Excerpt from A New Story: One Rainy Night

They had called him Ro, although he didn't know why. His name, his birth-name was Christopher Allen, but everyone he knew, since he was a baby in a basket, had called him Ro. It had something to do with his parents and he would've asked them about it, but both of them were dead. Well, Ro was alone and lonesome in a rainy sort of city. They had wanted him to go to some orphanage outside of the city, away from the place where his parents had been buried. Instead, he slipped away. He had a talent for slipping away. He was small, but that wasn't all of it. The world seemed to open up for him. The night he slipped away from the backseat of the social worker's car, three things had happened. The first thing was the social worker's keys slipping from her hands and underneath the passenger's seat. The second was that the lock on the car door  failed to lock. Ro slipped away into that cold night with wet snow  fluttering down on his head. That had been the third thing. The snow kicked up into a flurry, eneveloping him concealing him from the social worker's eyes. It was an odd confluence of events that came instantly, one after another, beckoning Ro forward, allowing him to escape into the night.

Rain rolled down Ro's cheeks while he watched a truck trundle down a long, narrow street. He was perched up high on a rusted fire escape, boxes scattered over him and underneath him. None of the streetlights worked on this street and it seemed like the city just kept them up to hold up a false sense of security for the unfortunate pedestrians that regularly lost their wallets and purses. The streetlights lit up the streets on either side of that narrow lane. The truck rolled to a stop before an opened doorway, creating a wall out of the back-end. The trailer hitch rolled up with a chuckling chatter. A whitish-blue light spilled from the doorway and over the cracked and litter-scattered street, illuminating a man standing in the back of the trailer. The man wore a black, leather jacket that stretched to his knees and a pair of black, leather gloves over his hands. Another man, wearing the same thing, stepped out from the doorway, dragging a large, black bag about the size of a person. The man in the back of the truck took the body-sized bag and flopped it down on the truck's bed. The man from the doorway  came back with another body-sized bag and then another and another. There were fifteen bags in all and when it was done, the man in the back of the truck pulled a gun from inside his pocket. The man from the doorway saw the gun and cried out. Zip-zip. It didn't sound like the whip-crack of a gunshot, but the man from the doorway fell dead anyway. The trailer hinge rolled back down and the truck rolled away. Ro put his hand over his mouth to stop himself from screaming. A snigle tear rolled down hsi cheek and was washed away by the rain. 

It wasn't over, although Ro wished it was. The man from the doorway had kept crying out with the rain washing over his face. He was crawling, making a feeble path toward the lights at the end of the street. Go back...back in the doorway. Ro's mind urged him to go to where he came from. Maybe someone could help him back where he came from. Still, the man crawled, leaving a long trail of blood behind him. Ro's hands and feet began to work without his mind, climbing down the fire-escape. He was dropping faster and faster, knowing that he could do nothing for the man. He was on the ground, his hands shaking and raw from the hurried climb down. He had came down so fast, but he couldn't cross the few feet to the dying man. There were two options and one of them seemed too tempting. He could either go to the man or he could run down the street and away.  His head told him to run, but his feet moved closer to the man and knelt down. He was still crying out and Ro could understadn what the man was saying.

"They kill me. They kill me. They kill me." He kept saying it as he made a slow progress through the rain.

"Minster!" Ro called. His voice shook in his throat. The man stopped and then flopped onto his back. His eyes rolled to see Ro and then he gave a beckoning hand. Ro crept forward, his arms wrapped across his chest.

"Minster, you got to go back. Is there someone in there? Someone that could have you?" The man didn't answer. He just beckoned Ro closer. Ro knelt down and put his ear to the man's mouth.

"They kill me. They kill me. Do nothing but obey, but they kill me. Help me, boy. Let my brother know that they kill me."

"I don't know who he is."

"He is Roco. Find him, tell him they kill me, they kill Marcus." His fingers were wrapped up in Ro's jacket and it was trembling fiercely.

"Where is he?"

"Go to...go to... the Runner's Tavern." He exhaled for the last time.