Fear

Chapter 1 Fear

Aria cautiously walked down the street. She carried two bags of groceries and walked directly down the center of the sidewalk. It was too cold for anybody else to be out walking so she had the street to her self, or so it seemed. It wasn't that she liked walking down the middle of the sidewalk, it's that it is harder to grab you if you are in the middle of everything. Aria had a deep residing fear of being grabbed. It wasn't an unfounded fear either. Just two months ago Aria finally left her gang-banging, two-timing, snake in the grass, wife beating husband. It was all due to one really bad beating, an honest doctor, and a song that she had listened too only a few times. Now that she was out from under his thumb she played that song at least once a day.

As Aria came to the first of the four street corners she would have to pass to get back to her little hole in the wall apartment. She stopped and hugged the wall of the building peeking her head around the corner before she walked on across the street. Billy was more than willing to tell her how she had caught the men that he terrorised day in and day out. How he had followed them, or hidden around a blind corner waiting for them. She thought with a small smirk at his stupidity. Of course he was smart enough to hide that he beat his wife for five years. Even his fellow gang bangers didn't know. That thought made her smirk flee her face and a chill race down her spine. Fortunately the next two corners weren't blind and she could just quickly rush across the street. Unfortunately, the worst corner was the last one.

Her little apartment was in a little building that sat on traffic circle and had two streets that came and squished the building between them as they connected to the traffic circle. To get to the stairs that went to her apartment she had to go around a blind corner and into a small alley between the two first floor businesses. It was a fairly clean alley with only two dumpsters and one little alcove for the telephone pole, but it was still the riskiest place that she had to be in. Lucky for her the businesses kept a bar over the dumpsters to keep people out of them, so there was no need to worry about an attack from inside a dumpster.

Aria peeks around the corner and pads quietly to the first dumpster. She checks around the front before she wedges her foot into the little box on the side of the dumpster and hoists herself onto the lid. Bouncing on the lid a little she looks deeper into the alley and over the top of the other dumpster. Before jumping lightly down and jogging her way to the door that led to her second floor apartment. Just as she shoves the key into the lock, she is picked up by her neck and thrown against the far wall of the alley. A figure shimmers into view for a second and then dissolves into thin air. Then Aria is picked up by the neck again and thrown into the small alcove behind the telephone pole. Hitting her head on the hard ground again is to much for the woman and she fall unconscious.