Summer heat berated my back and foreign chemicals pumped through my blood and I felt like a man inhabiting dead space. I stopped moving and thought about the chemical deeply and my hands starting shaking uncontrollably. I tried to lie down but ended up sprinting. I was in a suburban neighborhood, leaping fences, soaked in mud. Someone could have been following, was not exactly clear, but in the accelerated haze I pumped my arms and legs and decided to not take a chance on anything, ever.
My foot caught a chain-link fence and I spilled over onto the front of my neck. Mud grits in my teeth. Chemicals. I felt them. I felt everything. I looked up and saw the night sky bloom around me. The concept of burning balls of carbon and hydrogen billions of years away, moving at immense speeds, the frightening nature of it, all spurned me to rise up and bolt towards my house. My lungs were on fire.
After a steady pace I collapsed in my basement and fell asleep.
If they want me, they got me, I thought, I give up.
