He runs like a wild thing.
Breath whistling through a steadily constricting throat. He never should have kept it. Should have tossed it, burned it, drowned it, shredded it to nothing. The moon crowns from between evening's lace-covered thighs, the wind treacherously winding those threadbare clouds 'round it's neck.
He runs like the damned.
He should have known better the first time it worked. Should have though better of the whole thing when It showed up - had he done so he would have ran. Ran somewhere, anywhere it's kind didn't exist or at least a place where the written word didn't matter so much. Instead he now runs no where the stitch in his side growing.
Trips.
Trips his shadow, followed swiftly by himself. Pain wells red from his scraped palms, skint knees, sandpapered chin. His chest rabbits fast shivery pants that bring no relief. Pieces of warm, stench-saturated air slowly suffocating him as his wrists sting pale from where his watch once resided.
A puddle, mirror-black that he kneels in.
With a moan, he jerks back closing his eyes to avoid the bright, orange numbers. Too late, near sobbing now - the numbers spinning off into the ether, Screaming now, filthy hand jammed into his mouth as his voice breaks, tearing it's self like blood-soaked sheet - ripped into ragged shards.
A torn bloody sheet flapping in the wind, flapping…
Shit! His head snaps up like a deer scenting danger as he strains to hear. That sound the flapping of unimaginable wings. Less wings really then vast sheets of blood-laden flesh - the wings of a monstrous bat. Panic now, because oh god he's coming.
Metal-studded boots splash through the filthy black puddles as he follows the sobbing fool. If only he had known, the little idiot cries damning his new eyes. 20 hours; less then a day left to the poor devil. "19 hours and counting 'til your ass is forever mine Baki." The wind is a cool, wet rush trailing behind a sound like Silence dying. Another can crashes over further ahead. With a sound like an unfathomable zipper, his wings unfurl catapulting him into the suri-painting sky.
Screaming again - him and those within the car.
Now cut nearly in half, but still alive and they, they have partly stolen his life. Nine hours and counting spiraling downward so quickly it's almost vindictive. Turning he moves to run nearly missing the sudden fall of the pole - nearly crushed. Crying as he pisses his pants he lands on his ass, gob smacked.
Up now - he walks.
Walks toward a bus stop changes his mind and heads for a subway. The streetlights are out. He doesn't need them, can see by the light of the death boards - the lights counting down a person's lifespan. He can feel the cool breeze from the waterway. Stopping in the middle of the long, black black road he turns right. He hears the wings and knows he's been walking for a while. His hand is numb with blood loss from the glass shard clutched tightly in his right hand.
The water is dark and deep as the heavens below. The line wells up a liquid black. Smiling he falls and breathes in deeply - It isn't nearly as hard as they say it should be.