Dark Avenue

First Meeting

*A/N* I hope you enjoy! As mentioned in my other story, I don't cast characters because I like to leave that up for the reader to imagine :)

In a city full of the privileged and wealthy lived a girl of eighteen. She was not among the class of the privileged or the wealthy. Instead, she lived alone in a ratty house on the outskirts of the city center. Each day was a struggle to survive. She was finishing her last year of high school.

Everyone thought the house she lived in was abandoned. Her address led to a postal box at the post office. She was very skilled in the art of deception when it came to her living situation.

It wasn't always like this. There was a time when her parents were still alive and she lived a respectable life. She had never been rich but she had never been in complete and utter poverty either.

After her parents' murder everything changed. Her house had been burned to the ground and she lost everything. No one looked at her with pity, not even for the sake of what humanity owned to its fellow human. She had been cast off from the world and left for dead. Friends had abandoned her as did teachers and family members. The government let her be so long as she didn't cause any trouble.

She was non existent to the world.

Yet she still existed.

Who was there to care if she lived or died? Who was there to hold her when she cried? She had no one and the only means of survival were that of thievery and lies. She did what she could in order to survive. In order to eat another meal, live another day.

She would survive.

The only reason she could move forward was in knowing that one day she would exact her revenge on the murderers of her parents. There would be no escaping her justice. All who played a part in her parents' death would perish by her hand.

She had been blessed with long and luscious black hair and hazel eyes. She was average height and pale. Exotic as her looks were, it was not enough to survive on. She possessed many skills that had once been foreign to her three years ago.

Today was a typical day like any other. School went by in a steady hum as it always did. People pretended like she did not exist. Nothing about her day suggested that things were about to change.

She was walking down a narrow alleyway hidden in shadows after school had ended.

The city was busy as it was every other day. She could hear the laughter of her classmates travel down the street toward her. Her chest constricted with an emotion she refused to acknowledge. Friends were dangerous creatures.

She looked up the alley's wall. She was walking between two corporate buildings complete with sixty floors each. The shiny, metallic walls reflected back her impassive face.

She had not laughed or smiled in three years. The emotion of happiness was now foreign to her.

Her family and friends had taken that feeling away when they betrayed her.

But she had no reason to idle away precious time worrying about the mundane things in life. She had spent her late afternoon scrounging for dinner. Day old pizza and a half rotten apple was all that she would eat for dinner.

It had to be enough.

She was headed back to her house when everything about her life changed. If she hadn't walked down that shadowed alleyway then she might have escaped the fate that awaited her.

Right before she entered the alley she heard footsteps behind her. These sounded familiar.

They had followed her before.