I turn and sprint toward my exit. I have to get there. I have to get home. The cops don't come to this side of town, and even if they did, it would take them hours to get here.
But even though I'm running at full speed, and he's clearly on drugs, he's somehow faster.
He manages to grab my arm and yank me backward so hard I stumble into a wall.
I move to react, to shove him away, but that's when I see it—the glint of a knife.
He snickers. "Don't make this harder than it needs to be. Give me everything you have."
My gaze narrows in on that single piece of metal. Then I stare into his eyes but there's nothing. No humanity, no soul. It's completely gone.
I should hand it over, but there’s no guarantee he’ll let me go. And I’ve had so much taken from me. I refuse to let it ever happen again.
I punch him in the gut as hard as I can.
"You bitch!" He backhands me, and pain explodes in my skull.
I taste blood, but I won't go down.
"You're gonna pay for that."
"Fuck you," I spit, some of my blood getting his eyes.
He rears back and I rake my fingernails over his face.
“Fuck,” he shouts and I try to move around him, but he slams me against the brick wall so hard, all the air rushes out of my lungs.
He tries to grab my throat, but I manage to yank his hand away, snapping my necklace in the process.
Then he punches my side, and I scream.
His eyes widen.
He curses.
And when I press my hands to the wound, and find them covered in blood, I realize it wasn't his fist…
He stabbed me.
He yanks the knife out and my vision dots as white-hot pain radiates through my entire body.
I press my shaking hands to the wound, but blood pours between my fingers.
He's saying something but it's all muffled. Is he cursing? Mumbling? He starts pulling at his hair like a mad man. Then the world tilts and I crash onto the floor.
It hurts. It hurts so much. I want to ask him to help me. I'm willing to do anything to survive, but I can't get the words out. Can't make my mouth open and close.
The world begins to fade, and the harder I try to see, the blurrier it becomes.
Then reality sets in.
I'm going to die here. Alone.
I want to scream. To cry. To shout at someone, anyone, God—I don't care. My life has been so unfair, so unjust, and this is what I get? Stabbed in an alley where the rats are likely to eat my body before the cops find me?
Why?
Why is this happening to me?
