There. Behind me.

I whirl around, the shadowy figure of _something _just barely out of sight. It’s there, I know it’s there.

Though I know it’s surely not real.

The whispers started, I think, in the basement. That cold, stone floored room with peeling, sickly yellow paint, that curled down to reveal the thick, concrete walls that once marked me as their prisoner.

Camping with grandma was my favourite time of the year. Fishing, kayaking, catching frogs, everything a little kid would want. I loved it there, out by that creek that seemed to whisper to me, some nights.

You weren’t to touch the fancy china.

Those delicate, ornate plates and teacups were my grandma’s pride and joy, I knew that. But one day she was out, for one reason or another, and I was so bored. I thought maybe, maybe grandma would understand if she came home to a tea party. Not that I knew how to make tea. But milk in the fancy china should do well enough, my five year old mind decided.

So, I dragged over a chair, hoisting myself up onto it. The shelf was so high, though, and even perched on my tiptoes, standing on the largest chair I could find, my fingertips could only barely brush against the porcelain surface of the china. Groping around a little, I managed to hook the curve of a teacup plate with the pad of my pointer finger, tugging it and its teacup counterpart closer to the edge of the shelf, where I would catch them when they fell.

I didn’t catch them.

She screeched when she returned, seeing me standing on a chair, one of her precious teacups strewn across the floor in pieces. She shrieked out her agony until I was sure my ears would bleed.

After that, to the basement.

I hated it there. The unforgiven concrete floor may as well have been melded directly to my tailbone, due to how it immobilized my spine.

The whispers started there, yes, I’m sure of it.

I’d hear her, scolding and shrieking and praising alike, my grandma’s twisted voice thumping against my eardrums like a lingering, ghostly heartbeat. And the longer I was in there, the less I could recognize the voices in my head or what they were saying.

The men arrived.

I suppose it’s not entirely correct addressing them as men, but as a young girl I was taught to connect danger with strange men who wanted to hurt me. And there were certainly things, creeping around in my peripheries, slender, lithe limbs just barely pricking my attention before slipping just out of sight. I’d hear them, murmuring incoherent threats, cackling amongst one another at my misfortune.

I’d bury my head in my arms, drawing my shaky knees to my chest, but that was really no better. I could hear their unnaturally long toenails clicking against the concrete, could feel their icy cold breath ghosting along my neck.

I wouldn’t cry. No, I was a little rabbit hiding its broken leg, as I would sit staring at that peeling wallpaper, living corpse eyes widely transfixed on those swirling yellow patterns on the walls.

The voices started in the basement, but once I was out they would go away. Sometimes I would hear a lingering whisper when curled up in the soft sheets of my bed, or catch a glimpse of something thin and dark in the blur of a foggy dream. But they did go away. Mostly.

I’m not sure what happened, all I know is that they’re back. I can feel their presence, raising the hairs on the back of my neck, filling the base of my stomach with an underlying sense of foreboding. There’s an alarm clock embedded deep in my chest, and once the whispers returned, it clicked on. I can feel it ticking, counting down with each beat of my heart. Every pump of blood pushing me closer to my deadline, to the night when those shadow men will finally strike.

The doctors gave me pills to take, pills that numb the sharp ticking of that alarm clock, and quiet the whispers. I know I’m supposed to take them, I know I know I know I know.

But I can’t.

Because they won’t go away. The shadow men, they want me to take the pills. Yes, it’s all so clear now, the men _want me _to be unable to sense them. To see them. And then, when I’m delirious and numb, they’ll take me. Throw me in the back of a van, take me somewhere dark and cold, somewhere like grandma’s basement. Somewhere the light can’t reach me, and I’ll become another woman in those murder-rape horror stories.

I won’t let them.

---

They’re coming for me.

I can feel it, feel it in the way that alarm clock’s ticking grows more insistent, speeding up the unending march to my doon. They’re coming, they’re coming, and I can see those shadow men in the corners of my eyes, glimpses that seem longer, and I know the day is soon approaching where they will not longer be just out of sight. The day when they will take me is nearing.

---

I wake one night, jerk straight up in bed, cold sweat wetting my face. It’s so dark in my room that my vision swims with fuzzy shapes, dilated pupils trying desperately to latch onto something in the pure, unbridled blackness. And then I hear a stirring—something, in the corner of my room, nearing the side of my bed, thin, spindly limbs reaching out to take me—

I scream. I scream, and I thrash, and the alarm clock in my chest blares out, jackrabbiting in my chest with all the force of the knowledge that my time has run out. I scream, and I fight, and I kick, until something tiny and cold bites my skin, a tiny pinprick of hot pain that sends a warm drowsiness up my arm, and straight to that alarm clock.

Maybe if I close my eyes, when I wake this will all be a dream.

---

I wake up in my grandma’s basement. I blink, confused, until the peeling wallpaper is slowly replaced by white padding. I’m not immobilized by fear, this time, but I am immobilized. Or, I suppose, physically restrained. By garments the same color as the padding on the walls that bind my arms across my chest. I can feel the alarm clock in my chest, but barely, just barely. I start to sob, hot tears traversing their way down my flushed cheeks, because I knew this was coming and I couldn’t stop it.

Where have the shadow men taken me?