I was trapped. They surrounded me like a pack of hungry dogs, their eyes gleaming in the faint light wafting in through the top of the barn. Spreading out close enough I couldn’t go through them but locking me into the corner. Their eyes spelled out vengeance and I knew that they were going to find it in the most painful way. My back felt something scratchy poking at it. Lifting my eyes just enough I saw that there were giant hay bales stacked behind me. Looking back at the group I could see their eyes still trained on me, not realizing the plan formulating in my head. Gently my hand reached down, ever so slowly as not to show them what I was doing. I patted my pocket on my pants to check to make sure it was there. A pistol. Fully loaded, with 10 bullets. Looking back up at the hay bales I saw that the first one was about 4 feet above my head. Knowing it would be tough and I didn’t have that much time before the boys got bored and decided to kill me, I had to think of a distraction.

“Look out. Police!” I yell and then turn and jump. My hands scrabble on the hay trying to find something to grab onto. I pray that they are distracted long enough that I can climb. Suddenly a bullet whistled by my ear causing me to shriek and start to slip. My fingers found purchase on a rope holding the hay together. There were shouts from below, but no more bullets came my way. Pulling myself up onto the bale, roll away from the edge to catch my breath. I retrieve the gun from my pocket I hold it behind my back.

“I’ll surrender if you cease fire.” I yell. Smirking to myself I stand when I hear one of the boys tell them to stop. Backing up so that I’m up against another hay bale, I look down on them and survey the situation. I have a few options.

Go down there where they will gladly kill me. In their dreams.

Continue climbing to a better height and it would be harder for them to reach me, but risk more fire upon my person. Also I would have better view and standpoint to shoot them from above. Most likely.

Stand here and give up the element of surprise by shooting at them.

I decide to go for option two.

“I’m going to climb up.” I tell them. “There is no way I can escape so let me just gather my thoughts before I surrender.” I’m taking a gamble that they are stupid enough to buy it. Thankfully they are.

“Don’t try anything with us. We know about your ways and how sneaky you are.” The eldest one who looks to be in charge calls back.

‘Ppfh. If they knew about my ways then they would have checked the barn roof before just assuming I was being honest. Oh well their loss.’ I think to myself, as I climb higher and higher. Finally I reach the last hay bale, panting, beads of sweat dripping down my forehead. Outside its summer and yesterday’s 100 degree weather got trapped inside the barn.

“Give me a few minutes.” I yell at the boys all the way on the ground.

“If you aren’t at least beginning to descend in five minutes, we will come up and rip you to shreds.” The leader growls back, a sneer etched on his face. I smile sweetly back down and give him a promise of my innocence. Batting my eyelashes and smiling, I retreat to the rear of the hay bale. There I lay out all of my supplies. One hundred feet of thick ship rope, stolen off a boat on the Delaware river. Two long sharp hunting knifes, from a rich white hunter in New York State. The man now resides six feet under from wounds from his own knives. Other small essential items that would be of no use to me now. Now about twenty feet to my left there is a opening at the side of the barn. I have to be at least a forty foot drop to the ground. Thankfully I can use the rope to lower me to the ground. But the only problem is that the twenty feet between me and the window, has a ten foot gap between the hay bales. And the gang down below has a perfect view if I try to jump or swing across. In other words this is not one of my best thought out plans.

The crawling part of the plan went fine, because after you’ve crawled through twenty feet of sewage pipe that scratches your back every time you inhale, you learn how to properly flatten your self out. I reach the edge of the hay, and peer down.

I use to have a fear of heights but that has long since disappeared. Still the forty feet down to the ground, slightly scares me. I shake my head and return my focus to the task ahead. Now throwing the rope across will not be a problem, it’s securing it and climbing that will be dangerous and attract their attention. Plus they can run out the door and wait for me outside when they see me jumping out the window.

“Two minutes.” The boys call up to me. I grinned to myself and prepared to climb across. I found one of the hunting knives and tied it to the end of the rope. If I throw it then I would have to climb across. I mean ten feet is not that much but I suck at tightrope walking. Oh well.

I suck up my courage and lean back on my knees and prepare to throw the knife. I have only a few seconds once I cross the rope to exit out the window and make it to my car outside. Okay well, technically it isn’t mine. I killed the owner and stole it. Every time I move I steal another car just to confuse the police and so no one knows who I am. Its amazing how stupid the world is and how they still haven’t realized what I am doing.

Leaning back I push all of my weight into it and I throw the knife. It soars through the air, the blade glinting in the fading sunlight. It lands with a faint thump in the hay on the other side. The boys still haven’t noticed my escape but they will with what I am about to do. Quickly packing up my bag I throw that to the other side. That lands with a louder clang, loud enough that I attract the attention of one of the boys. He turns to his leader and whispers something in his ear. They still haven’t realised what I am doing. I truly wonder how stupid they are. The boys start yell and screaming, swarming towards the hay. Scrambling up they struggle to climb it. I smile evilly at them and wink. The only one still on the barn floor is the leader who is yelling obscenities at the boys, stuff along the lines of

“Catch the damn girl, b***hes!” He yells face turning purple.

Already having tied this end of the rope to the hay I place a single foot on the rope. The boys are about half way up so I have to hurry. Placing one foot in front of the other as fast and carefully as I can is very strenuous but I can do it. I just keep repeating a single motto in my head.

“Life is pain and this is just part of life.” I say to myself. After what feels like ages, my foot feels the other side. I take a leap and land on my backpack. The boys are just reaching the top of the hay now. The leader finally sees what I am going for and yells for his gang to get down to the bottom to intercept me outside. Saluting him I pull the knife out the hay and hold it above the rope. The first person has placed his foot on the rope and when he sees what I am about to do yells and tries to get back. Unfortunately for him all of his co-horts are right behind him and refuse to move back. In fact they are yelling so loudly that they can’t hear the leader now screaming, desperately trying to get their attention. I smirk but in the back of my head I am thinking that this plan went a little too easy.

I slice the knife down viciously and the rope snaps. Three of the boys plummet straight down towards imminent death. Thinking about how I have to jump from that height leads me to pause for a second, but the boys and the leader heading for the door, finally bring me back to now. I run to the window and tie the thick ship rope to the hinges of the window. I can hear the screams and yell of the boys running/falling down the hay in their rush to get to the door. Then I toss the rope over the edge and lower myself down. I release my grip on the rope and I slide easily down to the ground, a burning sensation crossing my palms. Grinning to myself as my feet near the ground. I can still hear shouting from inside the barn, but it won’t be long before they follow me.

My feet land softly on the ground and I draw my knife from my pocket. Then suddenly way above my head I hear another shout and someone screaming. I spare a glance up and am shocked to see a body falling, straight towards me, from the window high above my head. Stepping to the side, the boy falls with a sickening crunch on his neck. He lets out a moan blood gurgling out of his mouth. To put him out of his misery I stab the knife straight into his heart. Wrenching it hard, feeling the bones break and the blood spurting up around my hand coating it blood. Besides every person I kill means more for me.

But now I have wasted time killing him and the gang are close to the exit of the barn and getting closer every second. Yanking the knife from the dead body and slashing my initials into it as my signature mark, I cut the rope and turn on my heel. Seeing the trees in the distance and the faint glimmer of my car, I start running. Despite the heavy pack on my shoulders I am quite fast. But I have several things stacked against me. The boys are right behind shouting and screaming, and they have nothing to slow them down. They also have guns and since I am running across a field, I am like the perfect target practice. But I do know what I am doing and know where my car is. Plus there is my secret weapon.

My feet give me a burst of speed seeing the car right ahead. Taking deep breath and slowing myself so I can do this, start to scream. I know it makes no sense but I do have a plan. And there there it is. The sound that I was hoping for. The sound of my car engine starting. And suddenly a patch of bushes gets mowed down by a red convertible, with the top down and my ‘sidekick’ in the driver’s seat. Smiling and waving at me, he pulls out a handgun and points it over my shoulder. I see his finger twitch, and a bullet whistles over my shoulder. There is a thud and I turn to see a boy drop dead.

“Do hurry up,” Nico, my best friend and sidekick yells at me, “We need to get going.” He says with a smirk on his face. Grinning back I surge faster and hop right over the edge into the car. Before I even am sitting down Nico has hit the pedal and we lurch forward.

“Sorry,” He says with an impish smile, “Not quite used to this car.” I laugh as I hear bullets hitting our bumper. “Duck!” he yells at me just in case. I smile as I lower my head, but we are soon turning down another lane and approaching the main road.

When we are clear I lift my head and look at Nico. He’s relaxed with his arm out the window, ragged black hair blowing back in the window. His skin is an olive color with bright green eyes. On his face there are a couple of cuts from the last fight we got into. They are beginning to scab over but he has a kind of rough attractiveness about him. The story of how we know each other is a long one and not for right now. Right now I have more important things to deal with.

“Did you take off the license plate?” I ask Nico. He’s relatively good with this kind of thing. But I always just want to make sure.

“But of course m’lady.” he says with a smile. it’s a wonderful thing to see nico smile and not many people see it. Every time I do I savor it as it could be the last.

“Well I need to change and then we need to pick up a new car as they will now know we are in this one.” I say. I quickly scramble into the back and begin to strip. No no chill your biscuits. Nico can’t see me and it wouldn’t matter if he could. We have had to do so many things together now that changing right in front of him would never phase me.

I yank off the blood soaked shirt and throw it into the front. Then I grab a clean(er) shirt from my duffel bag I slip that over my head. It’s a cute flowy blouse with buttons down the front. Then using a baby wipe I clean the congealing blood off my hands so I can braid my hair down my back. I also change into some skinny jeans and grab my makeup bag. Hopping back into the front seat I use the mirror to wipe the blood off my face and apply concealer and eyeshadow along with some blush.

Nico takes his eyes off the road for a second to glance at me. “You clean up nice.” He says. Glancing at him I make sure he is wearing the clothes that I laid out this morning. He is which is good. We can now pass as a couple who just got out of the movie. We plan on parking just on a side street next to a movie theatre and then going round with my duffel bag and his things in my bag we will say ‘goodbye’ in front of the theatre. Then I go to the outer part of the lot, find a car which looks like I’ve borrowed it from my parents and he will hotwire a newer more fashionable one. We plan on departing in separate directions but to meet up near the highway where there is a convenience store in which I can hop into his car after we restock on food. To accomplish all of this we need to move fast because otherwise the police we start to crack down, knowing that we are in the area after we just murdered someone. The one thing that has changed about America, since we started our little business is that the security and forcefulness of the police and government has increased tenfold. It makes us have a little more trouble but with the sponsor like ours the government is no problem. In fact you could almost say our help is almost ‘divine’.

The movie theatre is now right ahead and this is where things get a little tricky. ‘Cause if anyone sees us and happens to notice what we are doing then we are in trouble. But if not then everything will go just peachy. So when Nico parks the car around the back and we don’t see anyone we are elated, but we make no noise, just silently get our things together. While Nico goes to check is the coast is clear, I wipe down the seats and rescrew the license plate back on. He motions for me to hurry up so I grab my duffel bag and come stand next to him. He grips my hand and looks flirtatiously at me.

“Ready to go, honey?” He says as we start to make our way around the building. His voice is sickly sweet.

“Of course.” I say in the same annoying tone. My smile is so wide it is obviously fake. I have no idea why no one notices how obviously fake we are. But we take advantage of their stupidity.

Strolling along the side of the theatre we whisper, “Dark Shadows.” So we have decided on which movie we saw. Not seeing anyone we cut the performance a little slack. Waving a cute little goodbye and kissing each other soundly on the lips, we leave wistfully with promises of seeing each other tomorrow. I stroll through the parking lot looking for a car which could viably be mine.

At the other end of the parking lot I see one who the owner was stupid enough to leave the windows down. From there is not too hard to slip my arm through the crack and flip the lock. It’s an old car so the alarm only goes on for about 10 seconds. From there I jump inside and hotwire it. I gotten so used to it and I now always carry the materials around in my bag. The car starts under my hands in minutes. Placing my foot on the gas and putting the car in gear, I zoom out of the parking lot.

Hopefully no one saw but if they did, they would have only seen a couple in love leaving a day at the theatre. I pull out of the lot and onto the highway. The convenience store is about five minutes away so I have time to think over what has happened this morning. When we woke up this morning both Nico and I knew that this was our last day in a cute little town in New Jersey. We had completed the assignment set out for us by both our sponsors. Now we were just having a little fun but the police had seen us. We had run away and decided to camp out near an abandoned barn on the outskirts of town. We stuck to the woods near the barn, me sleeping in the car and Nico lay his sleeping bag right next to the car. We awoke in the morning to the sound of shouting and motorcycle engines revving. We just smiled knowingly to each other and packed up our stuff.

See in our job we have a system. Nico is more in charge of escapes and plans and dealing with small need clients. I do the dirty work and deal with our major client and things of that nature.

So flipped Nico a thumbs up and slipped out of the woods to the outer parts of a large field. There was a dirt path running through the middle and to get to the barn I had to cross this. A cloud of dust erupts and I assume another person has just arrived. I estimate about five to ten kids. Boys most likely from the sound of their yelling and screaming.

The sound of screeching tires pulls me from my memories of the morning. Turning violently and scaring the people on the road around me I turn into the lot next to the convenience store. Nico is already there, lounging languidly against the car, black hair glinting in the evening light. Seeing me in the car he waves to me. I pull the car into the spot next to him and jump out.

“Any problems getting here?” I ask in a low tone as I approach him.

“None,” He replies, “And you?”
‘Absolutely nothing.” I smile at him. “Come on we need to go.”