Thunk

He was outside now. The red uniform clung to him in wet folds, though it wasn’t really red anymore. Sleeves clotted with mud. Knees the same. Grass stains decorated the ankles of his trousers, soaked and heavy. Bare feet, crusted in dried blood, rust-brown, cross-hatched with scratches like something had tried to climb up.

He was on an overpass. Not at the top yet, but high enough. He looked down over the railing.

Thunk.

Swing.

Creak.

“… Please—”

His breath caught. Shoulders tightened.

“No—”

He looked up.

The asylum was just a silhouette in the distance. Floodlights swept from the two guard towers, slow and lazy, as they did every night. But no sirens. Did they even know he was gone?

Silence.

He turned away, the building slipping from view. Waited. He swayed a little, like a branch deciding which way to bend.

A sound swelled out of the quiet until a car sliced past.

Amber headlights stretched the shadows long across the tarmac. Then gone. Sound swallowed by the night.

Silence again.

The shadows stretched once more, but this time there was no engine, no beam of light. They swam and skittered across the sidewalk, pooling thick at his feet before spilling forward, thinning, reshaping. Long, starved shapes crawled along the edges, restless.

The street light above him died with a flicker.

Then the next one ahead.

He understood and began to walk, each step carrying him higher up the overpass, each step widening his view of the sleeping city. He headed toward the dark. Behind him, the street light flared back to life, chasing the shadows away.

He kept climbing. Near the top, the next lamp shuddered and died just before he reached it.

The darkness moved with him, shielding him, clearing the path.

He reached the crest.

Far ahead, something glowed in defiance of the black city around it. Tall white concrete walls, framed with steel and glass. Lit like a beacon. Red and blue lights washed over the entrance as ambulances came and went.

He knew what he had to do, if he ever wanted to escape.

The next street light died.

He walked on.

Every step took him further away from the asylum, and closer toward the hospital.