Was I Shot?

Damascus, in Virginia, is a small town in the United States. It's a peaceful place, most of the inhabitants know each other, giving the idea of how small the town is. Astri White decided to go live there believing she could live a calmer life than New York.

Astri grew up in an orphanage in New York, she was found in the middle of a park when she was around 6 months old.

A police officer found her, he was around 55 years old and he was the one who named her when they didn't find any family of hers.

Astri, because her eyes look like stars, and White, her surname, because her hair is almost white with thin red locks, and her skin is so fair that she looks like a snow field.

While she was growing up, everyone could notice that she was different. And Astri herself could see that too.

She was like other girls in looks, having beautiful curves, round eyes, and plump lips. But since she was little she was stronger than others, when she became an adult no normal man could beat her in terms of strength.

She is a glutton, being capable of eating three or four servings to actually feel full, and even eating all that she wouldn't get fat.

When she was a child, the orphanage had to control her meals and since she couldn't control her strength well she would also be kept away from other children.

She was treated as a problem in the orphanage, so she didn't know what love was.

At school, she could make friends, but she never felt part of them, she never felt whole anywhere. And whenever she would show her strength or how much she can eat, people would notice she was different, so she just pretended she wasn't hungry or wasn't strong enough for anything to don't call attention to herself.

And when she became an adult, she realized she was really alone in this world… She could only stay at the orphanage until she was 18 years old.

On the same day of her birthday, she was put out of the orphanage and she had to live in the streets until she could find a job to rent a place.

Astri is a beautiful woman, she calls men's attention, but she feels deep inside of her that if she gives herself to a man it will mean much more to her than to him.

Also, she fears being used and then thrown out like in the orphanage. She would do everything for the children, she accepted taking care of them all the time in the hope the orphanage would accept her there, but they just used her until the day they could get rid of her.

When she was 20 years old she decided to go live in Damascus, to try living a quiet life and being distant from other people, deep down in her job as a waitress, and her hobbies were singing, reading, and drawing.

–

One night, around 3 am, Astri was taking her heavy backpack, full of her books and notebooks, pencils and art supplies, some snacks, and spare clothes, preparing to leave the bar where she works.

"I'm so tired today. That's what I get from not sleeping what I needed for two days straight reading." She thinks.

She decides not to take her spare clothes and just leaves in uniform. The next day would be her day off, so it doesn't matter if her uniform would get dirtier.

She throws her backpack on her shoulders and says good night to everyone.

As she walks on the dark streets, she senses she's being followed. She could always sense things more than normal people, she noticed that long ago.

She pretends to look to both sides of the street for any cars but her intention was to know where this presence she sensed was.

"There!"

A man wearing a black hoodie was following her in the distance. As she kept walking, he quickened his steps to get closer to her.

So she quickened her steps too, and when she found a curve she sprinted afraid that the man following her would be armed.

When he turned the same curve, he noticed she was running and he ran after her.

She knows she can run for a long time and wait for him to get tired of following her. Then she decides to take another curve that leads to the park, and when she turns she feels her eyes darken and her body loses its weight.

"Did he shoot me?" She thinks before losing consciousness completely.

—-

She wakes up slowly feeling the sunshine, as she starts to remember she was being chased she wakes up with a jump. She looks around and only sees trees and grass.

"Am I at the park? Did the.." She talks frantically.

She touches between her legs scared to death, but she doesn't feel anything strange. She gives a relieved sigh.

She checked her backpack and the maniac didn't steal anything, even her cellphone was there.

"Isn't that luck? Maybe I lost him before..." She tells herself, but then she doesn't even understand what happened to her.

She simply lost consciousness from nowhere and woke up in the morning.

She starts walking and she doesn't find the road or gates. The trees are endless and she's sure she didn't go deep into the park. She looks around again worried and getting scared.

When she was getting desperate she hears men talking, she followed their voices feeling relieved, but when she found them the relief was transformed into horror.

There were three naked men sitting around a deer eating raw meat. Their hands and faces were all dirty with blood. They sensed Astri and together looked in her direction.

"Oh, look what we have here!" One of them says with a terrifying smirk, standing on his feet and walking in her direction.

"What a beautiful female!" The second one stands.

"Our lucky day!" The other stands and Astri is already feeling that their eyes are not friendly, they're looking at her as if she were their next meal.

She was stepping back since the first one stood up, asking herself how she could escape those maniacs. However, in a blink of an eye, she knew all she could do was run for her life.

"The deer is walking away!" She points behind them and they looked back.

When they turned their heads away she ran as fast as she could. She ran, having no direction at all, she just ran.

"Smart female! But you can't run away from us!" One of them laughs out loud starting to run after her.

Astri was fast, even with her backpack on her back, but when she looked back she didn't see three men following her. She saw three huge wolves.

"What the..?! Wolves?!" She cried running with all her strength.

She had to stop running when she was met with a cliff and almost fell into the river on its end.

She looked at three wolves getting closer, their faces looked like they were having fun. And then they started changing shape.

Astri felt the air missing from her lungs and her heart stopped beating when she saw the wolves transforming into the three maniacs from before.

"I-I must be having a nightmare.. What is..?" She stutters, completely in shock.

"Oh, you wish. Don't worry. We'll be gentle." One of them says sarcastically while the other two laugh.

She diverts their hands and kicks them away. Her strength took them by surprise, but they felt even more excited to have her.

It took her one more breath for her to decide she prefers dying from falling on a river than in the hands of perverts who walk naked and eat raw meat like savages.