Claire was sitting on the train and watched the lights reflecting in the window. They went by so fast that it made her think of how drastically her life had changed just in the last few weeks. She had imagined something else when she moved to London, had wanted to become an actress at the theater which had always been a dream of hers. But instead she was still working as a bartender to pay her rent. She only wanted to do this until she had a secure employment at the theater which sadly she did not have until now.

So Claire sat there thinking about her current circumstances and almost forgot to get off the train at the station near her working place, a bar called "The Riot Grrrrill". She always liked the name because it sounded a lot cooler than telling someone that you work at "McDonalds" although the Grill served food that was not that different from the typical fastfood. You could of course get fish and chips but also fries and burgers. Claire liked working there because her chef had always been nice to her and in return she was a loyal worker who was always careful to put all her effort into the work even if it meant to tap beer for 6 hours straight.

She arrived at the Grill and put her black leather jacket on the coat hook next to the entrance. Her black hair was tied up in a simple ponytail and her straight bangs were cut to the exact lenght where it did not bug her by falling into her eyes and you could see her dark eyebrows which framed a pair of almond-shaped brown eyes. The colour got lighter in the area around her pupils.

Her small nose was pointed slightly upwards towards the end of it and because she liked her nose, a small gold ring on the right nostril decorated her face.

She had a very pale skintone and wore black eyeliner which accentuated this even more.

Claire went to the room where the stuff for the employees was storaged, grabbed her black apron and put it around her waist over the white shirt she had to wear while working. She hated wearing white. At least her trousers could be black, she thought. When she was dressed for work she took a last look in the mirror und the went outside to begin her late shift at the Grill.

Half of her shift had passed, it was around midnight by now and nothing really interesting had happened. A few men were sitting and drinking beer, some were talking, some were sitting alone. And the highlights of Claire's evening consisted in some of them ordering food to their drinks. It was not only a normal evening at the Grill, it was exceptionally boring in fact and Claire could not wait for her shift to be over and to finally get in her warm, comfy, king size bed. The last two hours of the shift passed as slowly as the ones before and Claire almost ran into the room for the employees' stuff, threw her apron in a corner, got her leather jacket from the hook and flew outside after saying her boss goodbye in a hurry.

The fresh autumn night air filled her lungs as she stepped outside and she immediatly began to freeze and regret that she only had her leather jacket with her. Although she was almost always freezing she loved her leather jacket over all and would not stop wearing it until the first snow would begin to fall. So she simply fished for the pack of cigarettes in her pocket and lit one up. The smoke began to rise from the cigarette and disappeared over her head in the dark. Claire began to walk her way to the train station after inhaling one deep breath, closing her eyes and letting the smoke out of her lungs slowly.

Maybe every other girl would have found it a horrible experience to walk through this part of London at such a time but Claire had gotten used to it. But this night it was different. Claire had the feeling she was observed the whole time. She thought she was just paranoid and tried to push the thoughts of turning around and seeing someone behind her away and simply continued to walk through the dark alleys. She silently cursed at herself for forgetting her ipod on the drawer besides her bed. She would have loved to listen to some Metalcore now because it always got her chilled and she could have needed that a lot right now!

Claire had almost reached the station and could already see the illuminated signs in a few hundred metres distance behind the little park she had to walk through on the last part of the way. She let out a sigh of relief when suddenly in circa 30 metres distance behind a tree she saw two red little lights that were glowing in the dark. No, those were'nt just lights... they had the shape of eyes. Claire's pulse increased and she squeezed her eyes together really hard. After opening them up again the eyes, were gone. She was relieved and walked faster now only having on her mind to reach the damn station.

Claire had almost left the park when she suddenly felt a strong presence behind her. She did not know what it was that was telling her that she had to turn around and what made her remember everything her father ever told her about defending herself when she was a teenager, but she did. She turned around just to see that the red eyes were right in front of her. Staring into hers. She did not scream, it was too much of a shock, she simply forgot to breath.

Before she could do anything, the eyes came nearer. Claire could not move a muscle, the tears that rose in her eyes were the only thing moving in her face. One second before the scream that build up inside of her so long could get out, a big hand with long, thin fingers covered her mouth and kept her from screaming. Slowly the outlines of a thin, tall man began to appear around those eyes as he moved towards her centimetre after centimetre out of a shadow and showed Claire that the eyes that before had no body belonging to them belonged to the mysterious man.

So Claire stood there, tears now streaming out of her eyes, the man's hand on her face at the end of the park and her thoughts were running wild. Would he rape her? Rob her? Or even do more terrible things to her? Between those thoughts a dark, warm voice of a man appeared. "Don't you dare scream! It would be the last thing you did in your precious life." Claire was shocked. The man standing in front of her had not opened his mouth. "Keep quiet and nothing will happen, little lady." He was in her thoughts. Another explanation was not possible. Nobody was near them. It was too much, Claire's tears were now almost flowing out of her eyes as she tried to keep quiet. She did not want to know what the strange man with those piercing red eyes would do to her if she didn't. She felt her knees getting weak and knew that they would not be able to carry her weight any longer. As if the man knew it, he put one arm around Claire's waist, the other one still covering her mouth. "Will you promise me to be quiet?" His mouth was still not moving. His eyes were so serious that Claire just nodded. He picked her up from the ground as if it was nothing for him and quickly walked towards the last tree of the park with her in his arms.

Claire never had been so afraid in her life. The man simply looked forwards to the direction he was walking to and did not even seem to notice her in his arms. Claire still froze although she was pressed against his upper body. He was not very warm. But this had to be a normal thing with rapists, Claire just thought cynicaly. She emotionally prepared for what she thought would happen to her in a few seconds. They reached the tree and in it's shadow the man put Claire down on the ground, her head leaning against the tree trunk. He stood next to her and she looked up into his face. Really looking at it for the first time. He was handsome in a weird kind of way. His age was hard to guess, but he was maybe around thirty. His face had a striking shape, the jaw bones were really conspicuous and the skin was even paler than Claire's, his nose small and long, perfectly angled and with a wide smile on his face, he was grinning down at her. His teeth were whiter than his skin and it was hard to believe that this was even possible. The teeth were very pointed towards the end and it made him look a little evil when he was smirking like that but in no way unattractive. Claire did not want to admit to herself that she somehow found him attractive because she didn't knew what the man was capable of doing to an innocent human being like her.

She now noticed what odd clothes he was wearing. A big red coat that looked like victorian coats, Claire had already seen in museums, a big red hat that could easily cover half of his face if he wanted to and a black suit with golden buttons underneath it. He all in all looked really damn scary to Claire and she did not want to risk anthing so she just sat there, not doing anything, simply staring at him smirking down at her.

-Song of this chapter: Bring Me The Horizon: And the snakes start to sing:

"Worms come out of the woodwork.
Leeches crawl from out of the dirt
Rats come out of the holes they call home,
I fall apart.
And the snakes start to sing."-