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'Hello?' I called out. Don't back down, Daya. You need to know what's going on. Steeling myself, I sucked in a deep breath and walked forward. The cold was icy, biting and nipping every inch of uncovered skin, turning my breath into a white, eerily beautiful mist in front of me. Nervously, I glanced up at the sky ' maybe to look for the sun to check it was still there, I don't know ' but of course, all I saw was night's dark blanket, thick, ominously shadowy clouds covering any possibility of the sight of a star to calm me. All I had was a thin sliver of silver moonlight, struggling with the clouds that smothered it.
The sound of my heels clacking against the damp ground rung in my ears as I walked further, deeper into the bowels of the alley. I may as well have been walking into the bowels of a monster.
'Hello?' I repeated, despising myself for the way my voice shook. 'Is anybody there?' You're fine, you're fine, you're fine, I chanted to myself inwardly.
'Friday'
I froze, petrified into immobility; the voice, so breathy and thin and dark, had been inches away from my right ear.
'You shouldn't have come,' he murmured, his voice harsh, like it was being dragged over a bed of razor blades.
'You watch me,' I stated lamely, unable to drag my voice above a whisper. My muscles seemed to be locked into place ' I couldn't even turn to look at him. Now that I was here, now that I was actually speaking to him, my cocky, arrogant fury had disappeared to be replaced with the severe, cold slap of reasonable rationality. I was in a dark alley, with a strange man who had been watching me, and I was all alone.
What was I doing?
'Yes,' he answered, and I thought I saw in my peripheral vision a shoulder rise and fall ' a shrug.
Slowly, I turned to look at him, and nearly gasped at what I saw.
He was taller than me, and I'd hazard to say a year or two older than me, possibly more. His hair was thick and darkest black, and his features were harsh, cruel ' strong, stark cheekbones, straight nose, and small chocolate ovals for eyes. But his skin'it was so pale, so very pale and fragile looking; it reminded me of white tissue paper stretched over a frame, minus the crinkles. Despite the fact that it was darkest night, his skin was so white; it seemed to glow with luminosity. It was seemed almost translucent; I could see his bones, his veins.
He was stunningly beautiful, stunningly terrifying. I was staggered.
It was so irrational that his skin, his fragile, otherworldly, breakable-looking skin, would scare me more than anything else about him.