*This story contains disturbing imagery*
A teenager, José Aguilar, is hanging out with his friends. It is a Saturday night and they are all walking through Old Sacramento, laughing amongst themselves.
“So we hittin’ the Ferris Wheel or nah?” said José’s friend, Angel.
Two of his other friends, Jasmine and Manuel, agreed, “Yeah!”
José, checking the time, realizes that it is almost 11 p.m. and time for him to get going.
José disappointingly says to Angel, “Aye bro I gotta go home.”
“What?” He replies, disappointed.
“Yeah, my ma gon’ be on my ass. My fault.”
“If you stay like 30 more minutes, I’ll give you a ride home,” Manuel offers
“I can’t bro, I’m sorry,” José says.
They say goodbye to José and he begins to walk home. As he is walking home José’s mom texts him and says that he better be home in 5 minutes. So José then cuts through an alley to save himself some time. He walks through the alley where he finds himself facing some dumpsters. He passes the dumpsters and at the end of them there is a crouching woman, her back facing José, and it seems she is covering her face. While he is passing her he notices she is crying, but he pays no attention to her and continues to walk.
He reaches the end of the alley, but he then hears the dumpsters. They make a loud noise, so José turns around to confront the commotion. He turns and sees the lid of a trash can close, but he notices something strange. The lady is gone. He is frightened. He doesn’t know what to do. Should he be scared, should he carry on, he doesn’t know. Ultimately he decides to just continue to walk home.
He turns back around and there she is. The lady is in front of him, at the end of the alley. Her back, still facing him. Then she turns around, with a grin, and reveals her face. Her face can only be described as something from a horror movie, something that couldn’t be real. It seemed as if something or someone had taken a bite out of the flesh. All of the skin that might’ve once made her beautiful, had been gone. All that was left of her face was what should’ve been hidden by her skin. Her blood oozed from everywhere, her nose only being that of bone, her eyes popping out like the moon at night. And the grin. The grin was the most unnerving. It seemed as if it had been slit, the edges stretching from cheek to cheek.
José stands there, frozen as if he had been doomed for life to just look at her. The lady then reaches behind her back and reveals a knife. José is terrified. Then in an instant, the lady darts for José. He suddenly regains the ability to think, and in a split second, he too takes off running. He runs back down the alley and towards the direction of his house. He continues to run down countless streets, but so does the lady. Although it was a weekend, there was not a person in sight who could hear his shouts.
He turns a corner, just one last street, and reaches for his key. He turns around to see the lady, but she is no longer following him. José, still frightened, opens the door to his house. He has won and can finally breathe. He sits on his couch and relaxes. Then he pulls out his phone to text his friends what had just happened, but hears a noise coming from upstairs. He calls out for his mom to let him know he is home, but gets no reply. He checks her location to see if she is even home, but she’s not. José, almost passing out from exhaustion, gets up to check what’s upstairs. He goes to turn on the stairwell light, but it doesn’t work.
“You know, ‘cus why not?” José storms back to the couch in frustration.
José grabs his phone from the couch then gets the courage to walk upstairs and turns on his phone flashlight. He points the flashlight up the stairs and makes a shocking discovery. The lady is in the house, staring at him from the top of the stairs, still with the same grin.
José runs out of the house, along with the lady. He runs anywhere he can and he finds himself running through another alley. He tries to escape the lady, but it is too late. The lady catches up to José and stabs his back with the knife. José and the lady fall to the floor. The lady then begins to continuously stab José with the knife, he spits out blood and cries for help. He’s gone. The lady then gets up and walks away crying. José’s body lays in the alley, lifeless, one stab wound after the other covering his body, no one in sight to find him.