On The Run

Author's Note: The title is a work in progress, as is the story in general. To consider this complete would be a major error. The ending will certainly receive more attention in the future.

He only knew one life—the life of a man who did not exist. He was unassuming, average in both height and weight. In the past, he was handsome. He was the type of man that everyone saw but no one remembered. The only remarkable feature about him was the scar; the result of the day that changed his life forever. To him that day was his first birthday, even though he was already an adult. It was the irreversible end of his old life, and the beginning of a new life. On that day, he killed a man for the first time in his life.

            Perhaps he was justified. He certainly thought so. Perhaps he could have been acquitted in a court of law. He, as a lawyer, knew that. Perhaps he could have lived a peaceful life. Perhaps he could have had friends and a family. But this man did not deal in perhaps. He dealt in certainty. Admitting to his crime and attempting to justify it would create uncertainty. So he avoided it. And so he ran. He ran and he hid. Early on, thousands of people thought they saw him. The few that actually saw them were lost in the sea of those who didn’t. And so he left the only country he had ever called home under cover of darkness. A while later, a different man turned up in a port half a world away and bought a house in the old city.

            The day he left was forty years ago. The day he killed was forty years and one day ago. He remembered every moment—the fight, the knife, the gun, the chase, even the other man’s last words, fighting even with his final breath. He didn’t remember anyone else from before then. Not his mother, or his father, or any of his friends. He couldn’t. If he did, he would want to return. If he were to return he would be caught. His flight from the law would be proof of his guilt. He would face a jury, a judge, and finally a needle.

And so as he flew miles above the ground, he felt cut off from everyone below. He flew over a port that he had docked in forty years ago. He flew over an ocean he had sailed across forty years ago. It was just him and a metal beast and the past that he could never outrun. He was returning home.

            Since that day forty years ago he had been officially dead. A murderer on the run brought down by either a storm or the wrath of God, depending on which death one preferred. He preferred the wrath of a God he didn’t believe in to an unlucky accident. He had seen the certificates. He had seen his own grave. And he knew that his life had changed forever, as if a part of him had been buried below the earth for eternity.

            The man he became was certainly still alive. The port where he landed was not where people expected dead men’s bodies to wash up alive. That port was in a country where a man with money could easily double or triple his fortune through legitimate business. The man’s goal was not his own wealth. And so within a decade he became known as the philanthropist of the port. In spite of his best efforts, he gained publicity. Not fame, but publicity. Enough publicity that one man recognized him. And so he took his money and his boat and moved on to another port. He became a new man again. He built another career but was more careful this time—more careful to remain hidden. And so he remained in the background of the port, helping it discreetly as opposed to publicly. Operating in the shadows as he was used to.

            And so he lived for thirty years in that port. He became wealthy in that port. He grew old in that port. He wasn’t happy, but he was content. He told himself a dead man could ask for nothing more.

            But that was not enough for eternity. Contentedness does not cure cancer. Nothing does. And so the doctor told him he had six months. One hundred and eighty days. Perhaps a month less, perhaps a month more.

            He had never been a religious man. After the diagnosis, he went to church for the first time in forty years. It was Ash Wednesday.

            “Remember, man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” Soon he would become dust. No one remembers dust. Dust cannot be content. Dust cannot confess to a crime from long ago. Dust cannot apologize for what it has done, for what it has failed to do, through its most grievous fault.

            He prayed constantly for some time. Hours blurred into days, days into weeks. And weeks into month. The clock ticked on.

And so he returned home for the last time. The plane landed. His plane. The plane he had bought with the money he made for himself while on the run. He got off the plane. He walked across the tarmac. The cold, black asphalt on a rainy winter evening just as it was on that day so long ago. He walked. The car was there, just as it should have been. He opened the door. He drove. He drove the reverse of the path he took on that fateful day so long ago. He could still see the blood and feel the searing pain on his face. He could still see the body lying slumped over and the slowly growing pool of blood. He felt sick. For the first time in his life he appreciated what he had done. He had sinned; he had ended a life. He could not atone for his actions. But yet he tried. The door of the police station opened before him. He saw the man he was looking for immediately. The detective that had changed so much in appearance, but yet was still the same man as when he failed to find the man that now stood before him. Stood before him surrendering to the uncertainty of his fate but the certainty of his impending death.