“Who are you?” I hear Mel say something. The man watches us through the visor of his mask. We take a step back. I feel my side hurt again, my heart shakes abruptly. My hands too. “What do you want!?” I can't hide it, I'm terrified. The man continues standing without saying anything. He raises his knife to his face and turns to look at him. Small drops of blood slide from the tip. “I want to see if my hunch is true” we hear from the mask “The last person was very easy to hunt”.

The man steps forward quickly with a stride and swings his knife in our direction. I see everything happening so slowly. I want to get out of here. I push Melpomene to the side of the road. I don’t measure my strength. She falls and rolls down a path. The knife creates another wound on my body. A long horizontal slash across my bicep. Again, the cold, the heat and the cruel pain. I squeeze my arm with one hand, I feel liquid. I start to run in the opposite direction. My mind goes blank. I’m so scared. Not again. Not again. I can’t lose my cool. My leg starts to hurt, but now is not the time. I know it has a hole that hasn’t closed yet, but I have to get out of here running. The man’s footsteps continue hurriedly behind me, but then they stop. No. Melpomene. “MEL!” When I turn around, the man is not following Melpomene, he is still where he was, several meters behind me. Standing, arm outstretched, pointing a gun in my direction. Melpomene looms in the distance. I was running in the direction I pushed her. I think I'm still standing, hand clutching the wound the knife made in my arm. I don't know if seconds or minutes have passed, and the guy still has his gun pointed at me. I close my eyes.

Instead of an explosion, there’s a sharp thud, like applause. A second passes, then another. I open one eye. The gun the man was holding has fallen to his feet, but his hand is still gripping something imaginary. To his right, I can see a hand sticking out of the underbrush. Melpomene’s fingers remain outstretched. I think about running back, creating more distance between me and the attacker, until I notice he’s standing there, shaking in an odd way. His position is awkward, and his hands are contorting as if they’re broken. He’s… being held back. Melpomene is holding him back.

My teeth are chattering with nerves, and my leg is burning, even though I've only taken a few steps. It doesn't matter, I can't abandon her. I see her hand in the brush. She's closer to him than I am. I said I'd help her. I push off with my good leg and run towards the attacker. The blood on my arm is dripping down my fingers. I don't know what I'm doing. I know it's a bad idea. I know it's going to backfire because I'm dealing with horrible luck. I get within a few inches of the man and I push my shoulders forward. Almost instantly, I hear him take a step back. Melpomene has let go of him, and I tackle him with all my strength. His body is tough, but he's lost his balance after being held back, so a single blow sends him back.

I almost manage to avoid him, to ignore him and keep running, but as he falls he grabs my leg and I crash to the ground a few feet away from him. I think he growls, I don't know, the feeling of his gloved hand holding my ankle makes me panic and try to shake him off desperately. The man grabs my shirt and crawls until he faces me. In the darkness I can't even make out the features of his mask. His fist hits my cheek, and I see lights for a second. Suddenly, I don't feel as strong as I did a moment ago. I don't know what I was thinking, he's knocked me out. I hope Melpomene has gotten far enough away. I don't know how long I can hold him back, or if I can again. For now I have to get away. I think so many things, but I don't do much. It's like I've woken up from a bad hangover. The man stops and stands up quickly. I don't know what's happening. I brace my toes against the ground and try to straighten up to follow him. I barely regain some of my balance and shake my head. It was a hard blow. Sitting on the ground, I look up. The man is holding his gun, pointing it at me. It's like that day in the rain.

Maybe it was always my fate, I just avoided it the first time. I don't know why I'm so calm when my heart is about to explode. Even when this time I'm completely alone. Maybe that's why I feel a tear running down my cheek.

Something hits me in the chest. It shatters me. I lose all strength and fall to the ground. “NO!” a heart-wrenching scream sounds from the sky. A girl, I wonder who it was. I can’t open my eyes anymore. I hear Mel crying. Why are you crying? You have to run, you have to get out of here. Before she finds you. Why does it sound so close?

A drop hits my eyelid. I slowly open one eye. I thought I was dead. The rain is starting to soak me. I stand up and jog until I’m under a tree, but even here the rain is falling on me, as if it ignores the foliage above me. What’s going on? I get up and the man is gone. I’m still in the park, and it’s raining fiercely. “Mel? Mel!” I start to shout. I have to find her. I walk toward the path where I pushed her, but a fog prevents me from seeing clearly. Where is she? How much time has passed? I look in all directions, but I can’t see anything beyond a few simple steps. The rain continues to fall in torrents. The sound is very loud. I go back to where I woke up, looking for clues. I thought I was dead. How is that possible? Did he miss his shot? If so… What hit me?

“Hey, amigo!” a voice shouts in the distance, I don’t recognize who it is. I start running in his direction. The pain has faded from my leg, could it be the adrenaline? My arm! I look at my bicep, but the wound has… disappeared. I clearly saw him attack me… His hands were even covered in blood… What the hell is going on? “Hey! Over here!” the voice shouts again. I can make out someone a few meters away. I start running towards him. A little more than five meters away, that person looks like a silhouette. “Enough! Don’t come any closer!” I stop.

“Stay there!”

“Yeah… Who are you?”

“That doesn’t matter! Look up!”

I look up at the sky. Instead of clouds and stars, the light of an orb is blocking everything. In the middle of nowhere, floating, that bright sphere generates the rain that falls on the park. In the distance I can now see that nothing else exists. The park is trapped in the middle of space. And inside the orb, Melpomene is levitating.

“Mel? MEL!”

“She can’t hear you”

“What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure – But I think I know how to get out of here!”

“How?”

“Look to your right!”

In between me and the person is a path that wasn’t there before. A glowing path. It stretches for meters and meters into the distance, and the end is illuminated by another, smaller orb. Focusing on the contents of the other orb, I can only see a shape floating in it. “What is that?”

The figure starts walking towards me, and I move closer. Just inches away I can see his form clearly. Before I can get a good look at his face, the person pulls something out of his pocket and puts it over his face. A mask.

The guy from before stops a few feet away from me. I immediately try to run back, but a force pushes me back. What's going on? This must be hell. "You can't go back," the guy says calmly. "What the hell do you want!?” I tell him.

“Well, to get out of here”

“Why did you attack us?”

“To kill you, obviously”

I take a step back, the man remains where he is. “But I can't kill you in this condition,” he says, showing his empty hands. “I think I know where we are”.

“…Really? Where?”

“In hell!” he says and lunges at me. I fall to the ground and put my arms in front of me to protect myself. Nothing happens. I slowly open my eyes. The man is still before me, but he can’t touch me. Something is stopping him, pulling him back like the strings on a puppet. His outstretched fingers are shaking. He’s being held back. I slowly stand up and his body automatically arches back. It’s like I have a force field around me. “Believe me, I’m trying, but I can’t do anything,” the man says and takes a step back.

I put a hand over my eyes to stop the water and look at Melpomene. Are you doing this? Maybe… she did it unconsciously. She said her powers became unstable by her feelings… This world is terrifying. It’s like a memory lost in space… with eternal rain. This is the result of her fear. And this idiot. The man is still standing where he is, staring at the sphere. “What are we supposed to do? Fight for it?”

“I think so… that thing over there… has my gun… I hadn't been able to get very far until you came”

“I won't let you have that gun”

The man laughs darkly under his mask, then turns to look at me.

“I'll kill you again, you moron”

No, you won’t. The man starts to move forward and stops abruptly. I walk over and stand beside him, I can see that a glass wall stops him from moving any further. I look up at Melpomene once more, and I touch the wall. The glass starts to crack. I can feel that killer’s gaze on me. A simple race? I can beat him, I have to beat him. The only good thing in this world is that I don’t feel any of my usual pain. With the rain, it’s like I’ve gone back to a few minutes before the encounter with that psychopath. But now, I have the chance to save my friend.

The glass cracks completely. The moment it shatters into a thousand pieces, they disappear. I take a step forward, and the guy lunges at me. His hands go straight for my neck. I scream and punch him in the face. The visor of the mask shatters, but the blow ends up hurting me more. His hands clench, I feel like my neck is going to break. I punch him once in the side, then with the other hand, and repeatedly. “Damn, son of a-!” I grit my teeth and land another blow on his rib. This time, his hands lighten their pressure. I bend one knee and use the momentum to head-butt him. Again, the blow ends up hurting me more, but it stuns him enough for me to break free from his grip. I quickly get up and start running down the path.

Behind me, I hear him cough, and he stands up. His boots make an unmistakable thud. But without the bullet wounds, my legs feel like new. I keep running, each breath feeling like swallowing metal. His hands have tightened too much on my throat. The momentum of the rain threatens to push me back as the path begins to incline, but I double my effort. “Shit!” I hear a scream behind me. The guy throws something at me. It’s something light, the impact doesn’t hurt, but the surprise is enough to stop me for a moment. I feel the man’s weight on my back. We both fall to the ground. The guy squeezes my neck with his arm again and begins to hit me with his free hand in the ribs. Every second is another sharp pain on the wounds he’s already given me. I try to breathe, but nothing goes in. Looking ahead, I see what he threw at me: his mask. I reach for it, but the guy uses his other arm to stop my hand. I haven't breathed. My consciousness is starting to fade. With my free hand, I reach for his head. His hair is long. My thumb is directly over his right eye. I start to squeeze. Digging the rest of my fingers into the top of his head. The guy screams in agony and let’s go.

“You bastard—!” I know he's holding his eye in pain, I don't need to turn around to look at him. I get up to run again. Everything hurts. I limp on the first steps, but I try to ignore it. One step, then another. Each one hurts more than the last, but I'm so close to the sphere that I don't care. I keep running, the sphere lights up the path in front of me, I can now clearly see what he said: the gun. As soon as I reach it, I snatch the sphere from its place with both hands and continue running. I have to open it. How? I hear the boots behind me again. I'm screwed, he doesn't stop for anything. The light emanating from the sphere blinds me when I look at it, but it's not hot. The orb is colder than the rain falling on us. The man comes closer and closer. I have an idea.

I turn sharply and bring the sphere to the man's face. He covers his face with his hands and I take the opportunity to tackle him using the sphere. The impact pushes him back and shatters the sphere into hundreds of streaks of light. We both open our eyes.

The guy is on the ground, lying down, a stream of blood running from his left eye. His face. He can't be more than a few years older than me. His hair is long, his face is normal. He's a normal guy. In my hands, I realize that I'm holding the gun he shot me with earlier, and I point it at him. “Do it!”

I can't, I can't shoot him. My hand shakes as if trying to activate my decision. The guy looks at me, he's enraged. "What are you waiting for?"

The guy starts walking towards me and grabs the gun by the barrel. A shot is fired as he pushes the gun towards me. The bullet has gone flying into the distance, but the sound of the explosion echoes in my ears. I can’t hear him scream, but he tries to take the gun from my hands. My muscles are tired. I have to resist. The guy kicks me. We both fall to the ground and the gun slides towards the path. We continue to struggle for several minutes. His fists hit my ribs and arms, I try to keep him still, to tire him out, but it’s impossible. With a blow to the head, the guy manages to get me off of him, and he sneaks towards the gun.

I try to sit up. When I do, he now holds the gun over me.

“You had your chance! Now you’re dying”

“What did we ever did to you?”

The guy relaxes the arm holding the gun.

“My hunch was wrong”

“What are you talking about?”

“I had a dream that something would happen… that I would meet someone… but this, it’s been disappointing”

“Don’t hurt my friend... Go ahead, kill me if you want, but don’t hurt her”

“What? I’m not interested in her”

The guy is now looking me straight in the eyes. His left eye is completely black.

“I saw you”

The guy raises his gun to point it at me. No. I jump forward and the shot goes into my leg. The other one’s been damaged now. The heat, the cold, the pain. I’m getting used to it. I grab him by the arms and push him back. I feel a blow to my jaw, then another, then another. Each one shakes my skull hard. As he’s about to hit me again, I manage to stop his arm. “FUCK!” I land a direct hit on his other eye. The blow sends a horrible pain through my hand, but I still hit him again. The guy stiffens, and his body relaxes.

I try to grab the gun with the hand that hit him, but I can’t even move my fingers. I think I broke it. I grab the gun with my good hand and stand up as best I can. The guy is still lying where he is. I let him get back up. “Enough?” I ask him. The guy lunges once more. I don't even think about it. The bang hurts my ears. My arm jerks back, the gun heavier now. I whip it back in. I know where to aim. Another bang, then another. Adrenaline takes over. I don't even know if I hit him, but I keep firing until the magazine is empty. The guy staggers back and falls on his back. I'm about to pass out.