What time was it? The streets were empty as Cassidy stumbled home. She had an earbud in one ear, listening to a podcast, and the only other sound she could hear was the wheels of her luggage as she dragged it behind her. It was awkward. She kept tripping over her feet. But I was a Misty Copeland on that dancefloor tonight, yes I was, she chuckled to herself. She was drunk; so drunk she could feel that last beer, she shouldn’t have had, sloshing around. At least her house was only 10 minutes away. How long had she been walking? Is that another set of footsteps?
She turned around but nobody was there. She’d forgotten how deserted small-town streets get late at night. At least the moon was full and illuminating the corners the street-lights missed. She stopped and looked behind her. Nothing but closed stores, stop lights signaling to empty streets, and a lone, unbothered, waddling raccoon. In Bangladesh, London, Jamaica, and even Portugal, she knew to keep her senses alert when walking at night, even when it was busy. Can’t get complacent now. She picked up speed as she passed the Parsley Bee Paper, emblazoned with a chipper bumblebee in a hat, wearing glasses, reading a daily. The footsteps quickened behind her so Cassidy took off down an alley, forgetting it was blind. As she ran up against the twelve-foot obstacle she was slammed into a brick wall, knocking the wind out of her. Her phone flew out of her hand and as it crashed to the ground, she heard the chirpy voices of Karen and Georgia advise, ‘Stay Sexy, and Don’t Get Murdered!’
Her vision blurred even more, and when she could focus, she was faced with the bartender from the bar, who cold-cocked her. What the hell? She’d left an excellent tip, she thought as she tried to execute a kick from the ground. Those Muay Tai lessons might have come in handy if she’d continued going to class. And wasn’t wasted. She tried to reach for her wallet, because this had to be a messed up robbery, but before she could raise her hands, the woman had a garrote around her neck, jerking her backwards. The woman didn’t speak a word. All Cassidy could see was the big, bright moon, illuminating her wretched death in a urine flavoured alleyway. This was not how she thought she was going to bite it. Bite it, she thought as she began to lose consciousness, what a weird way to say die. The sound of the barking dogs was a weird soundtrack but maybe that’s what you hear when you expire. As the sound grew closer, the rope around her neck slackened, and she fell to the ground, back to the concrete, stars in the sky. She was deafened by the sound of growling, barking, and snarling. She could see the shadows of a large pack of, were they dogs? Wolves? Coyotes? She turned her head to see the bartender being torn asunder by a wild pack of animals. Was that screaming coming from her, or the victim? Cassidy closed her eyes and passed out.
‘Oh no! We’re too late’
‘No no no, I can smell her breath. She drank a lot of beer. Some small people can really put it away.
‘You grab her shoulders, and I’ll get her feet’
Cassidy opened her eyes to a very large, ugly, bearded man leaning over her, while trying to slip his hands under her armpits to lift her. She screamed. He screamed. She fell backwards and fainted.
She felt a soft hand gently tapping her on the cheek.
‘Hey. Wake up. We don’t have time for this’. It was woman’s voice. Cassidy awoke up to a black woman with a voluminous afro crouched in front of her.
‘Am I dead? Are you an angel? Is heaven filled with beautiful black angels?’
‘Oh, Jesus…’
Her view was then filled with the massive girth of the man she’d seen before. He looked to be seven feet tall. He reached out his hand, the size of waffle irons.
‘Come with us if you want to live’.
‘Stu, how many times have I told you to stop saying shit like that?’
‘Oh, man. I have died and ended up in 80’s hell’, Cassidy said, and fainted again.