Chapter 1
She was being shadowed. She couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, tall or short, white or colored, because she hadn't actually seen her shadow. It was a feeling--no, a certainty deep in her gut, a tightening of her muscles and a shrill panicked voice in her head that was telling her, yelling at her....RUN...HIDE.
Instead she stood motionless, pressing her body tight to the grimy, graffiti-festooned concrete at her back, surreptitiously scanning the area around her with only the slightest movement of her head.
She had felt her shadow days ago, but she had been able to evade her pursuer because she knew this area of the city well. She knew the back alleys and the location of each shrubbery and dumpster, the secret places under the stairs in some of the buildings, the recessed doors and back exits.
She would feel that tingle at the small of her back and she would be gone. Poof. Crouched behind a dumpster, rigid and unmoving behind a lamp post, lost in a crowd of rowdy students crossing the street, or pasted like now, to the hulk of a wall. If she didn't move, she could almost be part of the graffiti. Mis-matched clothes, dirty sneakers, a scarf wound around her head.
She clutched her backpack close thinking she couldn't lose that, too. They'd stolen everything else she had. This she would guard with her life.
1. I could see this as a short story instead of a novel.
ReplyDelete2. This is so dingy and dirty and I love it.
3. You make her sound like an animal which makes me think science fiction?
The girl went through multiple traumatic events. She came from a loving family with a very fulfilling life. The pursuer will get very close...closer than she would expect because the pursuer is her own self. Keep your friends close but your enemies closer....this is not what they had in mind right. She is imprisoned by her own fears (life, loving, living, happiness). She no longer lives within the living....she lives in her head....where exactly is she? Is she even really doing what she thinks she's doing or merely thinking them in her head? Pursued by her fears, she needs to find a way out to get back to the life she left behind.
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