The Man

Casey was an average woman, she was in the working middle class making a hundred-thousand a year, she had a decently sized house, a dog named Spike, 
a cat named Snowball, and a flower garden full of daisies, her favorite flower, and a 2015 Volkswagen Passat. One day while Casey was on her way home from work she came across an alleyway between two rundown apartment complexes, and in that alleyway was a shrouded man watching her, he was tall, a little taller than the doorways to the complexes beside him, and his face was blocked out of sight, shrouded in darkness from the closing day. The man scared Casey a little but “it’s nothing to worry about I’ll be fine” she told herself, but then, in that same moment, the man began to walk towards her, this alarmed Casey to the point to where she had taken her pepper spray out of her bag and she hadn’t even realized it, “S-stay back I k-know how t-to u-use this!” she exclaimed to the further approaching man. Despite all the threats he continued, “cAsEyy”, the voice whispered out to her this startled Casey to the point of feeling unsafe so she did the only sensible thing and ran, even though she was in heels she had a trick up her sleeve, her feet were callused so she threw off her heels at the man and could run properly. Casey had now put 50 feet between herself and the man so she began to slow down a bit and started to look around for help, but weirdly enough, in the highest populated city in a 500 mile radius, with a population of nearly a million people, no one was in sight, not a single living soul aside from her and the man. All the lights in the windows were off, store signs weren’t lit up, even some of the street lights were off, something was wrong and Casey suspected it was the man chasing her who was the cause of it. So she came up with a plan, she would run to her house and get in her closet to her safe, filled to the brim with firearms. She inherited it from her father when he died 15 years ago and now would be the perfect time to use it. But first she had to find her car in the parking lot 2 blocks-no, 1 block away. So Casey ran for it and realized in her stream of thoughts  the man had nearly caught up to her, just a mere 30 seconds he would have been able to touch her. “I NEED to be more careful,” Casey assured herself. She continued to run until she found her car got in it and drove away.

It would be dark soon, Casey was almost to her house, she lost track of the man 10 miles ago. “He must be long gone, right?” Casey asked in an attempt to reassure herself. 
Finally she was home, Spike was practically bursting down the door just to get out and see Casey, “Hey bud I have no time to play right now okay?” she said to the perplexed dog as she passed by him, Snowball was asleep on the couch laying like a loaf of bread with just her front toe beans visible. Casey approached the long awaited safe packed with enough ammunition to blow up her house three times over, more than necessary for the current situation. Casey got a Remington 870 out of the safe, she was about to blast him to kingdom come. Sure enough when Casey looked out her window the man was there, Spike started to bark profusely at the sight and smell of the man. So Casey went to confront him, carefully making sure to keep Spike inside so he wouldn’t get hurt by the man. Casey walks out in the yard, and the man is 50 feet away from her. She shoots, and the man takes it, she shoots again and again and again, but the man just stands there and takes every shot. Casey keeps pulling the trigger until ‘click’ she runs out of shells. She wasn’t anticipating this so she didn’t get extra ammo aside from the one in her back pocket because she got one extra, in her blinded fury of shots and anger at them not working, Casey failed to see how the man was now 5 feet away from her. She could smell his breath, it smelled like rotten cheese dipped in a rotten egg paste fed to a raccoon then thrown up into a garbage can filled with cow manure, in other words he hasn’t brushed his teeth recently. Casey flipped the shotgun around and used the butt to swipe at his legs to knock him to the ground and it works, but in the middle of falling the man grabs onto Casey’s hair and she falls with him. 

Everything goes black, and Casey wakes up on the sidewalk just out of the alleyway where she first saw the man but, weirdly enough, she was still holding her remington 870 and when she looked in the alley and no one was there, but Casey heard breathing behind her, she looked around and it was a different alley with the man in it and when she looked in the alley she stared at the man was there too, she looked too her left and there was a third man, and then a fourth, this continued until she was almost completely surrounded by shrouded figures that looked exactly the same as each other. “I-i-is this a c-c-c-cult?” Casey asked shakingly “o-or i-is this p-punishment for s-s-something? P-please ANSWER ME YOU FREAKS!!!”  Casey ran to the only spot that wasn’t blocked by another man in an alley, she ran past a convenience store then a supermarket then she ran past another convenience store then another supermarket. But they were the same ones as before, she was looping. She looked over and saw a parking lot full of cars, chose the closest one and used the wires to hijack it, she drove off and finally saw new brands of stores and other businesses, she was finally safe. And throughout all of this Casey still had the gun, and the last shell in her back pocket. (KEEP THIS IN MIND)  Casey keeps driving until up ahead she sees a giant pale white object approaching it just keeps getting bigger as she gets closer until she is enveloped by the white object, only it's not an object its a giant white void so Casey backs up and can’t get out of the void so Casey then gets out of the car and tries to go back and she still can’t. Then the car disappears and Casey is once again surrounded by the men in alleys. “JUST LEAVE ME ALONE YOU SONS OF-” but Casey gets cut off (thankfully so this story can keep its PG rating) by the shrouded men and in a twisted, raspy, crackling, nails on a chalkboard voice they say in unison, “We have been looking for you for a long time Casey now we are going to give you your just reward”  And all of the men pulled out knives, boxcutter, daggers, and one even pulled out a shiv made out of sheet metal, then they all hunched over and started to slowly walk over to Casey but she takes out the shell and the remington but remembers how the man in her yard just took every shot and took her down to this hell-hole, but then Casey realized she would rather have a painless death instead of a metal filled stomach one, so she took the shell and placed it in the Remington then she aims it at her face then pulls the trigger.