The hideout

The hideout

I ran. I ran and I fled. I ran until my eyes thumped sore with the blood bruising behind them, and my heart punching mad under my ribs, trying to break free.

I broke the pain barrier, fuelled by the fear of being caught and the unknown it entailed. I wheezed up the hill, breathing like an asthmatic. But I was a fast and healthy boy then. I threw myself over the fence, cracking my knee on the post. I wanted to shout, to swear at the pain, but I could hear them catching up on me so I just ran on. The forest and scrub scratched at my skin, while broken shards of sunlight pierced the canopy like in some lucid dream.

“You’re dead Macleod. Just you wait.” They screamed behind me. The hate riddled shrieks of other children. Children; too old for innocence, too young to mask their contempt of the world. What was I to them but another face of it, which they could blame for their births?

I ran farther into the forest, taking care to be quiet, and on the verge of collapsing. I plundered to the nearest crops of lush green Ferns. Then tiptoed, breathing shallower, meticulous so not to leave tracks, and lay among them. I curled there, panting in the warm dampness, peering through green leaves and frog spit. I gazed at the emerald summer canopy; through spider webs, and tiny droplets of water diamonds, my breath dying. Then I watched the beetles crawling over my arms, one with the forest, and thought about those who had chased me.

Who would set such demons on me? What kind of God allows it? That was the kind of questions I asked. I found some answers too. But I’m not a child any more, I’m safe now, and I lie here still in the quiet, sheltered by the golden, orange Ferns, and leafless trees, watching snowflakes carpeting my bones. Sometimes I still hear them calling for me, “You’re dead Macleod, just you wait”. But I don’t need to wait.
And sometimes I remind them. They never caught me. They’ll never find me here.