Heather Cole was little more than a shadow of the person she used to be. She was like a ghost, haunting the places and people that had been familiar to her in her former life.

Things had been going so well for her, for a while there. She had enrolled in community college, the first member of her family to go on to higher education after high school. She had managed to balance her coursework and her job at the gym for two whole semesters. But then, the classes started becoming more difficult, and she needed more time to finish her assignments. Then Sean dumped her. She started losing sleep. Things started spiraling out of control, and before she knew it, she was buying "study aid" drugs from some guy she barely knew. As it turns out, there's a pretty thin line between Adderall and Speed. It did help, though, and it felt great, at least at first. But as time went on, it took more and more just to get the same rush, and now there was no denying that she was an addict.

And so, here she was, walking the streets down by the docks at three A.M., desperately trying to find Trey's apartment because she had forgotten to write down the address. There weren't many cars out at this hour, and not a single other person on foot that she had seen. The night air was cold, and thick with fog, and her mind felt hazy and dumb as she was coming down from her high. She was going to crash, and crash hard, if she didn't get another fix soon.

A police cruiser rounded the corner on the street up ahead, and she immediately stepped away from the street lights and into the darkness, hoping she hadn't already been spotted. She wasn't doing anything illegal, but it wouldn't be the first time a cop had accosted her for "suspicious behavior," and she really didn't need that kind of hassle right now. Without waiting to see if she was being followed, she headed straight down an alley next to a Weisman's Drug Store.

It was dark, too dark to see where she was stepping. She stumbled over trash bags and a wooden pallet, fumbling blindly, her arms outstretched and groping to feel out her surroundings. There was a loud clang behind her, and she let out a yelp, falling flat on her ass as she stumbled backwards. At the entrance of the alley where she had come in, she could just barely glimpse a small shape darting away into the street—some animal that had been digging through the trash. A cat, probably, or a raccoon from the woods nearby. She breathed a sigh of relief and picked herself back up, doing her best to dust off the dirt and grime.

Then came another sound, like something scraping on concrete. It was accompanied by heavy breathing, a raspy, ragged wheezing. It was still too dark to see, but there was someone here in the alley with her.

"Stay back, creep!" She screamed, brandishing her keychain like a weapon, her thumb ready to press down on the small dispenser that was attached. "I've got mace!"

Her eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness, and she could start to make out a shape in the curling shadows. It almost looked like a person, but only barely. It was more like a distant echo of a person, a vague, indistinct, skeletal shape with gaunt features and jagged edges. It lurched forward slowly, its movements stilted and unnatural, reaching out towards her as it gasped and sputtered with hands like claws.

"What the hell!?" Her grip tightened on the can of mace, spraying it into what should have been the creature's face, but it had no effect. The crooked, jagged-edged shape continued to stagger towards her with slow but deliberate measure.

Was she hallucinating? That wasn't supposed to be one of the side effects of what she was on. Had Trey cut it with something else?

Animal instincts overtook her, and she turned to flee. Before she could sprint more than a few steps, her foot caught on a piece of refuse, and she tumbled headlong onto the cold, hard, wet ground. Fear had over taken her other senses, and she barely registered the pain. She scrambled into a clumsy half-crawl, half-sprint away, gasped when she felt something clamp down hard on her left ankle. Some terrible force yanked her back down, dragging her across the dirty pavement. Desperately, she tried to pull away, but to no avail.

The grasp tightened, and she felt something pierce her skin like thorns, rending her flesh as its grip tightened even more. Pain shot through her body, so sharp that it seemed to paralyze her. She could hear the dull, wet crunch of her leg snapping like a dry twig in the terrible grasp, and tried to cry out. Her lungs seemed empty, though, and the only sound she could manage was a pathetic, gasping wheeze.

Time seemed to slow down. For seconds that seemed like hours, she stuggled and strained as her leg was mangled. Searing pain shot up her ruined limb and up through her hips, her torso, even extending out to her arms and head, every nerve ending seeming to fire off at the same excruciating instant. For a moment, she thought she would pass out from the shock, and it would have been a relief. But she remained conscious, if only barely. At some point, she was vaguely aware of the flashing blue and red lights of the police cruiser she had just tried to avoid, and the accompanying chirp of the siren.

But it was already too late.

She felt herself lift off the ground. With sudden and alarming force, she rose up into the air, flung like a ragdoll. The pain was fading now, replaced by an almost comfortable cold numbness. She saw the world spin around her for several brief moments, a blur of light streaks against the darkness of the night, before she peaked far above most of the surrounding buildings.

She didn't even feel the impact when she landed. By the time she hit the roof, the world had already gone black, and her heart had stopped.

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