Turning toward the sound, Sarah found herself starting into the darkest depths of shadows she had ever seen. They had finally rounded the corner of the dumpster, where the scraping sound had been coming from, and Sarah was beginning to get very frightened. She tugged on Michael's arm, trying to urge him to leave with her. She didn't want to stay in this alley for another minute, regardless of how this might help him move on. She hadn't signed up for fear when she told Michael how she felt and, though she had told him no more than half an hour before that she would, she didn't feel much like waiting for him anymore. "Michael, let's leave. Now!" she hissed at him, tugging on his arm more urgently. When he finally turned to look at her to tell her whatever it was he felt he needed to tell her to keep her with him in this alley searching for Eve, she was no longer looking at him. Her eyes were as wide as saucers and she was looking past Michael.

Michael heard Sarah begging to leave but he was ignoring her. He had one thing on his mind right now and that was finding Eve. Sarah would just have to prove to him that she would wait for him and this was his way of making her do just that. He didn't hear the scrapping sound, or feel what Sarah could feel. He only knew that he had seen Eve and now he was going to find her, if that was the last thing he did. When Sarah started pulling on his arm so hard he felt the threads in the shoulder start to give and she started getting demanding, he had had enough. He stopped moving, turning to her to make her stop acting like such a baby. She wasn't looking at him, but over his shoulder, and her eyes were as big as the tea saucers his mother used to keep in her china hutch. When he turned to see what had her so frightened, he was caught off guard by the upper cut, and he was down for the count.

Fredrick moved out of the shadows, revealing himself for the first time this night. He watched Sarah as she screamed and reached for Michael as his body fell to the ground like a sack of flour. He smiled at her cruelly, feeding off of her fear as he moved closer to her. He heard Eve move in the shadows and looked at her with so much rage, she stopped moving. She wanted to save her best friend from the monster Fredrick had become but his look had her just as frozen as Sarah seemed to be. Fredrick reached out for Sarah, causing her screams to become shriller. Why didn't the neighboring apartments hear the screaming?

© DJ Shaw