Into a shady alley

Tyler called after her but she didn’t stop. She run and run and run, until her calves hurt and her lungs felt like they were exploding. She’d never imagined she could run so fast and so far in a pair of heels and a tube dress (both courtesy of her sister’s wardrobe).

Yet she did, even thought a part of her knew she had no need to. Tyler would have stopped if she’d told him to. Running away had been a poor decision made by a part of her she thought gone away.

Barbara leaned against a wall to recover some breath, then looked at her surroundings...and gulped. Now she regretted her decision to run away even more than she did before.

She’d ended in a part of the city she had never seen before. It was an alley littered with trash which, while disgusting, was nothing intimidating. What was intimidating, especially for a sheltered woman like her, were the people inhabiting it.

To her right, opposite the wall she was leaning against, were a trio of black man wearing beanies, baggy clothes and golden chains as necklaces. She didn’t like to jump to conclusions too soon but she was pretty sure they were part of some type of gang. And they were all leering at her.

Barbara gulped, again, and looked at the rest of the alley. A few feet in front of her was a man dressed in all black wearing a pair of sunglasses and an earpiece. He was the biggest human she had ever seen, a slab of muscle higher than a door. He looked like a bouncer but she had no idea of what. There were no illuminated signs, only a door he was covering with his massive body.

Then, at last, there was a half-open door with a sign on it indicating it as a public bathroom, even if the sign looked a bit strange. As if it was a fake. But why would someone make a fake bathroom? She didn’t know.

What she did know was that she couldn't remain there, she had to do something. But what?