They found me. The hunt was over. I, the prey, was about to die.

It’s odd. I thought of the weirdest things. I thought that when people die, their entire lives flash before them. What happened was no where nearly as spectacular. The first thing that came to mind was rocky road ice cream. It was the most absurd thing at the time. I was about to die and all I wanted was to savor the chocolaty marshmallow taste just one more time.

Then I started thinking about some of the things I had regretted doing. Maybe I should have been nicer to the Jerk, well I guess I shouldn’t call him that. I guess I shouldn’t have been so mean to Craig. Maybe he was an alright guy—in a weird, pretentious and obnoxious way. But who knows, I’d never find out.

I’d never find out who my real parents were. I’d never know what they looked like or why they decided to throw me away. Why did they abandon me in this lonely world? I always imagined that they were a rich couple who tragically died in an accident after having me. Would I meet them in the afterlife?

I’m not a religious person, but I was still afraid of God. Was there a God? Would let me enter Heaven or would he send me to Hell? Maybe I shouldn’t have stolen Mr. Warton’s wallet, that’d definitely count against me.

If God existed, then why was I going to die now? I still had an entire life to live. I was still in college. Instead of letting me die, go and kill someone who deserved it. For a moment, I secretly prayed that God would strike down the three men who were after me. But it never happened.  Life was so unjust. The world is so messed up.

Then I thought about how I told you that everything was okay with me. Well, soon enough, you’ll find out that I was lying. Damn, lying is a sin, right? I guess so is swearing. Well, you’ll find out at my funeral. Would you cry for me? Would you even attend? Would any of my classmates even bother coming? Who would remember me once I was gone? Nobody at school even knew me. I didn’t have many friends or acquaintances.

But I began to doubt that I’d have a funeral. I was evidence to a murder, and the last thing these guys needed was another suspicious dead body. I’d probably be thrown in the lake or maybe my body would be sliced up into a thousand pieces. I toyed with the idea of haunting the earth for a couple centuries.

All these questions ran through me mind. I knew that I would soon have the answers.

Then I heard Craig’s voice, “What the hell are you doing to me? Get your hands off me.”

They were here and they were after me. I part of me couldn’t believe that they had found me at school. A part of me wished that I had never gone to that club. I never should have followed Mr. Warton. My curiosity hat made me the witness to a murder and I had become a wrinkle in some diabolical plot. I had become a wrinkle that needed to be removed.

Who were they? I really had no idea. All I knew was that I was being hunted for what I had seen. I wish I had more information, but all I had was a wallet, a bunch of cryptic messages, and two keys.

My mind was frantically thinking of the best way to escape. I quickened my pace into a brisk jog as I weaved my way through the crowded halls. Students were walking to their next class, and I had little choice but to bump shoulders with the occasional passerby, only to elicit some swearing. It was like running through an obstacle course, except with more profanity and the outcome would determine whether I lived or died. I pushed someone out of my way and a shower of books scattered into the air. There was some screaming, but I didn’t have time to look back.

I swore. The commotion would only draw attention to me. It would make finding me easier. How could I be so stupid? I should have thought things through more thoroughly. My legs had naturally led me to the main entrance. But that was also the most obvious place to enter a building.

As a stood before the beige doors, my heart was filled with agony. Just beyond that door, lied my chance for escape, but at the same time there I could be walking right into their hands. I didn’t know what to do. If I spent more and more time thinking about it, those three goons would walk in, but I had to make the right decision, otherwise I was also doomed. I had to force myself to think, but the only think my brain could do was scream, “Run! Run!”

I was too afraid, just as I turned to take the back exit, the doors swung open.

Morning. My least favorite time of the day. It was the time you had to acknowledge that all your pleasant dreams were never going to happen. It was the time you realized that you'd never have super powers and instead of saving the world, you had to get up out of bed and return to your boring, mediocre life. I hate mornings.

I especially hate the morning when I have class. After hitting the snooze button four time, I finally get myself to wake up by rolling out of bed and falling on the wooden floor with a hearty thump. Half-heartedly, I conjured an image of me arrive on time, but as I check my watch I realized that it remain just a dream. I was going to be late for yet another lecture on "Journalism and Contemporary Media". Frantically, I grabbed whatever edible items I could for my breakfast and I raced out the door of my apartment.

As I crossed the street, memories from two nights ago seeped into my brain. There was my narrow escape and my nerve-wrecking encounter with a cop. Part of me wished that Friday night was just some horrible, crazy nightmare but as I felt Mr. Warton's wallet in my pocket, I knew that it was no dream. Why do nightmares always materialize into reality but never dreams?

On the way to school, I couldn't help but think about all the random notes that I had discovered in the wallet. Numbers like "526-231", and random phrases like "Refugees Forgot". It felt like I had the pieces to some elaborate puzzle, but I couldn't make sense of it. After all, "526-231" wasn't even a phone number. It wasn't a bar code or a zip code. What else could it be?

Finally, I reached the lecture room and I slipped into a seat near the back. The professor was finishing a discussion on the implications of various social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Then the professor wrote down the next assignment, which I grudgingly copied down.

Next up was "Professional Writing in the 21st Century", which really meant "Wasting your 21st century time by teaching how to write in Microsoft Word". On top of that, tutorials were lead by the most eccentric and (I hate to say this about another person but) pathetic individual I have ever known. His name was Ms. Dawson and he'd start every tutorial with some anecdote about his banal weekend. The worst one was when he lost his pet turtle in the mall and tried to call the security so that they would help him find it. Apparently he threw a fit when they told him to go look in the lost and found. So as I dropped myself into a seat in the back of the class, I could just imagine the eyes rolling as Mr. Dawson began another one of his pointless tutorials.

"Good morning class. This weekend I made on of the most remarkable discoveries." A typical start to his tutorial. "I doubted such things could exist at first, but they do! There are actually web sites that can compute anagrams!" I could hear the silent groans. "After all, such a thing would be very useful. I, myself, have been making anagrams by hand all this time. To think that there are such wonderful tools out there. Simple amazing!" Why waste your time rearranging the letters in words to make up new words? Sounded like the kind of stupid thing Mr. Dawson would do.

"For instance, you can take someone name, say George Stouffer—who as you know has appeared in the papers recently—and plug it into this wonderful web tool." I couldn't believe he was wasting the electricity to project the web site on the screen. http://wordsmith.org/anagram/

"Then you type in name and Voila! Look."

My jaw nearly hit the ground as I saw the first anagram.

"Refugees Forgot."