Martin stumbled through his own back yard, trying to get away as fast as he could from anywhere where the cops could find him.
A sleeping T-rex opened an eye when he stumbled over its tail.
Martin jumped back and saw he’d stepped into a smoldering pit of lava that, oddly, didn’t hurt.
How could he run, how could he do anything right, with all these bloody hallucinations? First the dreams, now this. He had no idea chronic worry and sleep deprivation could do all this. Could it do all this?
He checked for his passport as he climbed over the T-rex, ignoring its sinking its teeth into his thigh.
Bollocks! He only came up with those funny religious papers the cops gave him. Passport must be in the other pocket.
Siren. Real or imagined? Martin threw his backpack over one shoulder and struggled over a fence in the opposite direction, just to be sure.
Pounds, no…dollars. Checked his other pocket. Plenty. Plus an ATM card he should use as soon as possible and certainly long before arriving at JFK. But then he couldn’t bloody well buy a ticket for international travel without using his real name, could he? Would he have to stay in the States? Could he fly at all?
“Yo, what choo doin’ in my yard, chump!”
Real or imagined? Martin looked over his shoulder. Chap running after him looked like he weighed the better part of 200 kilos, with footfalls resonating in the ground as if he were the T-rex. Martin’s vault over the fence in front of him was the stuff of the Olympics.
Safe on the sidewalk. So what if it was bright pink and wobbly. He just hoped the ATM he spotted at the corner deli was real.
It felt real, unlike the T-rex’s teeth. Martin stumbled through the necessary and tried to empty out his account. Sadly the message telling him he could only take out a max of $800 turned out to be equally real.
He managed to hail a cab, after he remembered that, yes, the ones in Brooklyn were now green.
