She walked down the dimly lit street on the warm summer evening. It had been a long day working at the restaurant in the middle of nowhere, Arizona. She was aware that people had been checking her out all day, but she thought nothing of it. It was just another day for her. It was just a good thing that her favorite patron wasn’t there, grabbing and pinching her ass as she walked by. She had tried saying something, but no one thought anything of it. Such was the way of the world when you lived in a town made of mostly retirees. To them, it was just how things ought to be simply because that’s how it was for them when they were her age, but she begged to differ. It was 2013 and she shouldn’t have to be seen as an object. She was a woman, not some man’s plaything.

There was one guy who stood up for her though. He fought the other patron and forced him out, but not before a few blows were exchanged. In the end though, both men were told to leave. She didn’t like that, as it was plainly unfair to the man who had stood up for her. But her boss wasn’t happy with her as it was, mostly for not sleeping with him, so she knew better than to say anything. In the hellhole of a town, jobs were hard to come by. As it was, she had applied to her current job a year before and they had only called her back a few months ago. But that was normal.

All she wanted was to get out. She wanted to get back to a place where it was normal to call people back the same day you call them. She wanted to go to a place where people would actually do what they said they would in a timely manner. The fact that it was a rarity for a utility person to show up the day they promised was enough to make her sick of being there, but the distinct lack of anyone there that gave a shit about their town or anything other than the guns that were their substitutes for what was supposed to lie between their legs.

Arizona was no place for someone as liberal as she was, but sadly, a very good engineering school was there, and she was trying to work her way through college, just one more month to go, then she would graduate and be free from the madness that was such a large part of this town, the mentality of “it doesn’t matter; it can wait” was starting to absolutely drive her insane. All she wanted right now was to go home and just pass out on her couch and call it a night.

As she got closer to her apartment, she began to feel very uneasy. She didn’t exactly know what it was, but something was nagging at her. She kept looking over her shoulder, trying to see who or what was following her, but there was nothing she could see.

At the sound of a twig snapping, she bolted, running as fast as she could in any direction. It didn’t matter where, she just had to escape. She could hear footsteps behind her; or, at the very least, what sounded like footsteps. It could have been her own, she didn’t rightly know. She just had to leave so she took off, legs pumping fast, sprinting and tearing through the streets, knocking over trashcans and causing dogs to bark, lights turning on behind her, but she didn’t dare stop.

She opened the door to her apartment building and slammed the door behind her, hoping it would be enough. She had no idea what was going on behind her, but she was determined to escape. The world was silent and after waiting a few minutes, getting strange looks from people as they walked in the front door, she managed to compose herself and then, using every bit of her courage, she stood and walked the elevator.

She was alone in the elevator, and breathed a sigh of relief but at the stop one floor above the lobby, a man holding what appeared to be a very heavy box stepped in. She didn’t think anything of it; after all, it was just a man with a box. But the second that the doors closed, he dropped the box and in a flash, plunged a knife into her throat. She gasped in pain, her lungs screaming in agony as blood flooded into them, choking her. Life fled from her body and the man simply picked his box back up, and got out on her floor, leaving her dying body there in the elevator, alone and forgotten.