Chapter One: Roll the Dice, Get the Snake Eyes.

She had heard of people having a crappy streak of bad luck. But this was fucking ridiculous.

Her bare feet slapped against the tarmac quietly as she ran for her life. Quite literally.

"Huff… Huff… Huff… Huff."

Her breaths came out in short, ragged pants as she shot through the darkened streets. It was well eleven in the night and the sanctity of daylight wouldn't come for the next six or so hours. She had to last that long. She had to. She had to survive.

It was in fact only the sheer strength of her will and her survival instincts that pushed her along, kept her legs moving. Panic, horror, shock, grief and pain was lying in wait patiently for her to stop moving, for the adrenaline that coursed through her veins to disappear, so that they could hit. A tidal wave of emotion just waiting to break shore.

It was her desperation to live and escape the man chasing her- whom she knew first hand liked to get kinky with knives and guns- that kept her racing, ignoring the stitch in her side, that under normal circumstances would have caused her excruciating pain.

The streetlamps were few and far in between- which was a blessing and a curse. Provided that she could get her fucking breathing under control, she could be shrouded in the darkness, increasing her chances of staying alive for the next few hours until the sun decided to show up. The bad part was that the same applied to the creep with the blade. She wouldn't know that he was there until the serrated edge of the knife was at her throat, her jugular cut.

She didn't dare turn back, not in the slightest. She just kept running as fast as she humanly could.

Something wet and hot trickled down her cheek. Salty against her lips.

Tears.

Her body felt her grief before her mind registered it. The shock didn't give her enough time to feel, to be human. And that time sure as hell wasn't now. Run, goddamit! Live!

She was stupid- it was a cross, a scar she'd have to bear for the rest of her life. She had gotten her best friend killed. The only one who gave a rat's ass about her was now dead, and it was all her fault. She should have lost her will to live then and there, let the sick fuck with the pig head mask cut her ear to ear, chin to navel, until she was drained of blood. But no. Humans were innately selfish creatures. Even martyrs are afraid of death, no matter what they say. That very last second before the hay is lit, they want to live. And that's exactly why she was now running.

Survival comes first. Then comes revenge.

But revenge wasn't even on the radar at the moment. Just fear and panic simmering ominously below.

She had just run into a new neighborhood. One she didn't quiet recognize- all the zigzagging had thrown her sense of direction and the very faint moonlight did absolutely nothing to help her in her current predicament. It was all so… old. And dead.

More silent than a graveyard, if that was in any way possible.

She couldn't take it anymore. The suspense, the not knowing, was killing her. She quickly turned her head, glancing back.

Nothing. No one.

Turning her eyes back, she still ran, adrenaline- thank the heavens- still numbing her frayed nerves that was sending impulses to her brain, screaming that her body was on fire.

She gritted her teeth, trying not to cry out. It was becoming increasingly and overwhelmingly more difficult to restrain her humanity with every step she took, every pebble that tore through the skin on the base of her foot. A little by little, she was losing it. She was going to die… she was going to die. Oh God! She was going to die.

A metallic tang reached her lips, a droplet that was no sweat falling onto them. Blood. Most definitely not from the gash on her torso the bullet made as it grazed past her. She clapped a hand over the crack in her cranium that she hadn't bothered to patch up after the fight. In all normalcy, she would have pestered Elaine into threading a needle and sewing her up, but with the happenings- not to mention Elaine's death- the head wound that would quite possibly lead to a concussion seemed laughably insignificant at that moment.

Not feeling the sharp sting as her palm met her skull, she stopped the blood from dropping to the ground. There was no need to lay a bread crumb trail practically screaming 'here I am, Buck-o!' to the crazy-plus-dagger.

There was no God. There was no justice. Contrary to popular belief, there was no mysterious karmic force that punished the bad and rewarded the good. Otherwise, what sane all-powerful, all-seeing, titan god out there could possibly deem her and Elaine unworthy of life, could subject them to such a fate simply for fighting for the greater good? There were just inherently good, and inherently bad people waging wars against each other to see who comes out on top.

Currently, it looked like the man with the entrails-fetish was winning, though he was nowhere in sight. She was slowly but surely losing her shit.

And of course, that was the very moment that the non-existent deities and the whole fucking Universe decided to fuck with her some more. After running a good two and a half miles with a bullet wound stuffed with a dirty dishcloth, a crack in her skull and enough mental trauma that would most likely result in her going to the loony bin at some point or another in her life, her body decided to call it quits.

A thick fog rolled over her already waning vision and her world spun. She bit her tongue, hard, and the sharp pain as well as the salty, rusty taste of blood did a decent job of clearing her mind a little, enough so she could understand just how severe her situation was.

She had fallen to her knees in what was quite possibly the most isolated place in North America- no, scratch that- the world. Somehow staggering to her feet, swaying like a palm tree in a gale, she stood, blearily surveying her surroundings. The chance of being heard while shouting for help was just about the chance of getting hit by lightning and pelted with golf-ball sized hailstones in the middle of the Sahara. All in all, the chances were not good.

It was evident that the town… or whatever this godforsaken place was, was abandoned a while ago. A long, long while.

No payphones within walking (hobbling) distance. No streetlights. No houses.

The only buildings that indicated that this place once upon a time was populated by humans were two stores- a Chinese restaurant that was tightly chained shut, and a butcher's shop, with an iron grate bolted over the door. What the owners were worried about having stolen, she couldn't fathom.

Desperation was at an all-time high. Bile rose to her throat. No amount of training could have prepared her for this. She was only human and it was at least another two or so miles to a populated area. She couldn't make that run leaking blood like a punctured bucket leaked water. The dishrag stuffed under her shirt was so red that it was almost black. If she somehow miraculously escaped the man with the knife and the handgun, it was likely that she'd die of blood loss.

But deal with the first devil to go onto the next.

She weighed her options. She knew that her choices were limited. Straight off the bat she knew she didn't have a hope in Hell to find a nearby phone. She couldn't call for help- her screams would be heard by the night crickets, a possible serial killer and absolutely no one else. That left one choice.

Hide.

The big question was though, where?

For a minute, she contemplated going into a store to arm herself to up her chances, even if by a tenth of a percent. But she then realized that it was walking straight into the maws of the Devil. For one, the effort required to pry open the shutters and deadbolts would leave her severely weakened- she wouldn't be able to lift a finger. She'd be rendered just about as powerful as a malnourished kitten in the snow. But say she somehow got inside…

She didn't know very much about the neighborhood, but even when it had been populated, it was poor- that much was blatantly obvious. It was likely that despite the cross crossing of locks and chains, the shops had been ransacked, stripped of anything that can be potentially useful, or melted down and recast. She hoped to find a knife, but the chances of that were realistically slim to none. Realistically, the very best she could hope for was a plastic take-out knife.

Would she risk precious minutes of what was quite possibly the last hour of her life in a frantic search for a knife that may or may not be there?

No. She would not.

She limped closer to the buildings. They offered the only hiding place in approximately a mile wide radius but if she couldn't get in, even that would be useless. But then, thank her lucky stars, between the two buildings was a narrow alleyway.

Almost crying with relief, she dragged herself forward slightly faster towards her salvation, but then abruptly stopped, frowning.

The dark alleyway was the only hiding place. Meaning that when the axe murdered comes, it would be the first place he would look. She peered in. It was as black as pitch, but her eyes that were well adjusted to the dark, given that she had spent years living in it, could make out some of the details. Straightaway, her nose alerted her to the fact that the place was absolutely rancid, which by her books was a big plus.

The killer wouldn't be able to get to her by following the smell of blood, sweat, tears and downright heart-palpitating fear. It bettered her likelihood of keeping her life just that little more.

Her eyes made out the shape of a dumpster by the wall, deemed unworthy to be emptied by the garbage truck. By her estimate, the crap in there was years old. There was also a basement window entrance to the Chinese take-out place, which she immediately wrote off. If she got in, she wouldn't be able to get out. She'd be a cow to the slaughter.

Not that the alley would be too much better. She had no idea how many exits it had for her to escape from, if there were any at all. But she decided to pick the lesser of the two evils and entered the narrow space.

It was so clichéd- like something out of a cheap horror/slasher flick. Girl goes into dark alley. Girl met with a serial killer in a mask who proceeds to flay her like a fish while her scream echoes for a few seconds before the screen goes blank. It was like one of the movies that she and Elaine would watch for kicks on Sunday nights in the communal TV room. It was the only day they were allowed out of their dingy, powerless room in the basements, the only day they had no work and could relax.

If all was right in the world, tomorrow, Sunday, she and Elaine would probably be watching something very much like the situation she was in right now. She'd probably snort over the greasy popcorn they painstakingly popped in secret over a homemade gas fire and Elaine would smack her on the head for spitting over the food like a rabid camel.

A dry chuckle, somewhere between a laugh and a quiet sob, escaped her. There was no humor in this.

This was no movie. This was real. And it sure as hell was terrifying.

Legs threatening to buckle, she redoubled her efforts to find something to hide in. Trash? No. Far too predictable- that would be the very first place he'd look. Besides, she'd rather not die smelling like old dirty nappies stewed for five years in fermenting sauerkraut.

She started sweating out of sheer panic and nausea came back in all its fury. Ten minutes had passed. It was at times like these the chicks in the movies thought it was safe to come back out only to come face-to-face with their killers. She wouldn't make that same mistake. And she knew that he wasn't a man who gave up easily. Or gave up at all. He was coming, searching for her. And by now, he had to be nearby.

Something. Anything. A dirty cloth, a small crevice in the wall- anything that could hide a 5'4'' skinny nineteen-year-old. She scoured, panic simmering below the calm. She knew that he was near. Everything was dead silent and anyone else would have thought that the coast was clear. But she wasn't most people. She knew.

Her instincts alerted her to his presence in the vicinity- being the neighborhood.

It was the same gut feeling that saved her life in her fights. It was the feeling that told her when she was about to get sucker punched while recovering from a blow and allowed her to swiftly counter with a solid right hook to the mandible, flowed by a knee to the solar plexus and three fingers right below the temple that left her opponent out for the count.

The same series of moves that got her into this shit today.

And right now, her spider senses were tingling. The fucker was near.

Biting back a sob, she fell to her knees and groped around semi-blind. And almost wept when her fingers closed around a tarp. A blessed tarp.

Never had she been so reverent of a piece of plastic.

Staggering up again, she half-crawled to the very back of the alley. It was a cul-de-sac and she knew that she would need all the strength she could muster to punch and escape a second time and run the rest of the mile to the next town. Or die trying.

Lying down flat, with her legs slightly tensed so she could execute a capoeira kick upwards if and when the tarp was removed, she lay in wait. Hoping and praying to whatever God that she may or may not believe in to have mercy on her. Even the most fervent of atheists prayed on their death beds. It was once again, basic human nature.

Everything was still eerily silent.

She calmed down her breathing to near non-existent levels and her heartbeat slowed.

How much had changed in the last twenty four hours? She had lead a wholly shitty life- that much was given. The hand of cards dealt to her was so bad that the game had to be rigged. Orphaned, foster care, group homes, therapy, psyche ward at one point, public high school teeming with coke addicts, getting regularly beaten up by her 'manager' or sorts, running from the cops for petty crimes and cage fighting for a living. The whole nine. But this was a completely different ballgame.

Most of the people she ran with in Detroit could boast the same kind of life she was living. But no one else could really say that they had been shot at and stabbed by a guy who was Hannibal Lecter, John Kramer, George Harvey and Patrick Bateman rolled into one batshit crazy, homicidal freak of nature.

The pig mask she saw him wearing as he turned from her best friend's body- that she had no doubt was once attached to a real, live pig (there were blood vessels around the neck like tassels)- only upped the ante. This was no simple gun-toting Detroit drug dealer who killed with a gun for the money. No. This was a true sadistic sick-o who only used the gun to incapacitate. He used the knife for the rest.

Tears rolled down unchecked down her cheeks.

Elaine. She was dead. She was dead because of her.

The image of her last expression- the aftermath of a blood-curdling scream- etched on her face. Her guts spilling out onto the floor from the incision made from chin to navel- filleted alive. Her hand curled around a beer bottle as she fought back. And the sick fuck turning around slowly, having done his deed.

Buckling his belt in the process.

She hadn't eaten for two days- her midterms that seemed utterly useless now had been coming up and all the sneak-studying had taken up her time. But somehow, her stomach managed to conjure up some vomit that tasted of the classic gruel that was given at the MMA hostel.

If it wasn't for him taking a pause for the cause to shut his fly after he had defiled her best friend's dead body, she wouldn't have made it out of there. That split second pause between the moment he let go of his belt to reach for his gun was what saved her life and gave her enough time to throw an ugly porcelain cherub at his head and make a run for it. Elaine's (what she hoped was post-mortem) rape was what saved her. And it made her feel sick.

If only, if only she hadn't been a stupid ass and listened to Elaine.

She had tried to be far too smart for her own good and her best friend had paid the price for her mulishness. She should have known better. Sometimes the bad guys win and the good guys have to sit back and watch. She should have known that the guys running their little circus were fishes too big to reel in with her bamboo fishing rod.

But no.

She didn't listen to Elaine.

They caught onto her.

They wanted to get rid of her.

So they put a serial killer on her tail, so the police could never in a million years pin the deaths on them. All because she didn't dive when she was supposed to.

And the worst part? The Dunkin' Donuts/Krispy Kreme/Starbucks gang would never even bother to look for her body. Or find out what happened to Elaine. Or even bother to alert the FBI and shove their responsibilities to them. They'd just keep eating and pretending to be an efficient task force, letting the gun-toting Americans in Detroit lead their bloody lives.

Her breath went a little shaky with grief, but she quickly quelled it and pricked her ears, listening intently. Still nothing.

Her legs were cramping and she felt… well… like she had been shot with a bullet, stabbed with a knife and punched in the head more times than she could count in one night. The pain was just a muddle. So much pain she could no longer tell where it was coming from. In fact, it was faster to say which places didn't hurt.

Her thoughts began to drift as all the adrenaline rush crept away and the turn of events finally had the time to sink in. It was surreal and she felt the itching need to pinch herself to make it all go away. But she knew that all that would do was make bloody fingernail wounds, doing absolutely nothing to help her in her current predicament. This was all very real. She swore that she'd never laugh at Texas Chainsaw again.

In real life, the shit was a lot scarier.

Just yesterday she had been a normal girl- well, by Detroit standards. Earning a living, going to school, trying to build a better life for herself and Elaine so they could- fingers crossed- move to somewhere that wasn't Murder Central. A nice calm place. Tahiti. Hawaii.

Anywhere.

Even fucking Lubbock, Texas.

Anywhere where the occupation of choice was distribution of controlled substances and the air itself was smoggy with gunshot residue.

They were waiting until their pillowcase was filled with $20,000. They were at fourteen after five grueling years.

But their dreams just died. They died the moment Elaine did.

The tears came faster, though she still uttered absolutely no sound. All she ever wanted was to help the people she cared about. Get a good job that didn't involve getting beaten up for the pleasure of weirdos. She was smart enough to go to college- a good degree was almost guaranteed with a bit of luck and a scholarship. In fact, she had just done the SATs and despite her relatively meager education, she felt as if she had done quite well.

Elaine was always ecstatic about her education. She was a fair bit older than she was. She was twenty-seven. An older sister and best friend. Elaine always ranted on about how smart she was- she herself had dropped out of high-school at fifteen. She was insistent on that not happening to her, saying that her intelligence would one day be their saving grace.

It wasn't.

Because all her 'intelligence' did was get the most important person in her life killed. It had happened once. And it will just happen again.

Her life was cursed.

Someone somewhere out there had a voodoo doll in her likeness and was stabbing it with frenzied passion.

There was simply no other explanation to her strangely tragic streak of bad luck and misfortune.

No amount of Holy Water could save her.

She had to save herself.