I could hear them chasing me. My mother had always told me that they would one day catch up. That when they did, I would no longer exist as I had once. The heavy pants. The heat of flame. The rap-rap-rap of nails on the concrete. The person ahead of me seemed to be going to my building. They got out their keys.

I was too far away.

We made eye contact as they got their keys in the door and then let it fall shut behind them.

I realized that today might be the day.

The day that they would finally catch up to me.

I broke into a run, passing the door and taking a lap around the building, through the back alley, up and over the stray boxes that had been thrown there and long forgotten. My fingers fumbled in my pocket for my keys, instead hitting my wallet and almost throwing it from its space within my pocket. I tried my best to count as I ran, keeping my eyes open for obstacles and ears listening for the sound their bodies smashing into walls as they took the same turns I had taken but seconds before. One-two-three. A mistake. The keys were upside down and I needed the third from the right. I slid slightly across a patch of black ice on the ground, catching myself with one hand against a wall.

Run run run run run.

I had finished my lap, had my key in hand, and was finally again approaching the door.

Key. Lock. Turn.

I felt a heat against my hand as I pulled the key from the doors grasp. I had made it but just barely.

No time to stop and celebrate, I rushed up the stairs. Even though the door afforded me a measure of safety, that wasn't to say they wouldn't try their best to lure me out. Once they had even set fire to the brush outside to cause an evacuation.

Up up up up up. Counting 301, 303, 305, 307. I'd jammed the wrong key into the lock. A sharp yank corrects the issue and I burst through the door. I run to the kitchen, open the cabinet and grab our shaker of salt. A line across the door which had been broken when I had left earlier in the day, once again whole. Windows slammed shut as I draw a line with the salt across each sill. A long thin line along the base of each wall.

I can finally breathe.

That was in fact not the day that they caught me.