It's Your Bad Luck {Carver}

[AERYN MARIANA LIONFORD,]

It was New York, it was dark, and criminals and gangsters were on the prowl at this time of night. Petite blondes who could hardly pack a punch weren't meant to be up and active, but Aeryn never really listened to common sense. She had lived in New York for a long time and often had to stumble home drunk and wasted after partying at clubs, and if she managed to evade the things that roamed around in dark alleys in that kind of state, then she was quite sure that she would do perfectly fine now, considering she was very much sober and alert. She was old enough to know not to follow strangers that randomly approached her with some sort of offer, and she was smart enough to know that places that had light and people were better to go through. Nonetheless, this was Aeryn. She wasn't fearless and she wasn't lucky, but she was exhausted and in need of a good night's sleep, and while she knew ways to get home safely, she chose to take a chance and take a shortcut through the park. While it wasn't the safest place to be, she figured the dim lighting and lack of hiding places meant that the creepers of the night wouldn't really choose to make that their hunting grounds for the harmless.

As Aeryn walked through the park, she heard the soft squish of her sneakers over the dewy grass. There wasn’t much that was dark or foreboding about that sound, though she didn’t honestly expect some sort of music from a horror movie’s chasing scene to begin. Besides, it was hard to imagine the park as some place where crime could take place. Everything seemed too peaceful and surreal. There was pleasant quietness and a slight scent of plant life in the air. Up above, the stars twinkled prettily next to the bright crescent moon, all of which was on set against a contrasting black backdrop. It was quite a scene and if it weren’t for the fact that she was afraid of falling asleep from her fatigue, she would have laid down in the grass to attempt to search for constellations in the sky.

Honestly, though, things never went as expected for her. Sure, she was halfway through the park and a mere few minutes away from home, and the likelihood of getting jumped was dropping, but she had the convenience of stumbling over something. Leave it to Aeryn to simply drift off into a daydream, only to nearly to introduce her face to the ground as she tripped over a large load. Raising an eyebrow, she wondered what it was. She expected maybe she walked into the playground area and stumbled over the random sets within, but she never really expected to see a body. Eyes widening, she kept her lips pressed close together to keep from screaming bloody murder. She shifted so that she was kneeling next to what she was quite sure was a male, and extending her arm forward, she poked at his side, hoping for some reaction to tell her that he wasn’t dead. She could deal with drunk and passed out or beaten into unconsciousness, but there was absolutely no way she could walk away fine if it was a dead body she managed to stumble over.