When my legs feel like dead weights, my lungs feel like they’ve been scraped dry with sandpaper and all I can hear is the tribal pounding of my heart, I decide that I’ve got to stop and let my body recuperate…for however long I may have.

I stop outside of a small public park. No one’s around and the place is quiet, with the exception of the sound of my thumping heartbeat.

My ragged breath is visualised in front of my face, by the coldness of the night.

Leaning against a nearby phonebooth, I hunch over slightly and grasp my trembling knees.

I take some deep, shaky breaths to calm my outraged body.

It takes a few minutes to work, but soon enough, I feel somewhat…normal.

Normal.
Huh.
I consider how alien that word seems to me now. How everything is so completely and utterly NOT normal.

At that moment, the silence is pierced by a ringing sound within the booth.

Am I suspicious?

Yes.

Should I answer it?

Probably not.

Still…

“Mr. Smith?”

“I…uh…I guess so?”

“It’s time to meet…”