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With each resounding thud, his heartbeat only quickened. With no recollection of how he got here, or why he was here in the first place, the wanted man was at a loss. A frightening, yet suspected loss.

He knelt behind an old dumpster, but the tangy scent of blood felt so dignified as to overpowered the odors of rotten food and decaying rodents. Sweat and mud smeared across his face like war paint, a result from only God knows what. The charm of a necklace lay in the palms of his mud-caked hands; a golden, amber heart that he felt he once admired now mocked him with a luminescent glow.

He sat back and hugged the charm close to his chest. A hammer banged against the inside of his rib-cage, screaming to be let out. And, in this moment, he'd do anything to let it go. Anything to stop the anxiety. Anything to stop the pain the swelled in his head, his chest, his stomach, and his throat. He felt as if he would explode, nothing but pieces and bits against the graffitied, brick walls and noisy, ruinous alleyway.

Thud, ping, splash.

With every step of the horrific beast, a rock or pebble scuttled across the concrete and into some nearby puddle. A tiny sound amplified from sheer terror and echoing walls.

He didn't want to be scared. He didn't know why he was scared at all, but all instincts made him petrified, and his carmel brown hair stuck to his forehead in a cold sweat.

The sound stopped for a moment, and an unsettling silence followed. The only thing he could hear was his own unlabored breathing. When the sound picked up again, but faded away like every memory he had ever shared, relief flooded over him like a wave of sweet, sugary nectar. With no time to waste, he stood up shifted weight and scampered with a limp out of his hiding place. His only refuge of protection. Who could have thought that the cramped area between a rough, jagged brick wall and the exterior of a metal dumpster laced with a slimy brown substance could act as a safe and nurturing embrace?

He staggered across the pavement, traveling behind the yellowish light from the street lamps lined like pons from a Chess Board down the smooth road. Few cars zoomed past, though they stirred up a wind that sent chills down his spine. The lamps and occasional blink of a restaurant's OPEN/CLOSED sign was his only source of light, the clouds have concealed the moon and her many soldiers that surrounded her with loyalty unlike no other. Even after death, they still stand beside her for as long as they possibly can.

He felt a few droplets from the sky, the first tears from Mother Nature's eye. He felt her intense stare burning deep into his soul, her gaze threatening to unleash all hell onto his scrawny form. How he wished for this torment to cease; to be no more but another withering memory in the back of his crumbling sanity.

He just wanted to run and never stop running. However, every simple step now caused him agony and wiped the option of running, or even a mere sprint, off the table. Mother Nature then spilled out her frustration on top of his bleeding and mangling body. Her pounding tears cascaded from charcoal black oil spills in the once beautiful night sky. Was she crying for his condition, or the unbearable truth that he still lived and breathed on her Earth?

He gave up right then and there, letting himself collapse on the slick ground. He stared up, emotionless, at the dark void above him. Sorrowful, frustrated tears were wept upon him. They washed away the layers of mud and grit from his distorted body. The brown and crimson frosting flushed down the sidewalk like a tidal wave, or a pulsing river. Beneath these layers, like sedimentary rock, lay on the cold and unforgiving ground, a broken man.