Blythe Sullivan
She wasn't afraid of the dark; she was afraid of what waited behind it.
Her footsteps cut through the fabric of the night, renting the still, dark air with the sound of heels on pavement, announcing her presence to the silent world that surrounded her, the midnight cotton studded with stars and streetlights. They did little to brighten the blackness, feeble golden lights no match for the suffocating darkness.
Blythe wasn't used to walking alone. She usually had friends surrounding her - someone on each arm, people behind her, sometimes a few in front, her little army, protecting her against the evils of the world. Although she knew it was a bad thought, and as a little girl she'd promised her mother she'd never think bad thoughts, she couldn't help but feel safer when she was in the middle of a group.
That way, the edges will get attacked, and I'll be able to run.
She'd thought she'd be fine, though. It was only a ten minute walk across the city to campus, and it was a pretty one - dark leaves just turning their fall colors, flowers in window boxes that were just beginning to droop, skies covered in cream clouds that matched her sweater. Usually, the darkness waited for her to get inside, hovered at the edge of her vision until firelight reflected in her eyes and she was safe from the horrors of the night.
This time, it hadn't waited, and the horrors were just waiting to wrap their claws around her and drag her screaming into the night.
She quickened her pace and cleared her mind, hoping that her heels would scare away anything lurking, and wishing that one of the stores - any of them, even McDonalds - would be open at this hour, but it didn't seem likely. Their college town had an abundance of fast-food shops that catered to the young and hungry, but Blythe had never seen them open past 10.
She shivered once again, wrapping a long hand around her arm to try to stave off the chill, hiking her purse up her shoulder as if it could protect her, though the pepper spray she had clutched in one fist would do a better job. She could imagine it now - someone attacking her, hair wild, eyes crazed, and her, the unfailing heroine, wielding her weapon of pain, fighting them off with only tear-making spray and her nails.
Maybe her teeth - she glanced at her nails for a split second, lost in the train of thought, noticing once again how short they were. She had a bad habit of biting them down to the quick when she was upset; even now, her pinky finger was creeping towards her mouth.
She forced it down, pulled out her phone, stared at the small bright screen hoping for a text from Kylar - done early. come 2 my dorm. At least that was only another four minutes. His class was another five.
Three minutes away, though, glowing down the block, Blythe could see a Starbucks. Her mouth nearly water at the taste of salvation, of gross commercialism, of branded drinks that were fifty cents an ounce. The perfect place to stay safe from the old horrors of legend - they wouldn't be caught dead in such a materialistic place.
Blythe, though, was glad to be caught alive there.
She typed out a message, short and sweet, and walked with a steadily increasing place towards the bright lights, her feet feeling far more tired now that she had her goal in sight. It was funny how that seemed to work out - as long as she didn't know where she was going, it was easy to keep walking, but when she had her savior in her targets, it was all she could do to put one black-booted shoe in front of the other.
A hand - her own - reached out for the doorknob, yanking it open, spilling the girl into the buzz of fluorescent lights and the smell of imported coffee - hair mussed from the wind, aching legs nearly collapsing as she unwound her scarf and thanked whatever gods were watching over her that there were no patrons, only a lone barista to watch her collect herself.
