Warm-up: You Cannot Run

Only two feet away, rain drizzled into the alley, bombs bursting against the cracked asphalt, scouring the city of its filth. Axe was lost in that photo again, dreaming of that picturesque Hallmark life, that sort of life so few ever attain. Framed in front of a grandiose manse, three beautiful faces stared out of the photograph, a happy husband and wife and their smiling daughter.

Perfection, or at least, damn near it. Better than this place, he knew. The cost was high—it always was. That is exactly why so few could reach that dream.

Axe rubbed his grubby finger along the daughter’s jaw line. He cursed as a smear of grime was left in the wake. He searched for a bit of newspaper, something not smelling of piss or excrement or booze, and scrubbed at the image. Some of the color rubbed off. A tear tugged at the corner of his eye.

Delicately, he gave the picture a kiss and slid it back into the newspaper padding beneath his shirt.

Winters were harder here. Everything was harder here. There was no roof above his head save for the corrugated cardboard box. That roof would melt through tonight because of the rain, he knew. Tomorrow would be spent scavenging for a new home or some temporary fix. Maybe he could beg for a box from the soup kitchen.

Beg. Once, such a low act would have made him cringe. Once. Now, times were different. They said you cannot run from your past. He had to, though. Anonymity became necessity. Axe cursed his fate.

“What do they know anyway?” he questioned the night or the storm. “I’ll do what I want, when I want. Yes, I will.”

A torrent of water suddenly ripped through Axe’s cardboard roof. Startled, he leapt out of the box, slipping on his newspapers and blankets.

Thunder silenced his groans and curses as he crawled to his feet in the alley. A bolt of lightning illuminated his home and the enormous rip in its center.

“Alex?”

Axe straightened; the hairs on his neck immediately erect. Cautiously, he turned his head, casting a glance at the entrance of the alley. A shadow hovered at its edge. “No,” he hissed, spinning. Axe—Alex backpedaled. The shadow stepped forward.

“You cannot run, Alex.”

“I—I—I,” he stammered, still edging backward.

“You gave us quite a bit of trouble. Who could have guessed you, so lazy and glutted on the wealth and perfect life you once craved so desperately, would give us so many problems.” Alex could hear the smile on the man’s face. “Two years! By God, you survived on the street alone and unseen! Tenacity! That sort of tenacity will make you a wonderful addition.”

“M—M—Madeline and Joanna? What about Madeline and Joanna?”

The shadow paused its pacing and held its hands down and out to its sides in a strange manner. “They will live out their lives mostly unmolested, unless they should seek us out as you did. Our dealings are with you and you alone, right now, Alex. You knew the price when you signed. Now, it is time for us to collect.”