The tramp looked up at the rows of clothes hanging on washing lines over the alleyway he occupied.

'Those clothes look warmer than mine.' Thought the tramp

'But this is Mafia territory, if they caught me helping myself to their clothes they wouldn't think twice about putting a bullet in my head'

As if on cue, his thoughts were met with the sound of gunshots nearby. Startled, the tramp looked down the alleyway and watched a guy running for his life towards him. He was wearing a black leather jacket and green combat pants and looked pretty nondescript but the tramp concluded that he must be somebody important because there were three members of the Mafia close behind him wildly firing their pistols in his general direction.

He ran past the tramp and turned left into a small walled area. Two cop cars had blocked the other end of the alleyway.

'Unlucky bastard. Wanted by the Mafia AND the police, I don't know which one is worse.' Thought the tramp.

In all this commotion the tramp realised he had forgotten priority number one: STAYING ALIVE. The three Mafia goons were getting pretty close; the tramp had nowhere else to go other than to jump into the walled alcove that the mystery man was hiding in.

He looked around the area, it was surrounded by high wall with seemingly no way of escape.

"Looks like we're trapped in here," Said the tramp to the man

He did not answer; he just looked at the orange painted wall in front of him before taking a running jump headfirst at it. The tramp cringed, expecting to see the mysterious figure crack his head against the brick but instead, he just passed right through it as if the wall was made out of thin air. Almost collapsing from surprise and fear, the tramp gasped and desperately tried to comprehend what he had just seen. The sound of hurried footsteps grew louder and the Mafia got closer to his hiding place in search of the mystery man.

The tramp thought of the irony of the situation. He had just witnessed one of the most amazing sights of his entire life and his was about to die as an innocent bystander caught up in a stupid gang war.



He landed hard on the tarmac, got up and brushed himself down. He had landed this time on the road in front of the alleyway he had just been running through.

Blue Hell had saved his life a second time.

The two cop cars blocking the entrance now had two policemen cowering behind them. They had got involved in a shootout with his Mafia pursuers and now they were beginning to regret it as bullets peppered the side of their vehicles. This gave him time to get away so he stopped a passing Stinger sportscar and dragged the driver out of his seat before sitting in his place.

This was his new getaway vehicle and he was about to his the accelerator when an object in the rear view mirror caught his eye. He identified the object as a tramp falling out of thin air onto the road behind him. The tramp lay on the road dazed, looking up at the sky.

He changed gear and drove the Stinger backwards. There was a bump and a sickening crunch and the tramp's crumpled body was spat out in front of his reversing car.

'I can't have him knowing my little secret' he thought to himself.

Suddenly the tramps lifeless body was lit up in a pool of light, then the spotlight moved and encircled the car. Debris swirled on the street as the police helicopter hovered above his vehicle.

He had not escaped yet; he would need to find a place to hide.