Predator and Prey

Rain fell, the type that washed away colors, and smells, and even the solid boundaries between the night and the people that walked through it.

High heels clicked on the wet pavement. Business shoes, when business meant looking good without drawing too much attention. A woman who wanted to get ahead had to pay special attention to maintaining that precarious balance, so she seemed neither like a slutty intern nor a cold, asexual business drone.

Wind blew, tossing leaves across the dark path that was a shortcut through the park and tugging at umbrellas until the people beneath them were so wet that they decided the flimsy rain protection devices were more trouble than they were worth.

A young woman shoved her hands deep into her pockets, lowered her head against the rain, and kept walking. Click, click, click went her heels, audible even over the chorus of the raindrops splashing down. She was almost there.

Something tripped her, invisible in the darkness. She cried in pain as she landed hard. Her ankle was twisted at an unnatural angle, her shoe lost somewhere in the darkness.

“Sh**,” she swore through clenched teeth as she grasped the twisted limb with her hand.

“Such ugly words from such a pretty mouth,” came a gruff voice. Right beside her. Impossibly close.

The woman gasped and groped in her purse for a can of pepper spray, looked up.

The man was gone.

With wide eyes, she glanced around, every direction, trying to see through the shadows to wherever he had gone. Her aerosol can followed her gaze until it was suddenly wrenched from her hand and it too was gone, eaten by the night.

“Who are you?” She shouted at no one.

No one answered her with a kick to the ribs. She doubled over, gasping for breath as no one chuckled.

He was back. Standing over her, reaching down to brush a wet strand of hair from her terrified face, “Like you care who I am,” he spat. “You're just like all the rest. You never really see people, do you? You only see tools that you can use to get ahead.”

He backhanded her, and when the stars cleared from her vision he was gone.

“I-I don't understand.”

A hand smashed her face downward, into a puddle at the edge of the sidewalk. “Don't you? Well, understand this; girls like you have no feeling, you trample over little people with your high heeled shoes without even noticing that they are there, because you are so busy trying to reach the top. You don't deserve to live.”

He let her go. She rolled over, gasping for breath.

“You killed those other girls,” she accused the night air. “Mindy Skyes and all the rest.”

A low chuckle floated on the air, “Yes.”

“You made them disappear with you, so they'd never be found.”

She could almost hear his smile bend the night air as she put the puzzle pieces together for him like a pretty picture. “Yes.”

“Because they reminded you of her.”

The chuckling stopped. No one rushed forward. No one grabbed for her throat.

She was ready for him, with a sharp stiletto heel to the groin.

The man toppled off her, falling backwards against a tree trunk with a look of shock and pain twisting his face. She got to her feet faster than he did. Her gun was drawn, aimed at his heart.

She fired. He disappeared. The night was quiet, except for the woman's own panting. She waited.

Waited.

Ventured forward.

She found nothing. No scrap of clothing, no bullet lodged in the tree, nothing. Even his sour scent was gone. His trail hadn't simply grown cold or washed away. It simple stopped existing, right here in this spot.

Just like Mindy's had. And Evelyn's... And Ruth's...

Jocelyn put her gun back in her shoulder holster and straightened up. She retrieved her lost shoe from the puddle in which it had landed and put it back on her foot. It was time to go home.