I don’t want to find out the hard way.

The trees are dense and it's already starting to get dark so when I walk around a particularly thick tree straight into the view of a young man wearing an officer uniform it’s not much of a surprise to me.

“Just kill me already, let me start again.” His arm shakes as he raises his gun and shows signs of hesitation. To motivate him I launch forward and try to grab the gun off him. He shoots me in the shoulder but I manage to grab the gun off him and shoot him in the head, right between the eyes.

Seconds later everyone else closes in around me so I point the barrel of the gun at my own head.

“Let’s talk for a second.”