Marissa strolled along the slick sidewalk without a care in the world. She was smiling and wore minimal coats or winter gear, despite the chill of November. She was walking from her friend's house back to hers, where a nice hot cup of hot chocolate waited for her. 

"I feel like I'm in a movie!" She laughed, dancing as she walked, happily oblivious to her surroundings. 

She stopped abruptly at the sound of footsteps crunching behind her. Turning around slowly, she saw a tall woman smiling at her, but her smile did not fit-instead of making her look cheerful and sunny, her grin made even the creepiest of clowns to cower in her sight. Marissa's eyes widened in fear and she blindly ran forward, barely looking at where she was going.

"Little girl," the woman sang, always three steps away, her voice too shrill, too happy, too creepy. 

"Leave me alone!" Marissa shrieked, glancing behind her for a moment before ducking into an old abandoned shack and slamming the door behind her.

For a moment, she leaned against the door, gasping to regain her breath. 'It's all a terrible dream,' she told herself. 'I'll just open the door and it will be alright.' 

"Marissa, why do you hide from me?" Chirped the woman from outside just before she started banging on the door. Marissa covered her mouth to stop herself from shrieking in terror and instead backed into a corner. 

The woman broke the door down after ramming it twice and approached the girl, a knife in her hands.  "Come, little lamb," she beckoned with a bony finger. Slowly, as if in a trance, Marissa got up and walked to the strange woman, looking her in the eyes, no fear or hesitation in her eyes.

Her face twisted into one of extreme agony as the knife rammed her chest.  

The woman's face twisted into an unquenchable fury, and she was relentless with the body. When she was done, she smiled, wiping her knife on the shirt of the girl. Chuckling to herself, she walked out of the shack, and back to a spot under the bridge where she slept. 

As she walked to her shelter, however, she felt an odd presence, just behind her. But nothing was behind her when she turned around. Shrugging, she stretched out underneath the bridge. 'I'm just a little jumpy,' she told herself. 'I'll be fine later.'

Lie of the century.

"Something is chasing me!" she shrieked, running from a black humanoid thing, but no one else saw it. The thing always appeared behind her, next to her, or even in her dreams. Terrified, she told anyone, but nobody listened to her. 

One dark night, she found herself in the shack where it all began. "Whoever you are, stop! This isn't funny!" 

"Funny..." came a disembodied voice. "I didn't think it was funny." Before the woman could comprehend anything, she found herself dangling in midair, a tendril of shadow choking her to death.

Karma.