I stared at the row and row of cake mixes in front of me. My eyes were starting to cross from examining the same box of Pillsbury Devil's Food Cake for the last five minutes.

It was almost midnight, and there I was, standing in the middle of a 24-hour mart, buying damn cake mix. I wanted to go home and sleep after an exhausting day of classes at NYU, not stop to buy cake mix. But, my best friend Mackenzie's birthday was in a few days, and I promised I'd make her a cake. If I didn't buy the stupid cake mix now, I'd never find the time. And I made it a habit never to break promises.

It was a birthday cake, but there you were.

I heaved a disgusted sigh and finally just grabbed some random cake mix and dragged myself to one of the check out lines.

The guy behind the cash register gave me a bored look as he rang up my cake mix and frosting, shoved them into a paper bag. I handed over the cash in a bit of an apathetic stupor, grabbed my bag and left, walking out into the brisk late September air.

The subway entrance I usually took was a few blocks over. I didn't want to walk that far at night, but I didn't exactly have a choice. No extra cash for a taxi, and I wasn't sure if buses even ran this late.

I tugged my jacket closer around me and quickly marched down the dimly lit street. I'd lived half my life in New York City, but walking alone at night was something I'd never gotten used to. God only knew what was out there at night that nobody ever saw.

I'd just rounded the corner onto another street and passed right by an alleyway when I heard a loud crash.

The sound echoed through the nearly empty street, ringing loudly in my ears. I stopped walking.

Common sense told me immediately to keep on going and to not concern myself with whatever was going on down that alleyway. But then I heard a muffled groan and then what sounded like quiet sobbing.

Someone was in that alleyway groaning and crying?

Move, Holly! my mind shouted at me. Don't concern yourself with this. You do not need the trouble.

"Help..."

Someone really was in that alleyway. From the sound of it, they were in a lot of pain.

I moved forward without thinking.

"Hello?"

My voice echoed eerily around me. I sounded scared out of my mind and unsure, and I was.

I shouldn't have been standing at the opening of an alleyway where some horrific act might be taking place. I had enough common sense to know that venturing into the dark where something suspicious was happening was a recipe for disaster.

So why was I slowly creeping into the alleyway? Grabbing my phone out of my bag to use the small screen as some sort of light?

I had no idea.

The cramped, narrow space smelt of rubbish and decay and burned my nose. It might have been my imagination - it probably was - but I could've sworn I heard the pitter-pattering of tiny rodent feet.

"Hello?" I called out again, my voice cracking. "Is someone there?"

I took a few more tentative steps into the alleyway, listening intently for any sound that might have belonged to whoever was in trouble. Nothing.

This wasn't how I imagined spending the remainder of my Friday night. After a long day of classes, the only thing I was interested in was throwing myself face-down on my bed and sleeping until my alarm went off at six the next morning. And now I was edging my way along some dark, deserted alleyway, searching for some voice belonging to somebody that might not even be in trouble?

Yep. I was definitely hallucinating.

I stood stock-still and listened intently, giving myself another moment before I would leave and then book it for the subway.

It was quiet - very quiet. The type of quiet that sent chills down your spine and made the hairs on the back of your neck raise. I was so used to hearing the blaring noises of the city that they usual always faded into the background. Now that I was so attentive, though...I couldn't hear anything.

Nothing. Not a single thing.

The silence was suffocating, closing in around me like a straight jacket.

I forced my legs to move and get the hell out of this alleyway, from whatever unnatural thing that was going on.

I had only taken two steps before a hand shot out of nowhere and closed around my ankle, squeezing like a vice. A scream tore its way up my throat, but the sound had barely escaped from me before I hit the ground. Hard.

My head smacked against the pavement and my cellphone was sent flying across the alleyway. Stars were dancing in front of my eyes, making my head spin. I'd taken some pretty nasty bruises playing softball back in high school, but nothing compared to this fall. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to walk for the next century or so.

"Ow."

I froze, stopped trying to get up on my hands and knees when I heard a shuffling noise beside me.

"You shouldn't..." A panicked voice was suddenly gasping in my ear . "Get out of here. Now."

"What?"

"Now, you have to..."

Something warm and sticky touched my face - a hand, covered in...blood?

I could feel my heart beating an erratic rhythm against my chest and my breath was getting caught in my throat. White noise was filling my ears. I was going to pass out.

"Who...are you? What's..."

But the person, whoever they were, didn't answer. They screamed.

The person screamed and screamed, shattering my ear drums. I tried to move, to get away from the awful shrieking, but they had their fingers forming a manacle aorund my wrist and I could only make it a few inches without being pulled back.

How could someone out on the street not hear how loudly this person was screaming?

Just as I thought I had my wrist free, cold, clammy, skeletal hands clamped down on me and yanked me backwards, ramming me into the side of something hard and metal.

I was suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling of complete and total despair. I was going to die. I was absolutely sure of it. I was only nineteen and I was going to die in some sketchy alleyway at the hands of some unknown assailant.

Everything went black.

In my dream, I was standing on the edge of a subway platform. Air was whistling down the stone tunnels, whipping my hair around my face, signaling the arrival of a train. I didn't know what I was doing here, but I knew that whatever was on the other side of the tracks was important. Every fiber of my being was screaming at me to get to the other side of the tracks, onto the other platform.

On the other platform was a man. From the distance I was at, I could see that he was older, but in a handsome, classic movie star kind of way. His dress, a pair of jeans and a button down, gave nothing away as to who he was or what he was doing on a subway platform. He was staring at me with a calm, leveled look, like he knew everything there was to know about me.

I just knew that I had to talk to this man.

The train was getting closer and closer, its metal wheels screeching against the tracks. I didn't have much time to get to the other platform, if I could at all. The headlights from the train shone down the tunnel, blinding me, but I took a deep breath and decided to do it anyway. I had to.

I jumped.

"Holly? Holly, can you hear me?"

The calm, soothing voice drifted through my thoughts, slowly pulling me away from whatever dream I had been having that I couldn't remember.

Someone was poking and prodding at me. It was annoying, but I was too tired to care. I just wanted to sleep. With the amount of noise in the room that was impossible, however. Nobody would be able to sleep with people talking, doors opening and closing, someone scuffing their shoes on the floor, somebody whining loudly.

I finally opened my eyes with a heavy sigh.

I was met with the sight of some gray-haired woman hovering over me, one of those small flashlights in her hand, peering down at me with wide eyes.

"Well, hi." The woman smiled at me, showing off perfectly straight, dentist-whitened teeth. "How are you feeling, Holly?"

"Fine."

I scooted back on the bed, away from the woman and her overly enthusiastic smile.

Ever since my mother had the bright idea to take me to a carnival right after we moved to New York City and I'd had an unfortunate run in with a clown that took their job a little too seriously, I had a strong aversion to people who smiled too much.

"You took quite a fall," the woman continued, flipping through a chart in her grasp. "Do you know what happened?"

"I fell," I told her.

That was obvious, wasn't it?

The woman laughed, set down the chart on the bedside table, and picked up a stethoscope. She started asking me a series of questions while she checked my blood pressure, my heart beat, the rest of my vitals.

What year is it? When is your birthday? Who is the president of the United States? What is two plus two?

I seriously debated answering all of her dumb questions with even dumber answers, but I bit my tongue and forced out the appropriate responses.

She'd said that I had fallen, which explained why my head was throbbing, but other than that, I was perfectly fine. Tired, but fine. I was about to ask if I could go home when the purple privacy curtain around the bed was wrenched back.

"Excuse me, Dr. Wexler? I'm Detective Ayers with the NYPD."

I looked at the woman, Dr. Wexler, and then back at the man now standing at the foot of the bed, showing off his police badge. Dr. Wexler looked just as breathless as I felt.

Standing at the edge of the bed had to be the most gorgeous man I had ever seen in my entire life. Tall and dark haired, with a lean, muscled body and broad shoulders, curved lips and sharp cheekbones. Everything about him, this Detective Ayers, I think he said, screamed man. Of course he would be in a manly profession like law enforcement...even if women were in law enforcement, too.

Wait. What? Geez. How hard did I hit my head again?

"Hi," Dr. Wexler said in a stunned voice. "What can I do for you, Detective?"

"I'm here to take..." He grabbed a small notepad from his leather jacket pocket - wow, the police really carried those? - and checked something scribbled down on it. "...Miss Eberly's statement."

"Statement?" A beat of panic skipped in my chest. "Statement for what?"

Detective Ayers looked at me. Why was he staring at me like that? I hadn't done anything wrong, had I?

"You were assaulted," he said slowly. "In an alleyway a few blocks over from NYU."

Everything came rushing back like a battering ram.

The acrid smell of blood and dirt, the cover of slime over the ground, hit my senses and almost made me double over. I clutched at the bedsheets and dug my fingernails in, squeezing my eyes shut as I remembered the sensation of being grabbed at by those hands.

Those hands had felt like death itself. Frigid, thin, bony, like I was being touched by a skeleton.

I felt physically dirty. It was as if there was some invisibe slime covering me because of that thing's touch, and I had the sudden urge to make a mad dash for a shower and scrub myself clean until my skin was rubbed raw.

"Easy there, Holly," Dr. Wexler said, gently gripping my shoulder. "It's okay. Nobody is going to hurt you. You're safe."

"I'm fine," I snapped. "Can I leave? Please?"

"No."

It wasn't Dr. Wexler that had answered. The sharp, commanding tone belonged to Detective Ayers. He pulled a chair from the side of the bed around and sat, pulling a fancy looking pen out of his coat pocket.

"If you could give us a moment, Dr. Wexler," he said, giving her a pointed look.

Dr. Wexler, a complete stranger, looked down at me in concern. I stared up at her imploringly, silently begging her not to leave me alone with this ridiculously handsome, incredibly imposing man.

"Miss Eberly is not a minor," Detective Ayers said forcefully. "You have no say in the matter, Dr. Wexler."

Dr. Wexler sighed, nodding, and gave me what I think was supposed to be a reassuring smile, before she walked off, pulling the privacy curtain around the bed.

I eyed Detective Ayers warily. It was blatantly obvious that this man was all business.

I was going to throw up.

"So, Miss Eberly, I - "

"Please stop calling me Miss Eberly."

I was normally never this rude, but I could hardly force myself to care right then. I wanted to go home. Hospitals made me itchy, and sitting around in one while some hardass detective interrogated me was not my idea of a good time.

Detective Ayers seemed unfazed by my rudeness and merely shrugged. "Okay. Holly. I need you to tell me what happened in that alleyway."

I impulsively pulled the sheets around me tightly, shivering as a wave of coldness washed over me.

"I don't know what happened."

"Don't lie to me."

The funny thing? I wasn't lying. I really didn't know what happened in that alleyway.

In my pyschology class last semester we had discussed the brain's reaction to physical and emotional trauma. Adrenaline kicked in and took over most of your body. Sometimes, the brain created imagined images or feelings to atone for the stress you were under.

For all I knew, I could have imagined everything that had happened in the alleyway.

"That person," I said suddenly, remembering the panicked voice that had screamed and screamed. "Are they okay?"

Detective Ayers examined something on his notepad. "No. The Jane Doe found with you didn't make it. She died shortly after you both arrived at the hospital."

Oh, no.

A sob tried to work its way out of me, but I swallowed hard, forcing it back.

So there really had been someone in trouble. I'd gone into that alleyway with the intention of helping whoever had been in trouble. I couldn't have just not helped her. And now the girl was dead.

"It wasn't your fault."

I glared at Detective Ayers with watery eyes. What was he doing, reading my mind? Or was total guilt just plainly written on my face?

"There was nothing you could have done," he said firmly. "She was beat up too badly. Stop feeling guilty. It'll ruin you."

Was that supposed to make me feel better or something?

"Thanks for the words of comfort," I grumbled, rubbing at my eyes with the heels of my palms.

"Now." His pen was poised over his stupid notepad. "Tell me what happened."

I realized as I looked at his perfectly serious face, his dark eyes that said he wasn't shitting around with his job, that I wouldn't be able to leave and go to sleep until I told this Detective everything I knew.

So I reluctantly repeated what had happened. How suffocating it had been to be in the alleyway, the girl screaming, the blood, whatever skeletal thing that had grabbed me and thrown me around.

As I said this aloud, I realized a little too late that I sounded downright insane. How plausible was it that some skeleton had grabbed me? That something had happened to block out reality?

When my story was finished, I had the urge to start sobbing again. They were going to admit me to a mental ward. I didn't want to spend the rest of my days in a mental ward, surrounded by other people who were just as crazy as I was. I didn't -

"I believe you," Detective Ayers said calmly. "Don't worry, I don't think you're crazy."

I stared blankly at him.

He was a mind reader, definitely.

"Okay...you believe me."

Detective Ayers nodded, flipping his notepad closed, shoving it back into his coat. "We'll keep your statement on file and contact you if we need anything else. Hopefully, we'll be able to catch your assailant as soon as possible." He dug around in his pockets again and then handed over a small business card. "Call me if anything happens."

"Wait, hang on a second!" I yelped. "Is anything going to happen?"

Detective Ayers turned back to look at me, his hand fisting the privacy curtain. "I don't know."

He'd already passed three beds and was heading towards the swinging doors at the end of the ER before I thought to ask perhaps the most important question.

"Detective Ayers! What was that...what was in the alleyway?"

"I don't know."

He left without another word, thankfully taking his depressing attitude with him.

I dropped my head back against my pillows and groaned loudly. This day had sucked ass, and call me a pessimist, but I got the feeling that wasn't going to be changing anytime soon.

I examined the business card Detective Ayers had given me, wondering if I would ever have to voluntarily spend more time with him. So far, my first impression of him wasn't all that hot.

Detective Roman Ayers

CD Division - NYPD

212 -773 - 0001

What the hell was the CD divison?

I made a mental note to add that very question to my list of rapidly growing queries - most of which had to do with that damn alleyway.

Eloise Scott had a forceful personality to begin with. She avoided most people because she simply didn't have the patience to deal with them. And most people avoided her because they didn't have the balls to face somebody who could put them in their place within ten seconds flat.

Eloise Scott was not a woman to be messed with.

I loved my mother. I truly, honestly did. But I had felt a considerable amount of relief the day I finally moved out of home, and into a small yet cozy apartment with my best friend Mackenzie. Without my mother breathing down my neck and unconsciously placing pressure on me to do my absolute best, I was actually able to enjoy myself properly for once. Removing stress from your daily life could do wonders for you.

I didn't know how it happened, but someone had contacted my mother and informed her that I had been in an accident and that I was in the hospital. It certainly wasn't me. I hadn't intended on telling my mother about the incident, because knowing her, she'd flip a lid the second she found out.

That was why I was instantly filled with dread the moment I saw my mother standing at the end of my bed in the ER as I made my way back from changing my clothes in the bathroom.

"Holly." Mom was scowling, every part of her radiating disapproval. "Why on earth did you not call me immediately?"

"Because I was unconscious?" I suggested lightly, shoving my blood stained clothing into a paper bag one of the nurses had given me.

Because the alleyway was technically a crime scene now, my cellphone, clothes and purse had to be impounded as evidence, and God only know when I would get them back, if I could get them back.

"No excuses," Mom snapped. "You could have been killed."

"Anybody can be killed on a daily basis, Mom."

Mom sighed her why-must-I-carry-all-of-your-problems-on-my-shoulders sigh and started muttering under her breath - something she only did when she was truly annoyed. Most of the time, this happened because of something I'd unintentionally done.

"Regardless," she finally said, brushing back her glossy dark hair with a hand. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine."

I'd said that so many times tonight - well, now morning - that I was actually starting to believe it myself.

Mom sighed again, and an actual concerned expression crossed her face. Mom wasn't even in her mid-forties yet, but the obvious signs of aging had already taken over her. She was still a looker with big blue/green eyes, flawless skin, and gorgeous hair, but the lines around her mouth and eyes gave away that she had been through a lot.

"Are you sure? That bruise on your cheek looks painful."

I automatically reached up to touch the bruise blossoming underneath my left eye. "I'll live. The doctor said I'll be fine. No concussion or anything."

"Good. Are you ready to leave?"

Was I ever?

I slipped on my shoes, the only one of my possessions that had managed not to get destroyed by dirt or blood, and gestured to the doors. "Let's go."

Mom marched out of the ER with a fast stride, leaving me practically jogging to keep up with her. We made our way out of Bellevue, out into the crisp autumn morning. She flagged down a taxi and immediately ushered me inside, barking at the driver to take us to my apartment.

"Sorry you'll be late to work," I mumbled as the driver pulled the taxi out into traffic.

Mom was the manager of the Women's Lingerie department at Bloomingdale's, and she was very, very committed to her job. The fact that she had risked being late to her precious job to take me home from the hospital was a momentous occasion.

"Don't be ridiculous, Holly," Mom scoffed. "Of course I would be here for you."

I had to admit this was the truth, however marginally I believed it. Mom and I were close, however strained our relationship might have been because of our hectic schedules.

Mac and I live in a relatively safe neighborhood in Manhattan- well, as safe as one could be in New York City. The buildings were old and cramped, barely a breath of space in between. Our apartment was just the same. Postage stamp living room, narrow kitchen, water closet sized bathroom, and two tiny bedrooms barely the size of large bathrooms.

It wasn't much, but it was still home.

I rode the rickety elevator up to the fifth floor and made my way down the green carpeted hallway to apartment 5B, Mom trailing along behind me. I unlocked the door and slid inside.

I could hear Mac's snoring from down the hallway, so it couldn't be that late in the morning if she was still asleep. Mac was an early riser by all means.

"Go lay down, Holly," Mom ordered as she edged into the narrow kitchen. "I'll make you some tea."

I was too tired to fight back. I dragged myself to my bedroom, exhaustion weighing heavy on my shoulders. I'd be lucky if I even made it to my bed before I fell asleep.

My bed took up most of the space in my room, but it was worth it. I loved my bed and its fluffy mattress and cool sheets.

I dived underneath the covers and closed my eyes, begging for sleep to come.

I dimly heard Mom come into the room with tea a few minutes later, telling me that she had written Mac a note about what had happened. She kissed my head and then left for work, promising to stop by later tonight.

Hopefully, I'd be able to get some sleep without dreaming of subways again.

_____________________________________________________________

And so, this is what I've been working on for the past month or so. I'm very pleased to say that I'm very excited about this project, and I hope you all like it as much as I'm loving writing it. I've got a pretty good plot figured out, so expect lots of twists and turns and excitement at every corner...hopefully. :D   It's a little different from what I've written in the past, but not by too much. I'm 90% sure this will be my entry for the Watty Awards this year, so, hopefully, you all will stick with me through this! :) 

So, please, do me a solid and drop a comment letting me know what you think so far, or maybe even vote, maybe even tell your friends or your dog or your family, too. It would really help, letting me know how I'm doing so far, please and thanks. :) 

This also brings me to my next point. I've been getting some questions about when I'll be posting the next chapter of Face Your Fears. I'm working on it, really, but it's coming along much more slowly than I thought it would! It's distressing. D: I have what I want to write planned out in my mind, but the words aren't coming, which is a very big problem. So, bear with me, because I promise I WILL finish the story...it just might take awhile. But hey, I don't head off for college until the end of August, so we've still got a lot of time. Never fear! 

Oh, and one more thing - my sister and I watched Beautiful Creatures last night when I was over at her place, and I have to say, I really was pleasantly surprised. It was a pretty good movie. I'm planning on reading the book, but right now I'm a little preoccupied with Game of Thrones. Um...seriously? Nikolaj Coster-Waldau? Yum. 

So...let me know what you guys think, please. :)