Bit by Bit

They were coming, bit by bit they were catching up to him. He was running, forever running, legs aching, body slowly losing energy. His old tennis sneakers skidded over the old linoleum, past the lockers, and the closed doors of the classrooms. He closed his eyes, and stopped inches before the metal grate keeping him from his freedom. They were still chasing him but no longer running. They knew that he had nowhere else to run. They never stopped jeering at him, all the way down the hallway, he couldn’t even hear the words. They faded into a monotonous rumbling. It didn’t matter anymore, they would catch him, and there was no escape.

He collapsed on the cold linoleum; the gum from someone’s shoe would be the last thing that his eyes would ever see. He closed them in a desperate attempt to escape his fate. He pictured his elderly dog, sitting on his porch waiting for someone who would never come home. They were finally there, their cruel laughter cutting through his final fantasy. He could barely feel the expensive shoe that rested on his neck. The taste of blood in his mouth barely registered in his mind. He watched as if he was separate from his body. He was staring at the malicious pack that had harassed him since third grade. They had all the money in the world, and everything else they could ever want. They had all the cutest girls in school, and he had nothing. He never had figured out why they despised him so much. He was just there, a figure on the landscape.

He watched, removed, as they kept mercilessly hitting him up, striking him repeatedly in his jaw and groin. He saw dribbles of blood leak from his mouth. They continued relentless, for over what seemed like an eternity. He was becoming more removed. The last thing he saw was the ring leader landing a final blow in his stomach, then chuckling leisurely, as if all he had done was pat him on the back. The pack slowly started to amble away, to there simple and seemingly perfect lives. They left him in the dust of a hallway, with the absolute silence that is the only thing you can hear in a school after three o’clock. He laid there; his mouth open in a state of shock. He could feel he life ebbing away, like the grains of sand in an hourglass. Bit by bit...