“Oh lord, I’ve had enough of these people out here.” Says the salesman on Lewis corner, on the most run-down street in town. In a state of despair, I sit with him in the one place in town I never would’ve imagined myself.

“What happened to you?” I say as the gentleman looks me up and down, certainly confused as to why such a man like me would be caught dead on Lewis corner.

“ Well, my girlfriend left me last night, I was fired from my job last week, and now I don’t have anywhere to stay. But if you were talking about the people out and about that are making me all kinds of mad, this girl just threw a candy wrapper at me.”

“Well, sir, you look like you’ve got your hands full then, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess. What about you? What’s a suited man doing around here?”

“To be honest, my friend, I have no idea.”

“Rough night?”

“More than you could imagine. You know, I can’t help you get a job or a girl, but I do have an extra cot.” I don’t know where that came from, but I most certainly didn’t have an extra bed, let alone a place to stay.

“Who are you? Why would you do something like that for someone you’ve never met?”

“I don’t know, maybe it’s because I don’t have anything else to do with myself, I really don’t know. The offer stands, though.” I hand him my former business card, which has my phone number on it, and walk away. He is hooked now, success.

The air is chilly when I walk into the store, and the floor is hard, and it feels like it’s trying to eat me whole. My head is still slightly spinning from the night before. Red pictures flood my memory, and I can’t take it. I burst into the grocery bathroom and collapsed to the floor with my head between my knees. My nails scratch at my skin to try to distract me from what I’m seeing in my head. I want to forget.

I’m a good person, and always have been. I grew up Catholic with strict parents. I never did anything bad, until a couple of months ago. That’s just not me. Nothing fulfills me, and I honestly don’t think it ever will.

I peel my empty carcass from the floor, walk to the sink, and when the water hits my face, all of a sudden it’s me behind my eyes again. I look down at myself, and there are splatters of blood by my ankles; no civilian would notice if they weren’t looking for it. I wish I could say the past 36 hours were just sleeping terrors, but the blood, the memories, I’m scared. How did I end up here? Lewis corner. No phone, no keys, covered in blood that I wish was mine.
I panic.

I watch my feet dance circles on the floor, as I get dizzier with each lap I take.

Hold. I stop, but everything still spins. A hand on each wall as I stare into the corner of the nasty bathroom.

Do NOT fall asleep. My hand makes contact with my own face voluntarily, but it still shocks me. I breathe.

Walk. The lights blind me when I step out of the store, no bags in hand. The pavement suffocates me.

Sirens, whaling past me. I have to go. The pavement moves faster under my feet as I turn down alleys and streets I’ve never heard of. I hear every step I take and my breathing in my ear, nothing else, not even the man following me.

The ground is harder than I thought, now that my face is pressed to its cold presence. He rolls me over, and it’s the same salesman from the corner.

“Why are you running? What’s your deal, man!” He yells, but my heart is beating too loud to hear.

“You coming with me or not?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you, man, but you’re insane! Are you running from someone? The police? I can help you figure it out, man, you just gotta tell me what’s going on.”

I brush past him. My head hurts now. His footsteps follow close behind me yet again; I knew they would. He thinks I’m going to take him to my apartment to stay, but that’s so far from the truth. I need adrenaline. To stay awake, to stay alive, whichever sounds better in your head. I run until my feet bleed, and he follows, test number one complete. We made it to my spot, the cliffs.

The water is around 20-30 degrees this time of year, but we’ll only be in there for a minute, unless he doesn’t make it.

“No, no dude no, you can’t be serious! It’s winter! You will die in there if you jump.”

“You won’t.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Silence follows as I take off my jacket, pants, and tie. I watch his face as horror sets in at what we’re about to do. I approach the edge. The water is a broken mirror. “What’s your name?”

“Jump.” Just like that, I’m falling a thousand feet till the cold water floods my lungs. Finally, I’m alive. My now late-wife’s voice is screaming in my head to get out, but it’s just nice to hear her voice again. The roaring of water crashing against the rocks drowns out all of the noise. Still, I hear his body enter the water. Success. He is just where I want him, crazy with nothing better to do. I swim to him in the violent waves and yank his head out of the water. He’s breathing but not awake. I pull his body to the shore and the rocks and lie next to him, no movement from either side. Hours must have gone by, I got up and got dressed, leaving him by the bank, and started walking. Lewis corner. I found myself sitting on the curb. No concept of time. Before I knew it, the Salesman was back by my side, questioning why I left him and how we survived. Flashes. Last night haunts my doorstep yet again, the fire, the smell of bodily decomposition, the tragedy. Why couldn’t I have been there in time? My poor girls.

I must find purpose. I have to go away, far away, somewhere untouched by the sweetness of my past life and unaffected by my actions. Still, the Salesman follows. I call the taxi and tell him to drive somewhere, anywhere. Physical pain is so much better than thinking of that man from last night’s face. “This is as far as he can take us. Let’s go,” I tell the Salesman as I push him out of the car. I lay a 20 on the seat for the driver and walk away. We’re somewhere in the state still, not far enough away. New plan, I hold out my thumb on the side of the road, and eventually, a kind woman stops. I thank her, and once we get going, she tells us she’s stopping for gas. The second she steps out of the car, I lock all the doors and hot-wire the vehicle. I hear my girl’s childlike laughter echoing in my memories and I shut down. If only I could’ve gotten there in time. I took off while the Salesman panicked in the backseat. I drove as far as I could to the next gas station and, using the spare cash she had stashed in the console, I fueled up and kept moving.

“ Okay, what are we running from? This is ridiculous. I need to know where we’re going now. You’re practically abducting me. This is not okay. Tell me your deal now, or I’m out. I will jump out of this car and never see you again. Tell me your deal.”

“ Are you serious? You can’t just shut up and go along for the ride? Man, do you really want to know that badly? I’ve messed up so badly that I can never look back. I’m never going back. It’s this or nothing.”

“So tell me what you did! For my sake, I have to know whether I’m riding with a serial killer!” I never told him about the death and tragedy that happened to my girls that night, and I never will speak of it again. Their killer’s battered face is engraved in my mind. The salesman and I stuck together from then on, we bounced around in different living situations, and took life day by day. We grew close in a way that we both had our separate lives, but we did it together, we kept each other safe, and watched each other’s backs. We made plenty of enemies along the way and a few friends. We had each other, though, only silently did the salesman question me, but never once did he second-guess me..