It was a dark and stormy night as Jake, a college student and ex-football player, left his apartment to go for a run. He had been busy all day, and even though it was raining quite hard and later than normal, he still decided to go. Jake had only moved to this town two weeks ago, so he ran laps around his neighborhood. The rain started coming harder by the time Jake was on his second lap. As he turned onto the last street in his neighborhood, he heard a loud scream over the rain.
Jake stopped and looked around, but saw nothing through the rain. The wind picked up and began whipping sheets of stinging rain into Jake's eyes. Suddenly, the sky split open with lightning, revealing someone standing at the end of the street with their back to him. He began walking toward the person while the storm overhead became a very intense thunderstorm. He was now close enough to see it was a girl, but her back was still to him. Jake was about twenty feet from the girl when he began to feel afraid. He shook it off and kept walking, but the closer he got, the more afraid he became. He was now close enough to see what she was wearing.
The girl was skinny and had long black hair that fell halfway down her back. She was wearing a white t-shirt and skinny blue jeans, but she was barefoot. As Jake got closer, he could see that her shirt was shredded as though someone had repeatedly slashed a large knife across her back. He was now close enough to see that blood was pouring out her back and down into her jeans before being rinsed away by the rain. Jake was terrified by now but he kept walking; the girl obviously needed medical attention. He was right behind the girl; tentatively, he reached out and touched her shoulder.
She turned around and Jake jumped back, terrified. The girl's face was horrifying; her eyes had been ripped out, leaving bloody sockets. She opened what was left of her lips and grinned at him; meanwhile, his eyes traveled up to the hole where her nose should have been, then further up to a deep gash that was pouring blood from her forehead, right below her hairline. Jake had no doubt that he was looking at a corpse. He tried to run but his legs wouldn't work. As the girl reached out to touch him with a stump where her left hand should have been, Jake suddenly remembered a news story from last year.
A college girl by the name of Emily Duncan had been kidnapped on the way home from church by a serial killer almost a year ago. she was chained to a wall in his basement for almost a month before she managed to escape one day when the killer was out. She was able to pull a crowbar with her feet close enough to grab, then bashed her left wrist enough to shatter the bone, and finally used her cross necklace and teeth to cut through her skin, muscles, and tendons. She ran out of the house right before her captor returned. After he recaptured her, he tortured her for two more weeks before he killed her, only minutes before the police raided the house.
Jake was brought back to reality by the feeling of cold, dead lips on his own. He tried to pull away, but Emily was too strong. After a few seconds that felt like hours, she pulled away. Jake instantly remembered another story on Emily. It was an interview with her mother, who had stressed that Emily was waiting for marriage and that her daughter had died before she even had her first kiss. Jake looked up and saw Emily smiling at him before she melted into the rain. His fear was gone, replaced by equal parts joy and sadness. The storm started dying down as Jake headed home.
