The street was too quiet. The kind of silence that didn't feel peaceful, but hollow, like sound had been scooped out of the world and replaced with something cold.
A girl stepped out from between two abandoned alleyways, her breath sharp and uneven, each inhale cutting through her chest as if she'd been running for hours. Her clothes hung off her body; they were oversized, wrinkled, and smudged with dirt, as if they didn't belong to her. Her hair was tangled, sticking to her damp forehead. Her face was pale beneath the flickering streetlights, a paleness that came from fear, not illness.
Her eyes were wide, frantic and exhausted.
It kept shifting constantly, scanning every direction as if expecting something or someone to appear from the darkness.
