CW: abduction, death, cannibalism, blood, bodily harm.
I had two things in mind while writing this story: anti-trans legislature targeting trans, nonbinary, gender queer, and two-spirited people and all the moments I was bullied in the bathroom as a child for not looking girl enough. If this story can do anything beyond entertain, I hope it makes you speak up and act out against bigotry in all forms.
—ALW
Whatever takes us began long before we knew what to call it. Back then, it was just the thing that came at night. I try not to think about it or the carcasses of kids it’s left behind. During moments like these, though, when my heart pounds as if I am running through a darkened forest, I can’t help but picture something taking me by the neck and cracking me into pieces.
But I’m not in the woods. The sun is shining outside.
I should be safe.
Instead, I’m in a bathroom, and I’m scared. The girls’ heads pop under the stall like worms, in and out, giggling as sweat rises to the surface of my dark skin. There are murderous wild things here far worse than some girls circling me in the bathroom, but right now, these teens are my only terrors.
After they leave, I hastily pull my pants up. My urge to pee left just as fast as I originally felt it. That’s what made me run to the bathroom without my usual caution. And even though the girls had trotted back to the lunchroom converted to a dance hall, I know this isn’t the end of it.
Tracy Chapman is finishing a howl before a screechy vintage Beastie Boys comes hollering through to change the atmosphere. Old greasy cheeseburgers hang muggy in the air, and the perfume of crushed Skittles is so agitating it made my teeth itch. The horde of teens on the dance floor move in a circle without dancing, without rhythm. No way I’m going in there. My own party is waiting for me beneath the long lunch tables placed in a line against the wall. Sam sits cross-legged under the table, playing with the dirty tatters at the bottom of his pants and waiting for me.
I creep over, keeping my eyes on the open doors to the cafeteria. Bathrooms cast spotlights. Now, I’m invisible again, just a younger sibling that snuck in—a child hoping to run with the older flock.
The long tables hold all the jackets thrown off from the dance. To me and Sam, the tables are our tableau of terror. Beneath the safety of jackets, we are alone. We grapple and dodge, running our bodies through the metal bars, pretending they are trees, and we are running for our lives from monsters who want to strip the skin off our backs.
The song in the caf changes. It’s a slow song. Something too grown for teens—but in a world like ours, nothing is too grown, I guess.
“Today’s the day,” Sam says.
And I smile through my silent tears for the first time since I stepped into the bathroom. “We’re going to do it?”
He nods and my grin grows, turning my tears hysteric.
• • • •
No one knows who was the first kid to get taken. But it took a lot to get the people in town to notice something was wrong. They made up neat explanations for the bones and puddles of blood with small shoes like stones in their depths. Years passed with corpses falling from the sky, bones shattering car windows, and once a woman knocked a teen boy’s head free from a tree with a broom handle. His head was half-eaten with a wad of hard bubblegum still in his mouth. They created stories until the bodies outweighed their tales. And when ignorance is faced with the mountain of pain and hurt it’s caused, it grows borders to hide its shame.
Tests started. Tests they hid from the town until they had “results.” Whatever they did, they found out that only kids and teens between the ages of ten and eighteen were being attacked, and only at night.
That’s how the new world was made. Curfews crashed down immediately. Now, dances are during the day, school is only five hours with three extra hours of virtual learning at home, and nothing, nothing happens at night. At least not for kids that fall into the danger zone of ages. The talks we get now aren’t about condoms and the dangers of the sea, but sunset times and escape strategies.
If you find yourself alone after dark, what do you do?
Find anything to hide in—a trashcan, an unlocked car, a baseball dugout.
And if you can’t find anything to hide in?
Run.
• • • •
Sam distracts the chaperones, and I make myself visible. I hook attention by sneaking through the dance and ducking out the back of the kitchen. Eyes are on me, but I just need the right eyes.
Night comes slow, dangerous behind Sam and me as we run through the woods away from the school and into the thick forest. Once we hit mosquito territory, we know we’ve gone far enough, and the dark will soon be with us. Will they follow us? Is their hate so great that it chases away all their inherited fears and teachings?
Branches and twigs and leaves shift around us like a wind kicking up something furious.
“Look what we have here,” a voice drifts from trees thin and packed together. “A gathering of freaks.”
One of the girls from the bathroom comes tripping over roots to get at us. Her friends come trickling in behind her, bending over with startled, frightened laughter.
“How long do you think it’ll be?” I whisper, stepping closer to Sam and taking his hand.
“Shit, bet they’re on their way now.”
Darkness comes like a surprise when the sun sets in the New Jersey pines. The chill in the girls’ laughs and voices turns stone, dead cold.
“Portia,” one of the flock whimpers. “We need to go. Now.”
Tiny lights flash and go out, small at first, but then grow in strength and bring a murmuring of wings. Sam pulls me back toward where a bush makes a hideout between a copse of trees.
At once, the lights are a swarm, and in moments, they are a sparkle. The fireflies flutter over our shoulders, crawling on our earlobes, down our faces, some threatening our mouths. They descend in darkness like murderous falling stars.
Sam’s pale skin looks sick in the bright green glow.
The girls try to flee once the bugs begin to feast, flailing their arms and shrieking—great balls of light and pure fear. The ones who run are lifted into the air on the backs of millions of small lightning bugs. They are bitten and torn in the twilight above us.
Blood rains from the sky and splashes across the trunks of trees. It falls into our mouths, warm and bitter. A few drops burn, hot kisses from glowing demons. The whole clearing, save me and Sam, is covered in the flickering of bugs. Is this what comes for kids in the night—a glowing swarm?
But not us. We’re too good, too young.
We dance free from our hiding place to the screams of those still alive. Together, Sam and I lap up the pools of blood like the wolves we are and howl. And whether it’s true or not, I believe nothing will ever take us, not me and not Sam. Not ever.
