Alfred Jump meets Alfred Wait

Alfred Jump meets Alfred Wait.

I suppose I look pretty much the same as everyone else; another body
making its way cautiously home, another person who's been working late.
Well look again. Watch me tread carefully on the pavement as it
trembles beneath my feet. Watch me dance on the path like a drunk as I
shy away from dark shadows jumping out at me. Watch me jump away from
things you can't even see. My fingers coil around metal, a passing car
tips up the silence I was trying to hear. The air crackles with nothing
but the sound of fear. Saliva cracks in the corners of my lips and gags
my tongue. I feel the way with my heart not my hands. Sweat leaks from
my face, fingers numb, still clutching, squeezing tighter to remind me
that they can still touch. Litter laughs at me as it tumbles by, as I
mistake it for something else. I swerve to avoid a tree standing in my
path. I look around to see if anyone is looking at me. I wish I was
home already, I wish this was the last time, I wished this last night.
A steel spring coils in on itself along my spine. Buildings loom down
from left and right strangling out the light. I try to cough. I don't
need to cough. I can't cough. I want to try. I try again. I try to
forget. I try to draw a friendly thought in the night. It's too dark to
see; I lose the image before it even arrives. I look behind me. The
feeling comes again. The steel spring loops inside itself and leaps out
sideways where I least expect. I blunder into the flow of a pedestrian
stream. People and sounds close around as they harmlessly try to pass
me by. I avoid them, I leap out into the street, rain water weeps
through the toe of my shoe. My shoe squeaks sadly. I'm walking quicker,
bent double, trying to stop the spring from springing away, holding on
to a trailing thread of panic that's tightening round me. My fingers
tighten even harder each time. Choking, a gust of air knocks me across
the face. It takes me a second to compensate, to decide if everything
is alright. It might be. Fear is still coming in waves. I cough. It's
cold; I thought my skin couldn't feel the difference between hot and
cold. It can't. I look behind me again. I take a huge breath. I try to
keep breathing. I try to cough again. I hesitate. I try to take another
deep breath instead. My head starts to crush itself into my
chest.

Stop and wait a minute. Here will do. Just chill, wait and chill. Step
out, under these everyday spotlights, to my natural home. Rise on my
toes. Here we go again. Briskly, walking up behind. I spin his body
round. He spins around. The shiny blade winks silently in the
streetlight. I realise there is no moon. A shadow slaps me at the
moment it pierces me in the eye. I close my mind. I fall. My head hits
the ground. The whole world falls down on me. He's screaming at me as I
turn cold, speech bubbles like butterfly wings, screaming children
falling off swings, I feel cold, I feel the shadows creep slowly into
my bones. The shadows seem so far away already. A driverless Cadillac
pulls up. We're going down, we're driving underground. He's gone. The
air down here crackles with nothing but the sound of fear.