Dead end

Diana never understood why people hated the city. She loved it! Having lived there for three years, she always found the people kind and helpful and as long as you didn’t take stupid chances, in her opinion, it was as safe as anywhere else. It was the best place in the world to live, she thought.

Until she didn’t.

***

It was a beautiful summer day; everyone was taking advantage of the low humidity and pleasant temperatures of the early afternoon. Lunch breaks were in full swing and the city sidewalks were teeming with people.

It happened suddenly. She was walking cheerfully, enjoying the sunshine and the crowds. She smiled at people as she walked, including him. His eyes were an angry ice blue and they scared her a little as she walked by, but she smiled anyway. No reason to be rude. One minute, Diana was unconsciously strolling, the next a hand shot out and grabbed her neck, squeezing. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t scream. She heard, “watch it” and “what the …”, but no one stopped. No one intervened. Her eyes bulging, she could see people looking then quickly averting their eyes. He walked, holding her by the neck and waist, and did not crash into anyone on the sidewalk. As she felt herself losing consciousness, she thought, are they actually moving out of his way?

He turned down a shadowy alley and quickly dropped to his knees with her beneath him. Loosening his hold, without releasing her, she breathed in the stench to let loose a scream. But then another she had not seen put a knife to her throat. She swallowed her scream.

Her summer dress was a flimsy piece of nothing meant to do little more than suggest fashionable fluff covering the barely-there thong she wore underneath. He ripped them aside as if they weren’t there. As if she weren’t there.

And then she wasn’t.