@the-final-peace
Another day was coming to an end. The box of luncheables had been left behind for the homeless to take from as they wished. The money made had been contributed to a local soup kitchen to purchase food, and necessities for them to utilize. What was left would go to another night in the dingy hotel room she had rented; somewhere relatively safe from the crimes and wailing of sirens that seemed uncomfortably frequent in the neighborhood.
She held her violin case in hold with the guitar case strapped firmly to the back of a hiking pack and blanket rolled neatly at the top. The woman had become so use to traveling like this it became second nature to pack everything in record time, and be on her way by the time night collected around her.
A sound stirred the woman, however. A faint skitter like worn boots dragging against asphalt. She turned to check behind her, only to start running when she caught sight of a shadow -- and the distinctive glint of a blade in the stranger’s grip.
She felt the hardened ground strike her; a pain tearing through her body as the world burned a blinding silvery-white. A glimpse of the stranger passed her vision of him laying broken a few feet from her, and the pooling of sanguine mingling between their two forms. She had been stabbed. Each breath was like inhaling acid feeling droplets of red fall from her lips. She couldn’t see clearly, however the gasps for air she quickly realized were her own.
A direct strike to her neck at an angle, tearing through one of her carotid arteries, through muscle, veins, and down to the top of her lung where a hole was left in its wake. She would be dead in a matter of minutes if she’s lucky. Seconds if the massive hole in her artery wasn’t repaired quickly enough. Even then her chances were slim.
The blinding white suddenly faded to an absolute black. But she could heart her heart. The quickened beat started to slow, until it simply -- stopped. Not from death, however. It simply seemed to freeze as if time itself had taken a step back, and the woman was left standing, unharmed, among the darkness with only the sound of slow breaths echoing into the void.
