Gasping for breath, the blood that pulsed from the open wound in her foot staining the polished tiles in the hallway, she grasped at the glass knob. Blood – her friend’s blood – smeared onto it from her fingertips.  She could feel the cool metal of the knife blade stuck into the waistband of her jeans on her skin, the handle twisting itself into a knot in the fabric of her shirt as she moved.

Her hair was knotted, twigs and leaves twisted into it, as it hung limply around her face. A cut on her face was bleeding, running down her cheek and staining the collar of her shirt. Her cheeks were wet as tears carved their path down her face.

Her heart beat a mile a minute from the pure, unadulterated terror that flowed through her veins, turning them to ice.  Twisting the doorknob and yanking the door open, she let it swing out so far that it crashed into the opposite wall in her haste. Cringing, she paused long enough to look back over her shoulder.

She could hear her pursuer coming just around the corner; his heavy work boots marking each of his steps with an ominous thunk, and a grating scrape as he lifted his foot back up again, for the next stride. She couldn’t see him, and so, thankfully, he couldn’t see her yet.

Forcing herself to move, she walked onto the first step, quickly pulling the door shut behind her, if only to buy her a few more seconds, the click of the catch echoing in the silence, so final. Spinning on her heal, she went down to the basement, charging, like a bat out of hell, and making the rickety stairs shake under her weight.

          Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Need a place to hide. Glancing around, she wished she had forced her parents to finish the remodeling of the basement. There was a small battered gray sofa, patched and sagging from to many years of use, pushed up against one wall, and a bookshelf against another, crammed with old children’s books ready for donation, tools, dusty and neglected, and boxes taped closed and filled with god-only-knows-what.

It’ll have to do. She thought, as the footsteps above her head edged closer and closer to the basement door.