The girl just walked; she had been walking for the last two hours. She had no destination, no direction, or no reasoning. The light was now hiding behind the tall trees and she had wandered from any known path. Giant, bare trees loomed around her; obscuring her from sight. Music played lightly into her ears from her phone in her side pocket, and her fingers twitched to the tune in her head.
The sun couldn’t get through the thick trees, leaving her in a darkness that creeped up on her. Her feet ached, and her legs screamed at her to stop. But still she walked.
The forest was enormous. By now it was completely dark, and the trees shook in the breeze. The girl wore only a thin sweater and jeans; but the cold did not bother her. She didn’t seem bothered by the dark, the cold or the way the bushes directly behind her swayed in the opposite direction to the breeze.
The music in her ears covered the soft footsteps coming from a few steps behind her and the wind blew back the cigarette smoke away from her.
She never noticed the tall man that waited for her to leave her house that afternoon. She never noticed the way he stayed fifty metres away from her at all times; even when she stopped for a coffee he still stayed fifty metres away from her.
Maybe if she noticed him she wouldn’t have gone into the forest that night. Maybe she still would have gone in if she did. But if she had known he was there things would have turned out different, for that I am sure. If she had known he was there; she would have been safe. For the easy kill is what he looks for.