The Flick Of A Coin.

Run. 

All I did was run. No looking back, fear, prominently flashing in my mind, and my heart furiously banging against my chest, as I puffed out air, dodging the stones on the street. My worn out sneakers I had bargained for a mere 4 dollars were starting to fall apart, the soles filling up with dirt. 

As I turned around the corner, I snuck a glance behind me, praying that they couldn’t follow. Alas, they don’t call me Hapless Harold for no reason. 

Seeing a dumpster out of the corner of my eye in an alley up ahead, I gave out my energy and sprinted towards it, head diving into the disgusting bags of garbage, a futile last attempt of escape.

As I tried my very best to cover myself with a plastic bag that could’ve very well been mistaken for faeces for the putrid smell it gave out, I froze when I heard him. 

“Well well well, look at who’s trying to hide.”

I closed my eyes. Maybe I could still run. My stomach. Why do I feel so..

I wretched, jumping out of the dumpster and emptying the little contents I had in me out onto.. shoes. Ferran’s shoes. Oh well.

Wiping my mouth, I slowly lifted my head, only to see Ferran’s face so full of disgust and repulsion, that his body radiated a sense of revulsion towards me. 

He blinked. Once. Twice. 

Then I thought he would scream. Lash out, grab me by my neck and suffocate me. Maybe even cry. 

However, what he did was worse. 

“What, did you just do, scum?” He asked me, his gaze averting towards his shoes, which were now coloured in a putrid green, and then back at me. 

The fact that his voice remained calm was like that of a horror movie, the calm before the storm. The silence before the chaos.

I gulped, my hands on the rims of the dumpster, as I tried my best to regain my composure, and stop my hands from shaking. 

I stuttered. “I.. I’m sorry, Ferran..” 

His minions, Sullen and Aiwan, looked at me as if I were a rat they had found dead, and decaying in their bathroom. Their fists were rolled and they looked like they were about to snap at me, had I made one wrong move.

Ferran exhaled deeply, and then under gritted teeth, he told me, “Get. Out.”

Not taking any chances, I pushed off of my hands and jumped out of the dumpster, landing two feet in front of him. 

He didn’t say anything. He reached into his pocket and fished around. 

Well, -I thought- this is my ending. What a tragic and sorrowful tale I’ve lived. 

What he grabbed out of his pocket was something I would’ve never guessed. A coin, that shone when a hint of the sun's ray hit it. 

My eyebrows frowned as I tried to make sense of what was happening. “What?” I heard myself say. 

Ferran broke the silence and answered my rhetorical question. “It’s the season of giving, isn’t it?” He twirled the coin around in his hand, which caused it to emit a beautiful bronze gleam.

When he didn’t get an answer, he looked back sharply at Aiwan and Sullen, and glared at them. “ISN'T IT, BOYS?”

Hastily, they nodded, as the trepidation they felt from just seeing the big person that was Ferran was just enough to make two grown men wee their pants. 

“Ahem,” Ferran continued, “Pick, heads or tails, scum.” 

Though scared, I was curious. “What- f-for?” I asked, my issue with stuttering causing me to look more terrified than I really was. 

Aiwan and Sullen chuckled mockingly, and mocked what I had said. 

I scoffed, and fixed my gaze on Ferran. It was about time I got my act together and faced these nasty bullies. 

Unsure, I picked my answer. “H-heads.”

Ferran smirked. “If I toss this coin, and it lands on heads, I’ll leave you alone for a week. However, if it lands on the opposite side, your life ends today, here, and now.”

I shuddered. Why sign up for something when I had my life on the line? 

However, this could go two ways, the optimistic region of my brain assured me. Have faith. 

And so, with the cue of my nod, Ferran tossed the coin into the air, where it gleamed, and as if put in slow motion, it fell slowly onto the ground, as if it were a leaf on an autumn day. At least, that's what it seemed like. 

The four of us bent down over, my eyes wide open and waiting in half anticipation, and the other half brimming with the fear of losing my life.

Another part of me knew that I could avoid this whole situation together and run again, when they were so preoccupied with the intense interest of seeing the outcome of the coin. But, I’d run away from these people all my life. I deserved one chance to properly feel safe. Even if it were only for a week.

I closed my eyes and when I opened them, the coin had made the decision.  

“Heads..” I whispered, my body lighting up like the coin had.

“You p-promised, right..” I stuttered again, backing away slowly from the bullies who had tortured and tormented me for all 15 years of my school life. 

Ferran had annoyance written all over him. But mostly disappointment. “Whatever. But you’re dead next week at school.”

For the first time in my life, I ran from that alley with a smile leaving my lips. As the wind blew against me harder, a laugh cracked from within me, and then tears of relief and solace escaped my hazel eyes. With the sun setting in front of me, I grabbed the coin from my pocket, kissed it, smiled as it gleamed in the golden hour. 

Being able to run away from Ferran and his little gang wasn’t what made me so at peace. Escaping death wasn’t what caused these tears of relief. It was, that they had spared my life, not knowing that I had booked a one way ticket to Italy, 11,000 miles away from them. 11,000 miles away from the pain.

The flick of a coin had made my life turn from hell to heaven. From wrong to right. 

Perhaps I’m not Hapless Harold after all.