It was the 1st of November, and the brisk fall weather brought howling winds and darkened skies. The clouds moved as if they were being chased by something just out of view, they carried themselves swiftly across the heavens. The girl in the black dress walked through the streets late at night with a backpack slung over one shoulder. The fallen leaves danced around her, as if to worship her very being. She was heading home from her night class at the community college, moving south on Green, the path she took every night. She usually walked with the boy next store, but he was out sick this particular night. She was not scared of the lurking shadows nor the eerie twinkle of chimes laughing at her from abandoned porches, but what did send goosebumps down her spine, was the scream.
      At first it only seemed like another high-pitched howl from the crippling wind, but as she grew closer to her neighborhood she realized it was coming from her own house. Only her mother and herself lived in the small ranch style home at the end of the street; it was pretty lonely with the absence of her deceased father. The girl dug out her keys from the bottom of her bag to enter the now eerily dark and quiet house. She let her eyes adjust to the musty blackness until she saw the hand lying on the floor. Now it was the girl’s turn to scream.  
      She switched on the light to get a better view at the dizzyingly disgusting sight. The pale, yet well-manicured hand most definitely belonged to her mother. Her long phalanges lay limp like cold spaghetti bathing in a pool of fresh blood. The smell of metal began to diffuse through the house, which made the girl sick three different times. The girl searched every corner and crevice of the house with no luck of finding the source of the scream, or in that case, the rest of her mother. The fear began to sink in and horrible thoughts popped into her head. She tried finding a reasonable explanation to this unreasonable event. She ran to the landline phone sitting on the desk in the office. Just as she began to dial 9-1-1, she stopped. A note scribbled in loopy handwriting was written on a sticky note stuck to the table, it read, “How dare you bite the hand that feeds you. You took your mother for granted, and now she will suffer the consequences. The hand you so greedily chewed has been torn off at her expense. You will never see her again.”
      Someone had taken this idiom to the extreme. Chopping off her mother's hand and apparently abducting her was something that would only happen in a movie. How could this happen to her? Who would do this? She loved her mother. Yes, sometimes they fought, and sometimes she did things she shouldn’t, but how had she angered somebody this much to have this happen?
     She heard a creak from the slowly opening office door. She whipped around and saw the abductor holding the crimson stained knife. The girl screamed once again. It all made sense now, and she couldn’t be more afraid.