chapter 3: run rabbit run

She could feel the wind beneath her.

"Get her!"

The very second she heard those words bounce off the damp brick walls of the alleyway and into her ears, she was off.

Her heart was thumping against her chest like a rabbit's foot. The rabbit in her chest was just as antsy as she was, thumping its bony heel against her ribcage and resounding throughout her whole body. The thumping couldn't even be covered up by the sound of her feet hitting the concrete ground over and over again. Her nose was numb as she tore through the cold New York wind, the air slapping her in the face as if punishing her for disrupting it so badly. She could feel the blush in her cheeks, her veins pulsing with blood rushing like a river throughout her, begging for her heart to slow down and give it time to distribute throughout her body.

Her feet were numb, and her legs were aching. She hadn't gotten that much exercise since P. E. in her first year of high school. She was out of shape, but the adrenaline pulsing in her was keeping her moving forward, her petiteness finally giving her the advantage of being so fast. Her arms were pushing her forward even faster. She wanted to ball her fists, but she kept her hands open, remembering when her ninth-grade track coach told her that keeping her hand in a fist would slow her down. She didn't have time to mentally thank him.

She wanted to turn around to see how close the people were behind her so she could at least have an idea of who her murderers might be. The thing she feared the most was that they were right behind her, and that her world would go black with the swing of a knife or possibly even a gunshot. Or even worse, they would grab her and take her away. She would disappear from the world and the world would disappear away from her, except that she would still be alive, sitting probably in someone's creepy basement or warehouse, tied up and enduring whatever torture that the demented people would most likely love to inflict on her. They had just jumped someone and killed him; there was no telling what they would do to her.

Her legs wanted to falter. Her heart wanted to stop. She was sure that if she didn't die in someone else's hands, she would die by the failure of her own heart. Her heartbeat was right in her ears, whispering to her how each sharp, fast breath she took would be her last.

She finally stumbled into the yard of the house, scrambling up the steps to the porch. The tips of her shoes banged against the wooden stairs, tripping her up. She couldn't even hear the loud music over her own racing heart and even faster racing thoughts. On her knees, she crawled to the door, only then feeling the wetness of tears on her cheeks.

Her pale hand reached up to the doorknob, and before turning it, feeling some sort of safety by at least being right at the doorstep and nearly in sight of witnesses, she turned her head back to see if the people were about to grab her by her feet and drag her back to the alleyway for their second kill of the night.

They weren't there. There was no one there, besides a guy leaning against a tree in the front yard, holding a cigarette to his mouth and a red solo cup in his hand, looking at her with pure bewilderment and judgement. She didn't even think about being embarrassed.

Letting go of the doorknob, she shot up to her feet and frantically looked around. The hooded figures were nowhere—not on the streets, not standing behind any trees, not sitting on the porch swing right next to her. There was no one there except for her and the confounded guy standing against the tree.

Her heart slowed down, but the anxiety still had her in its grasp. Her nerves were shot, but she felt numb all at the same time. Maybe it was from running, or maybe it was from going into cardiac arrest. Either way, the cat in the cage suddenly disappeared, and the rat was left shivering in the corner, worried that the cat might still be lurking near. The rabbit in her chest thumped to a slower beat, the loud music from inside the house finally drowning it out.

She mentally thanked her high school track coach.

♠

"Dear God," Peyton mumbled into her pillow, still wearing her clothes from the previous night. Her pale face was paler than usual, her makeup devastatingly smeared. "Let me get past this hangover...please!" she yelled, then wincing from her own loudness.

August couldn't chuckle. She was turned away from her roommate, facing the wall with wide open eyes. After sitting alone at the party for another hour or two the previous night, she took her friends to their dorms and then took a shower. When she had gotten into bed, she didn't sleep. She had been staring at the same white wall, analyzing each and every paint chip as if memorizing them would save her now endangered life. But the question of her salvation was the very thing that kept her eyes wide open the whole night.

"August?" Peyton mumbled, moving her eyes to the back of her roommate's body that laid completely still. She figured she was just asleep since she didn't have an early class that day like she did.

August stayed awake, her eyes fixated on the wall in front of her, as she listened to Peyton drag herself out of bed and get ready for her class. The second she heard the door gently open and then gently close shut, she let out a sigh.

Her stomach had never felt this restless. Her nerves were tingling all over, and the only thing she could think about was the green cat eyes that bored into her soul last night; about the sound of the knife jabbing into the man; about the sound of feet rapidly scuffling behind her to try and get her.

She felt as if she were in danger. She had witnessed a gang of people murder somebody. She was considered a witness now. If the police found out, they would take her in for questioning. She would have to tell them what she saw. Then the people would know who ratted on them, and then...

Her puke filled the toilet as she held her own short curls back. Her nerves had gotten the best of her. Puking them out seemed to help a little, but the nervous feeling was still wrestling at the pit of her stomach, eating her alive.

The beeping of her watch interrupted her thoughts as she sat on the cold bathroom floor beside the even colder toilet. It was 9:00.

"Shit," she hissed, flushing the toilet and quickly hopping up. Her World Lit class started at 9:15, and she remembered that she had a test that she never got around to studying for, having spent the entirety of the night staring at the wall in paranoia. "Shit shit shit."

♠

"This is so fucking dumb," whispered the classmate next to August as he flipped through the pages of the test.

Assuming he wasn't talking to her, she didn't respond. She didn't think it was dumb—she wasn't completely prepared for it, but she understood it was her own fault. She shouldn't have gone to a party the night before a test in her first period class. In fact, she wished she would have never gone to the party for multiple reasons.

Taking the test had distracted her from the events of the previous night. But now, halfway through, she felt a nervousness creep into her. Her leg was bouncing, shaking the entire table she sat at.

"Chill out!" whispered the same guy next to her, annoyed by her shaking of the table.

"Sorry," she muttered so quietly he probably didn't hear her. She wasn't really sorry. If only he knew what the causes were for her shaking her leg, there would have been no way in hell he wouldn't have understood her nerves.

She felt eyes burning into the back of her head. The burning sensation grew hotter the more she noticed it, causing sweat beads to form at the top of her forehead.

Taking her lower lip between her teeth, she wondered if she should take a quick peek behind her to see if someone of concern was staring at her. But "taking a peek" had turned out to be the worst possible decision for her the previous night.

But it was for her own safety, she inwardly argued with herself. Plus, it would make her feel better to know who was staring so hard at her. It was probably just some creepy guy who would nervously look away as soon as she caught him. Her apprehensions of the seriousness of her feelings gave her more bravery to turn around.

Her heart froze in its beating tracks. Cat eyes stared right back at her—light green cat eyes that didn't blink or flicker away when she caught their stare. A gasp nearly left her lips again. There was no way she could have been mistaken in recognizing those eyes as the ones she saw last night. She knew those eyes that had haunted her the entirety of her sleepless night, every single waking moment.

She could now see the face that the eyes belonged to, and she was shocked. It was a girl—a woman. She looked like she should have been at the front of the class as the professor rather than a college student, but she looked youthful at the same time. She was striking, and August wondered why she had never noticed her in her class before. How could anyone look over someone with those cat eyes and that intimidating, almost scary face. Her medium-length black hair sat at her chest, covering the front of her dark grey sweater. August wanted to fully take in the appearance of this woman so she would know the person who murdered somebody right in front of her own eyes, but she realized that she was probably just hallucinating from paranoia and staring at some random woman who probably thought she was crazy. But the eyes never flickered away; they stayed glued to hers with an emotionless stare. It wasn't an angry stare—it wasn't an amused or even an unamused stare, it was just blank.

August whipped her head around, staring at the whiteness of the paper which held the questions to the test she was supposed to be finishing.

Those were the same eyes. She knew they had to have been.

Chewing on her lip, she brought a shaky hand to her test paper and tried to finish it, but her mind was jumbled with the feeling of those eyes staring at her throughout the entirety of the test.

Handing in her paper to Mr. Dawson, she came back to her desk to frantically gather her stuff, desperately avoiding eye contact with the dark figure who she could feel still staring at her. Was she even taking a test? Was this woman even supposed to be in that class? August thought these things to herself as she gathered her things together as fast as she could without disturbing the test-taking class, scurrying out the door without giving a second glance to the woman.

It was 9:57 and her next class wasn't until 11. She decided she would just rush back to her dorm and stay put until her next class. She basically ran across the campus, not as fast as she did the previous night, but she did keep up quite a jog. She made sure to look all around her surroundings for the mysterious woman who had stared at her the entire class period. She wasn't even completely sure it was the same person she saw the previous night, but the eyes looked all too similar.

As soon as she arrived at the door of her dorm, she unlocked it and nearly slammed it shut behind her, shakily locking it back and dropping her bag and textbooks to the ground. As a sigh escaped her lungs, she placed her forehead against the cool door, the steps of students walking up and down the hall vibrating against her pounding skull.

Checking again that the door was locked, she walked over to her bed and tiredly plopped down, placing her hands over her face. A migraine that she probably acquired from insomnia combined with running so much was ripping through her head, making her squeeze her eyes shut. Would her paranoia ever cease? Would she have to live like this the rest of her life—scared that those green eyes would be around the corner at any moment and that her own flesh would be the one getting stabbed? She exhaled as if her swirling thoughts would release with the carbon dioxide.

The pain in her head, alongwith the worry and anxiety nestled behind her ribcage, increased when she hearda low voice from somewhere inside her dorm thickly speak, "You are apretty fast runner."