A man walked down a quiet street. No stores were open, the only light coming from flickering street lamps. No cars roamed the streets, no people on the sidewalk, just a single man. Everything was wet and glistening slightly from a previous rain. The buildings themselves, towering above him, seemed to touch the stars. They were monuments to the night, unmoving and silent. The man paused, hearing something as quiet as a mouse and equally disturbing. He glanced down the alley he had passed by, and saw a woman, her hands and neck pinned to the wall by a mass of muscle under a ski mask. The man felt something inside him, and slowly he lost consciousness. He did not faint, however. A grin crept across his paling face, and a shadow overtook his mind. The man, no longer himself, ran forward. The mass turned, gun in hand.
The mass was flying backwards, his bullet ricocheting off of the brick walls around him, and the man he intended to shoot unharmed and grinning at him. He felt a crunch and lapped into death, his fall breaking a trash bin, and his neck. The man looked at the woman beside him, the grin and the shadow vanished, and the former man returned. Both of them held shock in their expression for a lifetime of moments, when she slowly wrapped her arms around him, tears pouring down her face, yet kept quiet in her sobs. The man’s mind raced, searching for an answer as to what just happened. A broken piece of glass caught his eye, and in his reflection he saw dark eyes and a sinister grin.