Stalker

Chapter 1

As the early hours of Saturday morning approached, Clara stumbled out of Sunshine, the new nightclub in town. She and her two friends Orla and Yasmin made their way to a taxi. Orla and Yasmin made their way out of the taxi and then into their shared apartment and Clara was dropped off at her parents' house, it was empty as her parents were on a cruise to Venice. She staggered inside and made a cup of strong black coffee to try and sober up, after her 8th cup she was as sober as a judge and bursting full of energy. She decided to go for a run to get rid of the unneeded energy. She got into her running gear and jogged out the door glancing at the clock as she left, it was 4:21am. She jogged along Stewartstown Road and down Dunmurry Lane, not a soul in sight, at least that's what she thought.

As she jogged she was certain she could hear 2 sets of footsteps so she hastily turned around and there was nothing there, the coffee is making me hear things she said to herself. She jogged until she reached the bottom of Blacks Road where she saw several police cars blocking the road, she turned to head home the other way. As she jogged past the closed shop, again she heard a noise, she splashed through a puddle and it soaked her shoes and socks so she stopped to dry them off, as she removed her shoe she realised the it was not water in her shoe, it was blood. She let out a yell that shattered the silence. She tore off her shoes and socks and ran home barefooted. She sped upstairs and immediately jumped into the shower to get rid of the blood. She grasped her landline and tried to call Yasmin and Orlas house phone, the phone lines were dead. She peeped through the beige curtains and to see that the phone cable had been sliced. She panicked. She knew she was trapped, someone was out there. Then a glimmer of hope appeared in mind when she remembered her mobile was in her handbag which was in the kitchen. She pulled her bag apart and it wasn't there, she had lost it when she was out clubbing. She began to break down; she fell to the kitchen floor, a puddle of her makeup on the tiles beneath her. She lay there for several minutes until she had gathered the mental strength to to pull herself up. She clambered off the floor and began to make her way down the hall and to the cupboard under the stairs.
As she entered she made sure no one could see where she was going. She removed a small and thin mat from the floor and pulled open a door in the floor. She struggled down a flimsy wooden ladder into a small rectangular room under her house. She grabbed the string to turn on the dim light, she then head over to the other side of the room to close the blind on the small window peering out across her back garden. As she stretched out her hand to close the blind, and hand smacked against the other side of the window the it continued to pound against it.