Can't Run from Murder

        I guess she didn’t know where to go. There were plenty of alleys, plenty of escape routes. But she wasn’t familiar with her surroundings. So she just ran, ran as fast as she could, from the person who was chasing her. One of her clog shoes fell off in the parking-lot where she ran through trying to get away. She could feel each and every rock she stepped on, every piece of glass, every piece of throw out food from college kids to young to grasp life. She runs lopsided, tears streaming down her face, stricken with fear and contorted with adrenaline. Past the parking-lot where it started, off the paved road to a gravel one, down the gravel and between a fence and stadium bleachers, and into a practice soccer field barely used. Trying to climb a steep hill she lost her other clog shoe. At the top of the hill there was a Dairy Queen, a CVS, and other stores. It maybe late, but maybe, just maybe, some employee was cleaning up, or a hobo looking in the trash, or a robber breaking into one of the stores! Someone, anyone, to hear her, anyone to see her in her terror! Anyone, to see her in her last moments in this world...

         But no one came. Not until the morning when a passerby saw a young woman lying on the ground. ‘Must be drunk’ he thought, college kids are known in this town for their parties and just last year a big cocaine bust went down. You would never believe only 4,000 kids could cause so many problems, one of the smaller Universities in Virginia. The man thought about leaving, someone else would find her eventually... But she might have alcohol poisoning or something like that. He finally got out of his old, beat up Chevy and started down the hill, “If I loose my job with the furniture company ‘cause of some drunk girl- What in the Lords name!” He was almost at the bottom of the hill when he got a closer look at the girl. He slid down the remaining five feet of the hill and froze. The body was face up with the whole torso covered in dry blood, her shirt shredded to pieces, arms laid straight out seemingly untouched except for the few missing fingers. When the man finally came back to his senses, he quickly made his way back up the hill to his car and called the police in a shaken voice.

         “911 operator, what is your emergency?” the operator woman had an almost mechanical sound to her country accent.

         “Yea, there is a girl on the field next to the college baseball stadium” he paused for a brief second, “I, I think she’s dead, her eyes were white.” He gave a few more details he wouldn’t remember later because he couldn’t  stop seeing her eyes, glazed and looking up to the sky. After he hung up all he could do was grip the steering wheel hard and look forward. He didn’t want to look at the body but he knew he would never forget it, forget her...