She flees the night, and the darkness follows. Her breath catches in her throat as she sees a light and she runs to it through an unmarked doorway. Inside, she forces herself to stop running and sags against a wall, the dim orange light as beloved to her as sunlight. Her heart is pounding so loudly she’s surprised it doesn’t echo and she wonders again why she does this to herself. Why, every night, she loses track of the time and is forced to run, frantic with fear, through the streets towards home.

She knows as well as any child that the darkness holds only nightmares.

Forcing herself to calm down, she takes a few deep breaths and looks around. She is in the entrance to a stairwell, the sign over the door informing her that the stairs lead to level one of the underground parking. Drawing a quick mental map in her head, she realizes that if she cuts through the parking lot she will be much closer to home and there will be light to protect her. She is relieved and laughs softly. The sound is flat and strange and she shivers.

A noise from below causes her to jump and she peers nervously over the railing to the bottom of the stairs. A small yellow dog has walked in through the open door at the bottom and looks up at her curiously. She shakes her head and silently berates herself for being so jumpy. She calls out softly to the dog, and it looks up at her and wags its tail, grinning in the way only dogs can. Giggling, she feels happy and wishes again that she was allowed a dog in her small apartment.

Comforted, she walks down the stairs, the noise of her footsteps making her flinch slightly, the sound jarring in the otherwise silent room. The yellow dog has lost interest in her and has gone back through the door, so she is alone when she reaches the bottom. She feels slightly disappointed even though she knows it’s silly; the dog doesn’t belong to her and has no reason to wait.

The smell is the first thing to hit her as she walks through the door, strong enough to make her eyes water. She covers her nose and mouth with her hand, disgusted, the smell bringing to mind rotting meat and hospitals. Blinking to clear her eyes, she gets her first good look at her surroundings.

So much blood, she thinks, frozen with shock. How could there be so much blood?

A body, mangled to the point of being unrecognizable, lies crumpled to her right. The walls are smeared with blood, there is even, she notices numbly, blood on the low ceiling. There is a puddle of it covering the floor, black in the dim yellow light.

She tries desperately not to throw up, not to add to the scent and the sight of this place. What could do such a thing? She wonders, trembling. The light seems like poor protection in the face of this new horror. Movement at the corner of her eye makes her spin, moving back. The yellow dog is there, and she watches, sick to her stomach, as it chews on a piece of the body, staining it’s pale muzzle black, giving it a demonic appearance. She backs away, nearly screaming as her back hits the wall behind her. There is blood on her now and the warmth of it gives her fear a new urgency.

This death was not very old. The killer might still be nearby.

As this thought occurs to her, she hears someone coming down the stairs behind her. Her feet are frozen, but another sound, closely following the other, snaps her out of it, reminds her that this place is dangerous. She has to leave.

She turns and now she runs from the nightmares that are no longer mere fragments of darkness, but something solid, a real threat. The sound of her flight echoes around the small parking lot but it is not so loud that she can’t hear the other footsteps start moving faster, that strange other sound moving quicker as well. Forcing herself to run faster, faster, she risks a glance backwards. There is another dog, and perhaps a man as well but it is the dog that catches her attention, it’s eyes glowing brightly in it’s black face. A german shepherd perhaps, or a doberman. It’s teeth are bared in a snarl as it chases her across the parking lot.

She whimpers and faces forward, her mind racing with incoherent pleas to anybody to save her. She doesn’t want to find out what will happen if she is caught. Oh please, oh please, she thinks, the words a mantra, a prayer. Please don’t let it catch me. Oh please.

She is barely aware of where she is going or how far she has gone and so the stairs on the other side come as a nearly fatal surprise. Her pursuers gain on her a little more, but she recovers and races through the door and up the stairs, taking them two at a time. She bursts through the door into the evening air and cries out at the sensation of the cool night air against her face. Still she flees, not daring to stop, imagining the dog mere inches away, snapping at her ankles, the unseen man breathing down her neck, about to grab her arm.

The image is so strong that she screams as she feels a hand on her arm and she pulls away violently, spinning to face her attacker, not sure if she wants to fight or beg for her life but certain she must do something, anything. It takes her a few moments to register the young man standing in front of her, a concerned look on his face.

“Miss? Are you all right?”

She looks behind him and sags as she realizes that there is nobody else, no strange man and no demon dog. The street is deserted.

“Miss?” the boy says again, sounding distressed. “Are you all right? Should I call someone?”

She slumps, barely managing to stay on her feet. The tears come then and she sobs with relief and fear and the thought that she is safe. The night has never seemed as welcoming.

“I’ll call an ambulance,” says the young man, moving forward to catch her as she nearly collapses. She holds out a hand to lean on him.

“I’m fine,” she manages to say after a few moments. “Please, I’m fine, so don’t call anyone. I’m fine.”

The young man looks at her hesitantly. “Are you sure? What happened?”

She coughs and takes a shuddering breath, her legs feeling weak and rubbery, her lungs aching. “There’s a body. Back there in the old parking lot. It’s… in pretty rough shape.”

She pulls herself together and looks up at the boy. “Call the police and tell them, ok? Somebody, somebody needs to do something about it. The dogs have already been at it.”

She turns to go then, but the boy’s grip on her arm is suddenly strong, vise like, restraining her. She looks up at him, confused. He grins at her and grabs her other arm, and suddenly he doesn’t look so young, or so small. She wants to scream, but it’s too much for her to bear, it’s just too much and so it catches in her throat, leaving her mute and wide eyed.

“Can’t blame them,” he says, eyes glowing. “They’re only hungry.”

She moans softly. His teeth are so sharp looking, and there are so many of them. Her last thought before the darkness takes her is that she should have never trusted anyone who came out of the night.