The balcony was fitted with modern furniture of two pink and one blue polished two-seater plastic stools and an 'S' shaped glass table. On the blue stool sat my brother and his mentor, Tina. On the pink stool, it was my sister and her mentor, Leo, and on the last pink stool was me and my mentor, Mellissa. The sky was painted an intimate pink by the sunset. The fresh dew of grass prickled my senses and the last of the sweet chirps of the birds invited a certain sense of awe that could only be triggered by the magnificence of mother nature.
"You are going to need to train much harder", said Tina, addressing my brother, "especially since the recent passing away of your father, people are looking up to you as his heir." Her brutal announcement triggered the bundle of my buried memories to unfold. He was a loving father, despite his profession, and kept us away from the negativity - inflicted upon him by nothing but fate - as he indulged into it as a gangster. My brother nodded curtly.
Looking at my sudden expression of grief, my mentor hugged me like a mother and smiled brightly. Her smile conflicted with the darkening sky, making the dusk look out of place. I loved her. She was nothing less than a mother to me. Our intimate moment was somewhat infectious, for I felt even more arms folding around us two. First my sister, then my brother and then Leo. They all indulged in the much needed warmth of a hug. Even Tina looked at us with longing and considered being part of the little scene but she was suddenly distracted. "Something's wrong", she said, "I cannot hear the footsteps of the patrolling security guards..."
The words were hardly out of her mouth when several black-masked and black-suited men barged in over the balcony walls. There were tens of them. Instinctively, our mentors stood in front of us, guarding us like human shields. Bullets left the guns of every one that possessed them. There were piercing screams from each side. Some of deep wounds, others of death.
Just as the intruders seemed to lose, there came a loud knell of defeat from Tina. She was our bravest fighter. Her doom meant there was no chance for us. Shortly, Leo died too. My brother was now crouched under his stool with a gun in his own hand. I never knew he had one. I was standing there, confused, turning round and round to find the source of each new blast. A speeding bullet pierced through my mentor's heart. In a matter of seconds, she was dead too. I had hardly acknowledged the fact when my sister fell right into my hands. Behind me, echoed the last cry of my brother. And just like that, everyone I loved was gone, in less than five minutes. I broke out crying.
The stench of blood rushed in through my nostrils, giving me nausea and making me want to escape. Looking at the dead bodies around me I felt a hole in my heart, one that would never fill up again. My hands were numb with the dead weight of my sister's head. Everything was numb. Most of all my heart; which reflected the darkness of the heavens above. Seconds stretched into hours. Time was running out. My grief turned into anxiety.
What if more of those masked men came? My brother, my sister, Tina, Leo, they all fought for their lives until the last minute and my mentor, Mellissa, died for me. I could not let her sacrifice go in vain. I could not let those rival gangs win the satisfaction of cleaning my father's whole bloodline. I had to fight. Just like our mentors. Just like my siblings.
I went into the destroyed house and grabbed my black fighting suit and the emergency rucksack Mellissa had prepared for me. Hoping against hope I was trained enough to face this challenge, I opened the backdoor and stepped out of the ceiling of security and entered the life of chase.
I woke up suddenly from my dream. The clock on my window pane read 6:00 a.m. I wasn't supposed to be awake for another hour. 'That was intense', I thought, 'much like a nightmare!'
I love my siblings. I could never imagine their end as vividly as I had in this dream. The ache of my heart. The tears in my eyes. Is that how it would be? What if I actually had to live the rest of my life running? Would I be able to survive? I speculated:
There were noises outside my house. Looking under my window, I saw five masked men hammering my door down. I left my room and ran towards my parents' room. Their window faced the back garden. I jumped from the window onto the extended ceiling, halfway though the wall, and reached down to the garden. I could run out of the back door but they would surely be guarding it.
I climbed over the garden fence, crouching low until I reached the back door of my neighbours' garden. I climbed over and jumped out from the other side. But no use, they noticed me. They ran after me but I had the advantage of about two metres because of my genius plan... I ran across the familiar streets while they chased me. There were cars all around but the one that caught my attention was right in front of me. An open car. What are the odds? I jumped inside and locked the door while crouching under the seat so nobody could see me.
One of the intruders looked inside the car and found no one. "We missed her!", they face-palmed themselves in disappointment. As soon as they left, I started the engine (using a wire technique Mellissa had taught me) and drove towards the North. I planned to go as far away from this fiasco as possible.
It is so easy to get caught into the action that we forget the sorrows and the misery of these real-life (after all we never know how many people in this world spend their life on the run) characters. Perhaps it is all so far-fetched for us that we cannot imagine ourselves in their place; until we are forced to by a nightmare.