A/N: Nothing to say really, other than I don't own Death Note.
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(Oizys: the malevolent daughter of Nyx, daughter of Erebus; the goddess of misery and woe.)
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How can one tell they are talking to a dangerous man?
It's quite simple.
That man is holding a knife to their liver.
Anna blinked as the police officer slowly walked past them, surveying the arm the attacker had around her waist. He smiled politely, the two young adults coming nothing short of an endearing sight to him: the small girl not being able to decide between two brands of blueberry jam as her partner softly held her close, his face buried in her neck as he whispered sweet nothings into her ear.
Honestly, she shouldn't have been surprised.
No wonder those officers never catch anybody.
Anna gave him a strangled smile and he hooked his hands behind his back and walked to the end of the aisle, his protective vest and the baton hooked at the brown leather belt disappearing as he turned the corner.
The attacker's hold didn't waver. Anna struggled in his grip, attempting to turn around to see his face in case the situation took a turn for the worse and she would need to describe his face to a police sketch artist.
The knife pierced her skin through the black skater dress she was wearing. She stopped moving immediately.
"Try anything and I will drive this knife into your liver. You will die a slow and painful death."
The girl gulped and nodded, assuring him that a) she understood him and b) she will not try to scream for the officer to come back at the top of her lungs.
A few tense moments passed before the knife and the hand left her but she didn't dare to move at first, eyes wide and unblinking, afraid the man might have changed his mind and decided it wouldn't have been such a bad idea to gut her after all.
"Excuse me, young lady, do you know where the cereals are?"
Anna jumped at the voice, clutching both jars to her chest. She slowly turned around but her captor was nowhere in sight. An old Mexican woman with a pink bomber jacket and flowery dress stared at her expectantly, her chocolate coloured lips stretched into a smile.
"I looked up and down the store but I can't seem to find them!"
The girl coughed awkwardly, too disorientated to pull a smile. "Uh, it's the third aisle to the left. The big sign above it says 'home baking', but that's only because they moved things around the other week."
She pointed it out to the old woman who thanked her, shuffling away in her flip-flops with a, "God bless you, child."
Anna looked around her worriedly, floppily dropping both of the jars into her shopping cart and hastily making her way straight to the check-out with jam, chocolate ice-cream and milk being the only items she had picked out.
"That will be $9.45".
She patted her upper denim jacket pocket and choked on her own breath. Her eyes widened in terror and, soon after, in anger.
The bastard stole my wallet!
She managed to luckily dig out an old $10 bill sandwiched between her library books in her school bag and handed it to the impatient, overweight, balding woman behind the till. She took it from the girl's fingers like it was diseased and dropped the change into her outstretched palm from as high as possible within the adequate customer service etiquette. A ten year old in the cue behind Anna demanded a chocolate bar from his exhausted father, wailing when he was refused one.
Anna piled the groceries in a plastic bag and bolted out of the store so fast, the doors barely opened in time for her to slip through the gap. Once outside, the cold air hit her bare legs and she shivered, rubbing the back of her neck. A small part of her knew she should have been more fazed about the fact she was almost stabbed to death ten minutes ago but she could only find it in herself to be angry.
Very angry, for when she got to the space where she parked her car she found it empty.
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"Stupid gorram idiot. Threaten me. Steal my wallet. Steal my gorram car keys!"
Anna muttered to herself the full forty-seven minutes it took her to walk home. The ice-cream was melting and creating a trail, like breadcrumbs, drop by drop. She could have dumped it in the nearest waste bin but she was too stubborn to do so.
The small cut has stopped bleeding but her dress was ruined and her jacket was stained with blood. She glowered at everyone she passed and cars honked at the oblivious girl as she crossed roads without as much as glancing at the busy traffic.
She thought she had it bad when some idiot burnt his toast at the university cafeteria and the pipes above them burst out a shower of rain water, soaking all of their books and ruining not only the body they were dissecting and washing away three tense hours of careful observation but also destroying a couple of chemical experiments in progress on the floor below.
"Asshole!" She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and stomped her feet, growling. "I hope you get hit by a bus and your neck is impaled by a rusty metal pipe and you die a slow and painful death!"
People stared at her and mothers covered their children's ears as they all hurried past the brown haired student with a crazed look in her eyes. The businessmen in expensive suits glared and tried to save their interrupted cell phone conversations. A few passers-by deliberated calling the men in the white coats.
Anna crossed the street heading towards her home before they gathered the courage to actually do so.
She waved at the old lady that lived below her, telling her to be careful as she climbed a fragile ladder to clean her windows. Anna offered to help her but the woman simply waved the young girl away, telling her she'll call when the television stops working again.
Anna rolled her eyes and laughed. "Sure thing, Mrs Walker!" She saluted her landlady before racing up the metal stairs and pausing midway to reaching into her pocket when realisation finally dawned on her.
Her house key was on the same chain as her car keys.
She anything but melted into a puddle on the floor and her knees buckled. She rested her head on the railing, cursing the thief over and over again in her head.
"Anna, is that melted ice-cream on the stairs? Don't tell me you walked home all the way from the store!"
The girl winced before poking her head out to look at the old woman below. She grinned sheepishly. "Sorry, Mrs Walker, I will clean it up, I swear!"
The old woman pointed her index finger at her. "You better!" Then she spat on the old rag in her hand and wiped at the window.
Anna sighed and pouted, letting her head rest on the cold metal for a few more seconds before letting out a deep breath and standing up, dragging her feet the rest of the way up the stairs. There were only two other rented apartments in the building, one belonging to a forty-something divorcee and the other to a wannabe rock star who practiced his guitar at ungodly hours of the night.
Her apartment was at the end with the windows in all of the rooms. By the time she got to the door she rested her head against it, completely exhausted. She dropped both of her bags on the floor and let her hands dangle lifelessly by her sides.
How could her day get any worse?
She decided to wait for the landlady to finish cleaning the windows before she asked for the spare key, oblivious to the door slowly swinging open. When she realised that her face had already connected to the floor with a loud thud. She cried out in pain, mentally yelling out all the insults she could think of.
She rolled over on her back and rubbed her aching nose, surveying the open door.
Curious; she couldn't remember forgetting to lock the door.
Slowly, a dark shape moved into her line of sight and came into focus directly above her. A pair of eyes glowered down at her. For a second they flickered in red, before returning to two dark irises of black.
Anna frowned. "This is definitely not my day."
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She glared at the intruder from the corner of her eyes. The bastard tied her to a chair with rope he seemingly produced from nowhere. She tried to wriggle free of her bonds but she only managed to almost rub her arms raw. She was stripped of her jacket and her shoes.
He was riffling through Anna's fridge and inspecting the newly bought food products. At least he had the decency to put the ice-cream in the freezer but she doubted it was out of good will.
The attacker – and now intruder – was a tall lanky man of about six feet tall, although he might have been taller for he walked with a hunch, as if carrying a great weight on his shoulders. He sucked his thumb like a child, holding up bottles of sauces with two fingers as if with great distaste.
He wore a pair of dark jeans that fell around his form like a blanket and a black long sleeved t-shirt. He hummed, scratching his knee with a bare foot.
Anna couldn't see his face. He was not completely facing away but it was covered with a mess of black hair. He was deathly pale, and she guessed Caucasian, but she couldn't see his face clearly.
"I am not a fan of blueberry jam."
She glared, lacing her words with sarcasm. "I apologise. I wasn't exactly expecting guests."
The stranger didn't even acknowledge her as he unceremoniously threw the jars back into the refrigerator and slammed the door shut, walking straight past Anna to her small mattress in the corner of her studio apartment, underneath the window that was open and letting in a small breeze.
"So this is where you live?" he inquired, finally meeting her eyes through a curtain of hair, his fingers pulling at his bottom lip.
Anna's response was calling him an asshole in Spanish.
He proceeded to scrutinise every detail of her small studio flat in the same language. He mocked her book collection, hummed in appreciation at the detailed autopsy photos on her desk and raised a questioning eyebrow at the large cherry blossom painting covering the entire wall of the kitchen area.
"Untie me, you asshole!"
He smirked and climbed under the covers of her bed, turned his back to her and fell asleep right then and there.
With Anna still tied to the chair.
Her mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air and for once in her life she was not able to even form any coherent words in her head, other than trying to figure out what in the hell was going on.