Curtain Call: Part II

I did not wear the right shoes for this.

Sloan ran, barely recognizing the pain of her poorly supported feet hitting the uneven cobblestone. She could not feel the faintly burning wind chill on the sides of her arms. She could not feel the pinching near her armpit as her leather bag dug into her skin through her shirt. She could not even feel the stabbing in her chest as cold, dry air was sucked into her lungs and forced out before it was ready.

All she felt were the eyes on her back.

Minutes before, Sloan learned what it meant to "run for your life” in a very literal sense. She leapt onto the fountain’s edge, startling everyone enjoying a casual Saturday afternoon there. She ran nearly the length of the half moon, noticing that the tall and disorienting water show had gained her some distance from her pursuers before jumping off and running toward a wide alley ending with stone steps she had loathed throughout her childhood.

To move anywhere in the city felt vertical. The hills were plenty and steep. The clean-cut stone architecture was a wonderful distraction from the fact that all citizens were practically clinging to the side of a mountain. Thus, moving from street to street was not as easy as turning left or right. There was also the option of up or down.

Sloan chose up.

With the hoard of people at her heels slowly losing ground, Sloan had decided to move higher. No one would expect her to run uphill. It is by far the less intelligent decision in terms of speed.

It was not speed with which she was concerned, though.

It was distance.

Sloan had paused briefly at the foot of the stairs before beginning her climb. No one appeared to be in close pursuit, so, with staggering breath, she had taken off her button-down, leaving herself in a white tank. She had tucked the pendant of her necklace into the tank and stuffed the shirt in her bag, tightened the strap again, and began her ascent.

Having nearly reached the halfway point of the mountain-side steps, she looked like anyone struggling to climb these steps with dignity and grace. Mildly panting was fairly normal when climbing the steps of the city, even for the locals, and this was certainly a hidden advantage she had not previously considered but was nevertheless entirely grateful for.

The higher she got, the more residential the area became. Few people passed her. The crowds thinned. The foot traffic lessened. The hiding places increased exponentially.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Those who ran from their fate on Curtain Call rarely survived because their biggest threat, recognition, caught up to them. The producers did an excellent job of advertising the cowards that ran off set. It is their job to ensure that the chase keeps the audience engaged, and for there to be a chase, they have to keep people like Sloan on the run.

Forever, if it sells.

It is the easier option to keep running, ideally as fast as you can. It is easier to run to familiar places. It is easy to run yourself into a solid stone corner at the dead end of an alley and have a furious crowd crush you to death.

That’s what happened to a young man just last month.

No, Sloan knew her best option was to somehow get out of sight. She would be on everyone’s mind for a long while, at least until the next episode aired and someone made a more entertaining escape. But Sloan knew she would not be easily forgotten. She had seen how the footage of her exit was replayed over and over in the television screens mounted outside of storefronts as she ran. She saw how the camera zoomed in on her face - her smirk. She saw the fury in Calvin Connolly’s eyes. She saw his excitement in announcing her cowardice to the nation.

It may be decades until that footage stopped following her.

As she cleared the last stone steps, Sloan entered a lane leading into the heart of a residential area surrounded by tall trees and cliff-side views of the town. She looked around as casually as possible, and she decided that the area was safe enough to walk.

Well, safe enough to walk briskly.

She made her way down the lane as if she were taking a quick jaunt around her own neighborhood - nonchalance had already proven itself useful. Her feet had begun aching at this point as her adrenaline began to waiver. The cold began to nip at her as her heart rate slowed. The bag on her shoulder dug into the skin there, and Sloan tried her best to keep it on the strap of her tank top.

As she continued walking, she noticed that the neighborhood seemed unusually empty for a high traffic area such as this. There were no babies in strollers, dogs lounging in front yards, or dutiful husbands mowing grass. She began to question if she was being paranoid or intuitive.

Still, Sloan’s shoulders began to settle and relax the further she walked. Her stride became shorter and less forced as she wandered up the steep lane through dozens of houses, both big and small. Victorian houses, saltbox houses, and red brick ranches lined the smooth pavement of the lane along with picturesque picket fences and rope swings dangling from the branches of sturdy oak trees. The epitome of a family neighborhood.

And I bet everyone is inside watching the show.

After a mile or so, a man a few houses down hurriedly took his trash out to the street. He placed the big black plastic bag into the can and started back up his driveway. His gaze lingered down the street and eventually fell on Sloan.

He stopped in his tracks.

The eyes on her back became, quite suddenly, eyes trained on her face.

She froze.

He looked up to his house and back at her, clearly working something out in his head. He brushed his hands off on his denim jeans and continued up the driveway with haste. He ran up the porch steps two at a time and flung the front door open.

"DIANE! SHE'S OUT HERE!"

Sloan burst into action, running beside the nearest house with no fence. She passed a lovely covered patio, an empty pool, a covered grill, and a stone pizza oven. She ran into the unnaturally green grass of the yard, hurtling toward the line of trees at the far edge of the property. She noted the light disappearing from the sky just as she broke through the trees and into the forest.

Sloan knew these forests were commonly used for deer hunting in the fall. She knew that they were deep, but she just hoped they were deep enough to hide her for the night.

I am never playing hide and seek again.

She ran at breakneck speed through the trees until a root found her foot and twisted her ankle. She tripped and rolled over it, scraping her arms on twigs, rocks, and God knows what else. Her hair tie failed her, sending her heavy braids in every direction. She turned her head frantically to make sure no one was behind her, but it was too dark. All she could do was listen, but the pounding of her heart in her ears made that effort rather futile.

She grabbed a nearby limb to help hoist herself up to test her foot. She gingerly put her weight on her right foot, and a hiss escaped her mouth involuntarily. She looked around for the largest tree she could make out in the dark and limped toward it, backing up against it and sinking down to sit.

Sloan felt panic start to close around her throat.

She hated the dark, and she felt her stomach twist into knots as she realized she would be here all night: back against the tree, eyes wide open, and breath silent and frantic. She hated how closing her eyes, even briefly, made little to no difference with her ability to see. Her ears strained to hear any sign of life, and the occasional flutter of wings in the trees above was enough to light her nerves on fire. She was scared.

A tear slid down her face.

Sloan opened her mouth to draw in as much air as possible and as quietly as possible and let out a gentle, cooling breath to try to steady herself. She heard her breath shaking out of her, and she repeated the process until she let herself close her eyes and rest her head against the tree. Her cheek dried, and her heart steadied. Her ankle throbbed, but she breathed through the pain.

Finally calm, she shivered. The sweat on her tank top paired with the wind chill left her feeling ice cold. She reached into her bag and pulled out her button down and put it back on - the vibrant ochre color did not matter in the dark. She unwound her coat from her bag’s strap and shimmied into it, zipping it to the nape of her neck. She curled her legs up under her, carefully avoiding her ankle, and put her hands in her armpits.

Sloan stared straight up into the trees, hoping a star might peek out and reassure her. She remembered the sky had been cloudy earlier that day and frowned. She had thought it might rain in the afternoon, so she had decided on a quiet lunch at her favorite Russian restaurant. She hoped it would not rain now.

She tried not to think about what transpired on this week's episode of Curtain Call, starring Calvin Connolly.

And me.

She tried not to remember the businessman and his soup, and how she could never eat borscht again. She could not help but remember the little girl clutching her mother for dear life, and she could not help but wonder what happened to her. She could not forget the sound of Ana Hernandez's body hitting the ground at her feet. When she closed her eyes, she saw Calvin Connoly's slicked back hair and heard him ask who would receive the benefits of her self-sacrifice.

The audience did not tune in to watch people save themselves, and they would never forgive her for doing just that.

Sloan reached her hand up to bring her pendant out from under her shirt. She opened the heart-shaped locket even though she could not see the picture inside. It was a tiny picture of her and her sister Shannon who had died when they were children. It never made sense to her that she lost Shannon so early in their lives - little girls should not get cancer. It made no sense to her that it was Shannon who got sick and not her. They spent every waking hour together. Even as an adult, Sloan could not make sense of a fate that would separate her from her sister that early.

Sloan has spent a great deal of her life trying to make sense of Fate.

Sloan was very aware that her current situation was caused by nothing as omniscient and omnipotent as Fate. Keeping Curtain Call on air was society's choice, not a storybook destiny. Sloan could not imagine that Fate had anything to do with it at all.

Curtain Call was purely a product of supply and demand, and the audience had been supplying the demand for decades.

Tired of Fate and her fickle nature, Sloan closed the locket and tucked it away again. Finally warming up a bit, she thought she might try, even if in vain, to rest, so she rested her head back and breathed.

It’s okay.

You’re okay.

A twig snapped behind her, a sound closely followed by the inimitable sound of a shotgun being cocked.

"Don’t move.”

Fuck.