The lampposts themselves swung in the air like the fluttering visage of lanterns caught in the force of a hurricane gale and the voices of my pursuers shouted promises that made my skin crawl at their vileness. Despite the great cloud that swallowed the light above and behind me, streetlamps ahead blinked on in a pattern too purposeful to be anything but a trail for me to follow. Even in my desperate flight this did not bode well, as this evil town was surly just luring me into a trap, yet the feeling of skeletal fingers grasping just barely at the edge of my nape drove me onward like a beast driven to the slaughterhouse.

  Hopeville was so empty, a mockery of the cheerful name given to it. No other lights beside my guiding lampposts shone. In my hurry, I saw curtains shudder and shadowy figures dart back into the alleys in which they lurked, but gone was the bright welcome in which the town had so eagerly supplied earlier. Buildings streamed by, the bank, a gym, a grocery store, each in itself a destination, but none had flung open doors, ready to receive my business. Their dark windows watched, like a multitude of great eyes as I ran my desperate race. The town no longer had a need to put on a fa?ade, for with each step I ran from the chasing cloud, the further I delved into the belly of the beast.

  A burning heated up in the center of my chest and stitch fought up along my ribs that reminded me that I had not done much jogging since High School and just about forced me to collapse and give myself over to the judgement of condemners, yet a final great light, brighter than even the moonlight itself, shone past the next streetlamp. It was hope, it was the sun, it was salvation.

  It was a tiny used bookstore with the silly name, “Hopefull Books” hanging over its entrance, a narrow door was flung wide open, beckoning me in with a silent urging.

  One last final effort.

  The rage of a hundred voices decried me, “Coward, murderer! Face us! Face justice!”, but if justice meant having the flesh stripped from my living bones like they kept screaming between even more gruesome promises, then it was not justice I wanted fulfilled. Give me anything but that. A hot breath ran down my neck, a whisper came from among the multitude’s shouting.

  “You can’t run forever, Richard.”

  Be that as it may, I did my best anyway and tripped on the way inside Hopefull Books. I banged my knees on the green carpeted floor and I stayed down there as I whipped my handgun out, ready to face my end. The ash cloud had been just behind me, but when it tried rushing the store it dissipated like the bubbles of an evil tide hitting a shoreline of rock, an invisible repelling force stopped my foes from coming in with me. Burned hands rended the air in my direction and the promises for bloody justice continued, but these abated after a fruitless minute of nothing else happening. Slowly, the ash cloud floated away, crawling down the street like some great flood, until only the bookstore’s light remained unprofaned.

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  And a figure standing at the entrance.

  The man in black was at the very edge of Hopefull Books, staring at me, yet coming no closer. I didn’t shoot him again, because I knew what a waste of a bullet that would be, so we stared at one another for a moment that stretched for so long that when the gangly creature turned away, I had to take a deep breath that I did not even know I was holding. He started ascending to the sky again, taking one step at a time like a lord ascending the tower of his domain. There were no need for more threats, for I knew what it would have said anyway. It would be out there, floating in the sky, watching and waiting for me.

  I couldn’t run forever.

  The stress and fatigue of coming so close to death, again and again, started as a ball of tension in my chest and shattered into wracking sobs. I had not cried like this since I was a kid snuffling my face into my mother's dress, but the smell of the old books surrounding me and the gentle light made me feel like I was back somewhere familiar, somewhere where I was safe again. Making sure to lock the flimsy glass door of the store, but not much else, I walked around to the checkout counter and sat behind it. The old, tightly wound part of me that had kept me alive this long kept warning me to make sure the rest of the store was clear, but a deeper part overrode that instinct and lulled my limbs to a heaviness that traveled up my body and to my eyelids. Sleep came without too much of a fight and I dreamt of a black haired woman bouncing a baby boy.

  A phone that I thought I had silenced woke me out of a dream that evaporated before my eyelids even fluttered open. There remained only the bitter taste of knowing that there was something pleasant I had been torn from, but unable to fully recall its form, remained. A haven in a haze quickly dissipating. Yet the phone did not seem to care for such sentimental trite and continued its electronic warbling. It was getting annoying.

  I answered and growled, “Yeah, yeah, I leveled up.”

  What was the point of this limbo? What was the point of leveling up and these stupid quests? Maybe this wasn't a virtual reality simulation, maybe I was in Hell.

  Just before I hung up, I heard that familiar voice, but this time her words sent me jolting to my feet.

  “Don’t hang up, Richard. We need to talk.”

  Would you live in Hopeville if the rent was cheap enough?