I was getting paranoid.
I turned and tossed a glance over my shoulder but saw no one, as usual, and scolded myself for being so stupid. Nobody was following me. I was letting my mind runaway with me. Walking home alone was getting to be annoying, but what else was I supposed to do? Mum didn't have a car to pick me up and dad hasn't been around. Despite what the newspapers were saying about gang violence and random murders, why would I be a victim? I was just Bree.
I spun around again at the sound of footsteps.
I saw nothing.
I scowled at myself, shaking my head. No one was going to pop out behind a car and murder me. No one was going to kidnap me. Nothing was going to happen. My house was just a block away. There were cars driving up and down the street. Surely someone would stop if I was getting murdered.
I glanced at my watch and saw it was almost 10-PM. I was expected to be home in ten minutes. Surely my mom would believe that cheerleading practice had run late again. She always believed that. But what she didn't know is that I was kicked off the cheerleading team. Ran off would be better. The other girls weren't so friendly.
I sighed. I had been hiding in the locker rooms doing my homework like I did everyday so my mom wouldn't wonder why I wasn't coming home. How could I face my mom and tell her that her fifteen year old daughter was a loser? A failure in life at high school? I couldn't. It would just make her drinking problems worse.
I stopped walking in front of an alleyway. It was dark and damp and narrow and the sound of dripping water echoed off of the walls. I shuddered and hugged myself, staring into the darkness. I tugged on the strap of my backpack, thinking about all the cliche movies I had ever seen where young girls get murdered in alleyways. I scoffed and rolled my eyes and kept walking.
Before something grabbed my backpack and pulled me into the alleyway - pulled me so hard that the force nearly killed me.
I flew backward and into the darkness. My backpack flew off of my shoulders and hit the wall and I went tumbling literally head over heels over the cement. My skin rolled over broken glass and sharp rocks stuck in the cracks of the pavement. My head hit the ground finally when I stopped rolling. My head felt swollen and a slow pain creeped up onto my scalp so intensely that I cried out in the darkness, the air suffocating.
"Hello." A dark voice whispered in the darkness. I could see she shadow of a person kneeling down next to me. They leaned in and placed their cold lips near my neck, their breath in my ear as they said. "Don't move. It will hurt less."
And then I could feel a pair of teeth bite down into my neck, so easily, like a knife slicing through butter.