Raspberry Coke

I am holding a Raspberry Coke. In a plastic 600mL bottle.

There are six of us, trapped in this concrete prison. Grey slabs stained brown surround us ten floors high. Through the glass, we can see khaki figures guarding the doors.

We're not scared, because there's six of us (and six of them), and I'm holding a Raspberry Coke. They chase us down, up wheelchair slopes that maddeningly zigzag the complex. Their belts and buckles clang against the metal railings when they run. There are no corners, just neverending corridors and so for now, we're not scared.

Inside, the aged plaster smells like public urinal. Our feet, wading dreamlike in suspended reality, are soundless and weightless against the lino. Gradually, the corridor walls press in on us, Alice-In-Wonderland-like, as we fly through this museum of optical illusion. Each corner is tighter, each room smaller and smaller. Too small for six, and we start to feel scared.

There is one more wheelchair ramp. It slopes from the second-floor exit to the right, then back to the left, to a door on the ground floor directly below the first. On the far left, another exit leading to darkness. On the far right, the afternoon sun sparkles through a glass door leading outside to a leafy courtyard. We six squeeze tight and shimmy through the railing bars, and somersault to ground from the guardrail, parkouring to freedom - only to be faced with more khaki.

Four men enter through the glass door. Another six, guns - guns! - at the ready, skulk in through the ground floor exit. The gap closes as the khaki we have amassed during our escapade, numbering in the twenties, flank us. Lastly, breaking from the mass, their leader advances menacingly - wielding a polished baton, shiny and dark, that is much scarier than the guns.

We might be six, but now we're scared. Their leader is muscular and unforgiving. His square jaw is matted with prickly beard that is soft as cactus. His gold tooth winks at us in warning as he grins, but not warning enough as he swings his baton into the soft abdomen of one of us. There is an audible crack of ribs, and it is the first time today that I will hear bones break. Our friend crumples, winded and in that moment, we're separated, not feeling his pain and not wanting to. The static binding us disappears, the electron trails snap. We're not six but six ones, standing on his own, each man for himself.

The buzzing, of trapped electricity frantically fighting its way out, of sudden isolation, of the bubbles in my shaken Coke, causes confusion and panic. It isn't unfamiliar but it isn't pleasant. It is waking up to yourself. It is a state of persistent heightened alertness leading to anxiety, paranoia and eventual insanity. It is a depressingly desperate struggle. It's cyclic. It's annoying.

I watch the big guy swing his baton again, casually and randomly, crushing a mandible beyond repair.

I grab one of the armed guards. He looks young, prepubescent, with no pockmark scars marring his perfect sweat-drenched skin. He is thin, eerily so and almost weightless in my arms. He's gone limp like a rag doll. I hold his cocked gun to his head and back slowly towards the darkness.

The khaki herd start to follow but the big guy holds up his baton and they retreat. He walks towards me, oh so leisurely, waving his stick in a figure-8 in front of him. I continue backing away with my hostage, and he follows until the three of us are in shadow. His gold tooth twinkles in the dark so I know he's still smiling. I'm awkward and clumsy. Now, I can hear my own feet, scuffing the concrete, and my own heavy breathing, but paradoxically can't hear his silent footfalls. I stumble but don't fall, and pray that I won't trip again.

My back comes up against a wooden door.

Big Guy hasn't seen me yet. With my gun hand I fumble frantically for the handle, a round brass knob. It's slippery. Sounds seem to echo further in the dark and the lock is dodgy. It unsticks with some effort, rusted metal grinding harshly on rotted wood. It is then that I hear his sheer bulk coming towards me. The thumping of muscle on muscle. The thumping of his excited heart.

I scramble inside, dragging the hostage with my left arm, and slamming the door closed with both our body weights. I hear a thump and feel it reverberate through my body, but the wood is solid. I lock the door with my right, swing around with the gun and instantly shoot the boy in the head. Such a waste of a life, and I'm sorry.

The banging on the door won't stop, and the door won't hold. I am in a sad-looking office, with a full bookshelf to the right of the door and a desk and matching chair facing a thin, long window that provides little natural light. I judge the room to be on the first floor, but the view from the window proves me wrong. I'm three floors up, boxed in by a large corrugated metal fence two-and-a-half floors high. The fence forms a narrow alleyway that holds a dumpster, and piles and piles of old university textbooks.

I consider barricading the door with the desk, but it's too heavy, or the bookshelf, but it's full and so too heavy. The dead boy's brains are a now sticky star-shaped splatter on the carpet. Both were poor time-buying strategies. There is only one real option for escape.

The window slides open, but sticks a quarter of the way. The resultant rectangle is the size of a small dog kennel. I can squat on the ledge, the only way I can fit, and launch myself out.

I slam into the metal fence. I then rebound, onto the edge of the open dumpster, chest first, and my ribs snap inwards. I slide to the ground, face down, and hear the final crunching of bone. Wrist, radius, femur or skull, I don't know. I imagine a million tiny voices shrieking in pain. I see a birds' eye view of my own sprawled body, flat and limp like a rag doll.

From three stories up, I hear a window open.