The whisperer’s footsteps are quick as I hear them run out of the alley into a false sense of freedom. Follow, my mind shouts at me to move but I stand still, looking around at the garbage and taking in its rancid scent. My body has given up although my fight remains. It’s been weeks since they’ve come, whatever they were. We only knew the symptoms they inflicted and the signs of their approach.

Before I heard that person’s whisper, I knew I was being trailed. I could feel something's eyes on my back, picking me apart like my family does at holiday dinners but without the metallic mocking grins that are so blinding to look at. Instinctively, I reached for my pockets, the self-defense tool my friend bought me for my birthday last year became a force field around me. Or at least I hoped it did. He signed me up for self-defense classes I never took, not seeing the point because I was never alone. I always go home with a group, a friend by each side as we squeeze into an Uber. My apartment couch always has someone sleeping on it and when my friends weren’t available I found guests elsewhere, always making sure I was never alone.

Part of me wondered if the person following me was the guy I got bad vibes from earlier. I flirted for a bit but as the night went on he got more possessive so I slipped out of the club and decided to walk home. Why did I decide to walk? I don’t know. My legs were moving and moving as if they were a sail hit by a heavy breeze. Soon I was walking down streets I didn't recognize with feet slipped in red shoes stuck in an endless dance.

Someone was watching me. I could feel their eyes glued to my body. Up. Down. Side. Side. They watched my red-shoe dance that I kept steady in hopes to not alert my singular audience to the growing distress wrapping itself around me. The crowds got thinner and thinner so I…I slipped into this dimly lit alley with hopes my audience would find the exit.

With hopes, I could escape.

It wasn’t until a couple of minutes before I heard that whisper that I realized my singular audience wasn't human. I heard that strange guttural noise it made and I…I froze in the alley like an unwanted memory in someone’s head. What felt like an eternal moment was broken as the whisperer spoke and now they’re gone yet still I’m standing here.

Am I going to die tonight? In this short black skirt, I borrowed from May’s closet that always made me feel like I could take on the world and these three-inch heels that made me feel like I was tall enough to touch the clouds. I’m only twenty-four, and I haven’t gone on my dream trip or fallen in love with someone who made the tint of the world just a little brighter. If I’m not clubbing, then I’m at work, trying to be noticed. At the club, I’m trying to be noticed too by the right guys for the night and in the morning I’ll forget them.

No one’s ever seen me before without my waxy smile that’s always melting under their heated scrutinizing gazes. Am I smart enough? Am I pretty enough? Am I capable? I might die tonight and I don’t have an answer to any of those questions. I need to run, move my body and do something!

Still, I don’t but a strange feeling is infiltrating me. It’s like my thoughts are clearer than ever before and the story of my life is being reeled in front of my eyes. I remember every criticism anyone has thrown my way and I turn into a fly trapped in fly paper.

I remember the things I convinced myself didn’t happen.

My stomach twists, like a wet t-shirt in tired hands under the summer sun. It bubbles inside me and I feel a geyser rising in me longing for release. I lean over, my body shaking, as I vomit a non-stop stream of disgusted memories. A lifetime of hatred pumps, heavy in my fragile heart. My mind drifts to the news report about these creatures.

I remember the newscaster wearing a serious expression on their face as they said. “Witnesses state after hearing the sound, these creatures paralyze their prey and sort through their most vulnerable memories until all that is left of them is a husk. Researchers still have no idea if there’s a clear pattern to the people being targeted but they're working on figuring that out. Although there is a popular proposed theory…”

Falling to the ground, I lift a shaky hand to my mouth, spouts of vomit still spilling from it. My body didn’t feel like my own. There was an intruder within me. It’s why I can’t move. Why the urge to run feels like a quiet song in my head. I look at my hands and they feel as if they’re changing sizes, growing in reverse. I know who I am but I don't know when or where I am. I hear a voice that makes me shiver, a voice that haunts my nightmares. My hands go to my head, covering my ears as if that could silence it. I can feel my body shaking like a snow globe in the hands of a fascinated child.

It’s taking something from me but I don’t know what. It’s wheedling me down like I’m a piece of wood or carving into me like I’m a piece of meat. Once again, I’m thrown back in a memory but this one doesn’t make me want to recoil into a ball.

“You can always come to me to talk, you know that right?” My friend, Tyler said while we were both hiking.

His eyes held a concerned warmth, a warmth I always envied because the warmness inside of me was a blazing fire that was melting me inside.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I insisted with my signature waxy smile.

I feel regret season my every action and inaction. I wish I had told someone. Especially someone who wouldn’t…I think of my family’s knife-like words that have also left permanent scars.

And then it happens. I feel something slam in my back, caress my neck, then prick something long and sharp in my neck. My vision starts to blur as my body screams in agony but I see something, someone in this dimly lit alley near the garbage cans. A little girl that looks just like me. She looks lonely, afraid, and confused.

I’ve spent a lifetime hating her in a world that never offered her much.

I fight against the numb feeling in my body and use all my strength to reach out to her. I wish I could beg her for forgiveness. I wish I could’ve given her more.

I feel tired.

I think of the report on the creatures once again, thinking of the newscaster’s final words.

“There is a theory though that these creatures might be attracted to trauma. Some are even suggesting we call them Trauma vampires.”