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My hands slapped on the pavement absorbing some of the shock from the one story fall. My body rolled forward into a wheel barrel roll. My legs pushed me off the ground and into a lunge down the dark alleyway. The street was numbed by the night. The stars no longer shined in the sky, they had been replaced a long time ago by a polluted smog. The sounds of the city was replaced by the mania in my heart. Getting caught once more would be the end. My wallet wasn't lined enough to hire a competent lawyer, my youth no longer protected me from being tried as an adult, and my record already had two strikes. The pace of my running was based on fear, a fear of capture. I tried to maintain deep long regular breaths.

"Breathe in, run, run, breathe out, run, run, run," I thought to myself. I tried to focus on my route rather than be bogged down with images of police officers entrapping me. At the end of the alleyway was a small brick wall. It was about eight feet tall. As I neared it my body exploded. I leaped up towards the ledge using my left foot to push downward on the wall at an angle. The effect of my foot gave me the little boost I needed to gain a hold on the ledge. My right foot kicked out behind me as my upper body pulled me up. As my waist rose above the ledge my legs swung to my left side and over the small ledge. I turned my upper body to where I'd come from. My eyes saw nothing but darkness. I sighed and then let myself fall off the wall.

I looked around to see where I was. I'd familiarized myself with a general lay out of the city a long time ago. The major streets and their physical geography was mapped in my mind. These small streets though were tiny scratches that never made it on the paper. I walked forward. The police would probably spend a few minutes at the site. They would call for back up or would need to do some sort of bureaucratic activity then would begin a slow casual sweep for me. Escaping immediate danger was always much easier than surviving the long boredom of self-protection. The police don't often catch people who commit premeditated crimes like mine, rather they rely on informants. The law is more a manager of information than a cat catching a mouse. The law induced people to rat on each other or for the criminals to let their guards down and blab on themselves.