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The Scream (4) - Late one night, you find yourself in a fairly under populated area of town. You’ve been strangely alone for the past few moments when you see movement out of the corner of your eye. Only a few yards away you see a young woman with tear-stained cheeks and a long white gown. It is difficult to make out any more details; she seems to be running from something. She looks like she is screaming but makes no sound; even her footsteps seem to be silent. If you try to chase her, you will wind up in a dead end—alone, and suddenly, cold. It feels like something has slammed into you and turned your blood to ice, but there’s no one around. No matter what you do, the chill remains until morning—but the image of the woman’s fear-filled face may haunt your dreams for much longer.
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Shannon covered a yawn with her hand. It was late, way past the time for her to call it quits for the day… odd since she was and had been a perpetual haunter of clubs and bars for the longest time but something about putting on a facade of a good little homeopathic healer was really draining. It didn’t help that she had to balance everything else with her ‘real’ job as a freelance writer since she wasn’t about to ruin the inroads she had made ever since coming back into the city. It had taken way too long as it was after her absence so no way did she want to repeat that. At least this little business she had gotten green lit was making her meet and exceed her quotas, even when divided among the others running the gig. People really were gullible saps. She loved it. The influx of money didn’t hurt either.
Just about the only thing she didn’t like about the job was how it was cutting into her social life. That and karens. So many freaking entitled people think they get special service just because. They were the ones who went on a list… a little extra draining never hurt anyone that's for sure. Especially since the other option was yanking their starseed, something that would be a pretty big flag for any goodie-goodie looking into her store a little too closely. That would ruin it all and it was something she was doing her best to avoid.
Suppressing yet another yawn the woman paused at a deserted crosswalk, absently noting the lack of anyone else on the sidewalk or street. Not terribly unusual considering her location but still… abnormal enough that she kept her eyes on her surroundings. Something was up, she just didn’t know what. Regardless, whatever it was, it was about to learn not to mess with her.
She was glancing around, silently debating if it was worth powering up just to see if one of those ‘order’ snots were in the area, when movement out of the corner of her eye had her whipping around. There standing in an alleyway a few yards away was a young woman in a long white gown that looked like she had been crying. Left at the alter ey? she thought carelessly as she eyed the woman who seemed to be running from something. Or maybe to them if she was trying to chase her erstwhile groom. But something made Shannon really pause and try to make out more of the rapidly fading into the distance woman in the white dress. She looked like she had been screaming but that made no sense since there had been no sound, not even the clack of her heels on the pavement. She had just literally ran past Shannon and into an alleyway, ‘screaming’ but making no noise at all… as if she had been a ghost.
“Nope! Didn’t see nothin’,” Shannon muttered, wrapping her jacket even tighter about herself. No way in hell was she about to give chase. There was enough weird s**t in this city, she wouldn’t put it past it if it was also haunted up to the gills with ghosts and ghouls and other things that go bump in the night. Conveniently forgetting that she was normally one of those things that haunted the night.
The crosswalk light turned green and Shannon hurried on her way, silently muttering to herself about how she hoped that that woman wouldn’t be interrupting her much needed sleep. Something she feared it was going to do regardless of her own personal desires. That would just put the icing on the already long day.
… Would taking her irritability out on the customers really be such a bad thing?
