Note: This was written for a school competition and therefore the first few paragraphs are a mildly edited version of the prompt. I still think it’s better than the winner.

“Decaf latte, please,” I told the barista.

“That’s $4.00,” she said. I gave her the money and took a seat at my favorite table.

Once seated, I unpacked my schoolbooks and set them on the table. As I reached down to get my laptop out of my bag, I saw a pair of black dress shoes scurry past me. A scrap of paper floated down and landed beside my bag.

“Excuse me!” I yelled, “You dropped something!” But my call was met by the jingling of the bell on the door. The person had vanished. Curiously, I looked down at paper in my hand and unfolded it. I gasped. There in black and white, was my name.

I stood, leaving my school books hanging on the chair, patting the open textbook before me, and tucking a clean napkin into my pocket. Once again, my past had come to my present, and my present had melted away.

A death drop, a dead man, a dead heart. A month later I ran; I’ve been running ever since.

At exactly 2:00 post meridian, I checked the street for cops before walking towards the suburbs. No policemen nearby. The man to my left snorted, and I shadowed my face with the sweatshirt’s hood. A woman walked out of the shop to my right and stared at me, glared.

I turned left, transitioning into a fast, hopefully inconspicuous walk. By man shall his blood be shed: I learned it from my mother’s knee, and I have always believed it. He who sheds blood, by man shall his blood be shed. Never doubt it. And by man shall my blood be shed.

My toe crashed into an uneven joint in the sidewalk, and I fell. Fear tickled my mind past itself into terror. I was going to be caught, caught, caught, going to catch myself. As I felt phantom blood leaking out of my neck I hugged myself, shivered, and it began to spurt. Thank God silly, cowardly, safe civilization has outlawed decapitation as a form of punishment, however much I deserve it. The blood flowed down my cheeks towards my mouth, embracing me in a soft, hot, scarlet sheet.

Shedding the illusory horror with a gasp of desperation, I pushed off the gritty concrete and stood straight, too straight, like rifleman at Isandlawana. A tall man dressed in a tuxedo brushed past me. A poodle’s tail brushed my leg. A folded bill hopped along the sidewalk in the wind. With a scuff of rubber on concrete, my feet burst into motion, and I began running, running as if the dogs of Lucifer were on my tail, running with the haste and agility of a new born antelope, running, for by man shall his blood be shed. I knocked some papers out of a man’s arms, and he sneered at me.

They were after me.

My father warned me. “Sin,” he said, “is a slippery slope,” and I’ve proved that maxim in full. Started with a few petty thefts, moved on to drugs, and everything kept on going down the mud slide. Murder was the klaxon that woke me up, or rather, it scared me into relatively legal behavior: the worst I’ve done since then has been buying electronics in shady stores.

While I may have escaped drugs a few months ago, sin is a much worse hallucinogen, and I’m never going to escape it. I’m going to Hell: that’s why I’m scared silly of dying.

Blood trickled down my shirt, so I grabbed my head to keep it from sliding off.

A policeman is looking at me funny.

I dodged around a pink pram, turned left to avoid the busy intersection, and crashed into a tall man in a crisp business shirt, throwing him to the ground. Just as I stabilized myself, he grabbed my leg, pulling me down to the concrete with him. My knuckles lost all their skin to the sidewalk.

I shut my eyes and swung, crashing the side of my fist into his nose. Blood anointed my hand like it would my neck. He who sheds man’s blood. He screamed, the wimp.

Was I screaming?

Terror became a strange clarity, and I knew what to do. Stand up, hands in pockets, composed face, walk forward, don’t look for policemen.

I looked, and one was standing not ten feet away, walking towards me quickly. Jerking my head away, I sped up a tad, just a tad. My bloodied hand shoved the napkin back into my pocket. Sweat dribbled over my brow like the spittle of a corpse, for by man shall his blood be shed. The cloud of fear descended again, and I froze.

No book could prepare you for knowing that somebody was coming to lock you up, lock you up and put you on trial, put you on trial and kill you. Nothing could, save perhaps living in hell or fighting for a decade in the humblest hovels of Vietnam under arc lights.

Then you would long for it.

It’s too late for redemption. My father wouldn’t agree, but I know. I’m Hell- bound, and I’m terrified because I want to go there.

The bloodied napkin dropped out of my pocket onto the sidewalk before me.

Life wasn’t fair, but the afterlife is. Hell was waiting for me, is still waiting for me, and I don’t have much time to finish writing this. I panicked and attacked the policeman. Punched him in the face time after time after time, or at least I tried to. They arrested me too soon, and I confessed to the murders they had never suspected me of. Pleaded guilty- why not go to hell now and get it over with? Sometime soon I go to die.

You will not mourn for me.