TWISTED GAME ©

Deadly Run 2

Katelyn Summers' flesh knew before her mind did that she was being watched.
Her face flushed with heat, and the flesh on her neck prickled, terror, trickle-down her spine as if her backbone were being traced by frigged fingers, one vertebra at a time.

This was not the same creepy sensation she had endured when ogled by middle-aged men. This was an instinctive caution the body signaled for its survival.

Warning.

Danger.

Katelyn turned, incrementally, her eyes fixated on the dissilient jogging trail ahead as if she were stuck in a nightmare. She sprinted, to the park's exit. The sensation of being watched rushed over her skin and sank in the pit of her stomach, leaving her on high alert.

She saw no one, yet she shivered, as attuned to her surroundings as a frightened kitten, hidden in a bush.
She reached to tug the phone from her jacket and stopped. Seized with terror.
There.
There he was: the one whose gaze drained her blood.
She fled from the park and dashed across the street to the Chinese restaurant.

From across the street, the man appeared again. She fled the park so quickly that Katelyn had begun to believe she'd imagined him, the threat of him.
Now, he stared at her, just long enough to lock eyes for haft a heartbeat, only his eyes visible to her, his face obscured by the fabric of the scarf.
He turned away as if satisfied his message had been received. But who was he?

"Who are you?" Katelyn shouted.

The restaurant patrons gawked at Katelyn: the woman who cried out.

Wong, the owner of the restaurant came out and stood next to her, "You ok?" she asked, placing her warm hand on Katelyn's shoulder.

"I'm fine." She tried to swallow.

"You not fine. You shouting and shaking. Are you sick?"

"No." She'd be damned if she let Wong or anyone else for that matter know that some guy watching her had traumatized her. She didn't need people thinking she'd gone insane. She'd been distraught enough with the twentieth anniversary of her classmate's murders coming up.
She was still freaked out. Who wouldn't be when she learned the most popular guy in the high school had killed two of her classmates? But she didn't want people to think she believed every weirdo who eyed her was going to kill her. Even if she felt unnerved by this stranger's presence. It felt ridiculous now, her fear, now the man had gone.

Yet, the safe feeling quickly vanished. As soon as she entered the restaurant with Wong, Katelyn felt eyes on her again, her face warming, the sensation of those cold fingertips snaking down her spine again, she sneaked a quick look over her shoulder, afraid of who she might see; but saw no one. Mortified, she left the restaurant.

Katelyn turned on her phone to find messages from her boyfriend, each more urgent than the last.
She stepped onto the curb, her boyfriend picked up on the first ring. "Hey," She said.

"Hey babe, where are you?" He asked.

"I went out for a run," she said.

The truth was she needed to run off some steam. Her new case at the TPD was unsettling. She'd gone to the women's shelter to figure out if a predator was using the location to select victims. Since high school, she'd had an obsession with deviant violent crimes; so when her Sargent had told her a dead woman might be linked to the women's shelter, Katelyn had investigated. Water dripped from the awning above Katlynn as she looked across the street.

"I'm here at your apartment." His soft manner calmed her.

She'd had enough of fear for one afternoon. She didn't need him thinking she'd gone berserk. "What are you doing there?" she said.

"Remember, we're going to Dan and Susan's house for dinner." Katelyn's boyfriend stressed."

Water dripped from the awning, spattering the toes of her sneakers. It was tinged red, like thinned blood. The earlier rain and the strange glow of the wet pavement cast that entire side of the street in an orange halo.

Look at her, so oblivious.

She stares but sees nothing.

She steps back toward the alleyway.

Toward her end.

Closer.

Closer.

That's it.

That's it.

She can't see me.

Her end is here.

Now she will pay for her sins.

"Oh, shot. I forget. I'll be there in ten minutes."

She stared at the blood water dripping. What the hell was up with this water? Katelyn stepped further into the alley and shielded her eyes against the disappearing sun. She saw nothing, except the bloody water, trickling from the rusted nails' heads' in the tin roofing.

"Don't worry. I'll call Dan and let them know we're running a little late."

"Thank you. I'm headed your way," she said.

A gunshot rang through the alley. Katelyn dropped the phone. Her hand went to the agonizing pain ripping through her chest. She tried to scream. But couldn't. Blood had filled her airway, her body swayed a moment before her knees gave way, and collapsing to the asphalt.