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“We can’t keep doing this, Samantha.”
You could hear the words being spoken, but it felt like they were passing through you as soon as they were said, slipping through your ears and into your mind for but a second before fading away. It was like you were floating in a stream, the current pushing through you, past you, and you were sinking, down, deep, into water so deep that you would never be able to swim back out.
And yet you felt no panic, no need to thrash or breathe. You just listened, floating on your back, your eyes open but not seeing.
“You need to forget about me.”
You sank.
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Everyone kept telling you to stop looking for her.
You refused, of course. If they wanted to forget and be bad friends, that was their choice—but somewhere, in their hearts, you knew that they had to have realized that you were right. That your kindness was right. You didn’t just abandon people you loved to the streets. You looked for them. You helped them.
You found them.
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You always wanted to believe in the best in people, but got harder when you realized that no one was looking for her anymore. A few had humored you, originally, but all of them slowly fell away, uncaring and unconcerned. They felt that if she wanted to ruin her own life and leave everyone that it was her right to do so, and they were content to forget.
You weren’t. Something must have gone wrong, she must need help to climb out of some hole she dug herself into. You wouldn’t just leave her. That wasn’t who you were.
You kept looking.
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It became a hobby, something you found yourself doing when caught in a crowd. Sometimes you’d walk a new part of town just to see some new faces, to see if she would appear and catch your eye. Whenever you sat down to eat, alone or with others, you would people watch. Just…looking at who walked by, seeing if any of the faces were familiar. Seeing if any looked like her.
You looked at their clothes, their hair, their eyes. Even if she had changed something in her appearance, you were prepared for that. You thought of what she might look like with shorter hair or a different style of clothing. You forced yourself to remember the shape of her face, the slant of her jaw, the slight smile that always seemed to be ghosting over her lips whenever you spoke.
You looked for all of those things, seeking that familiarity, utterly certain that you would, eventually, find her.
You started being even more anal about your phone, keeping it charged and ready just in case she called. You even kept the ringer on at night. To the irritation of your roommate, you answered every late night call, even the ones openly labelled as scams, just in case one of them happened to be her.
None of them were, but you kept answering, kept hoping.
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A soft murkiness ensconced your mind, dragging you down into the deep dark. You felt groggy, even while awake, strange lights and shadows dancing across your vision. You had the feeling that something, someone, was in front of you, but you didn’t who it was.
You opened your mouth to speak, but no sound came, words bubbling somewhere, stuck in your saliva. Your breath came out, calm and slow, entranced, and you felt your consciousness slip into gray.
There was no way for you to know how long you had been in that state, listless and drooling, but once your awareness returned you stood up from the café you had been sitting at. Your bill was already paid, cash on the table, you must have forgotten.
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It occurred to you, briefly, that maybe you should go to therapy. You were a psych major, you should know these things, you should reach out to help when having a trauma response, but…you couldn’t. You didn’t want to lose the precious amount of free time you had—any appointment that took you out of the general public and shoved you indoors only made it more likely that you’d miss her if she ever did walk by. You refused to do that, unless it was absolutely necessary.
And, even if you went to therapy, you doubted that your behavior would change. Not now, at least. Not when it had only been a few months since she went missing. Maybe later, you figured, once it had been a reasonable amount of time. Once it became clear that she really didn’t want to be found, or perhaps just couldn’t be found.
Now wasn’t the time, though. For now, you still had a right to search, a right to dedicate yourself to this worthy cause.
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You tried not to, but you couldn’t stop thinking about what might have happened to her. Why she had disappeared off the face of the Earth.
Maybe she had gotten into some bad stuff. Drugs, prostitution, or something. You didn’t know—anything could happen in LA. Maybe she was dead, and you were looking for a corpse rather than a living person. Maybe you had already seen her killer, in all the looking you’d done.
You roughly shook your head, forcing those thoughts away—no. She had to be alive somewhere. Alive and in trouble, and you would keep looking for her. You would find her, and you would help her.
Everything was going to be okay.
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She looked at you, her eyes an impenetrable dark lake, reaching depths you’d never seen before. Her stare transfixed you, her eyes boring deep into yours.
“Forget about me,” she said, her voice bouncing around in your very skull, vibrating in your bones, “Stop looking for me. Forget you ever knew me.”
A soft shroud of blue, a ticking clock of endless time, your entire life cycling around you. Forget. And you did, for now, the very sight of her melting before your eyes until there was no one there at all—you were alone.
But you didn’t forget completely. You remembered your missing friend. You kept searching.
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No one else seemed to care. Whenever you asked someone to come with you while you wandered the streets, they would look at you with cold eyes. Disbelieving eyes. They didn’t understand why you cared enough to keep looking, why she was worth the trouble of this.
You wanted to scream, to tear out your hair and shout at them that she mattered because she was their friend! Didn’t that mean something?!
Apparently not to anyone but you. And you…wouldn’t let her go. You remembered her so clearly, and while you hadn’t been close to her, you wanted to be. She so rarely had given you her full attention, always closer to others in the group, but you always liked her the most. Every time she looked to you instead of someone else, a part of your heart sang with light.
You couldn’t just let that feeling go. You needed her in your life—and even if she wasn’t close to you, you wanted to know that she was okay. That, even if you couldn’t see her, that she was safe. As it was now, you didn’t know a thing.
You kept looking.
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Teeth.
Sharp glittering fangs, white in the dark of night. Eyes behind glasses, tinted lenses hiding her expression. It was her, right? This was your dear friend before you now, right?
She was not smiling as a monster would have, as she plunged her teeth into your neck. You didn’t know why you couldn’t move, why you couldn’t get away. Your pulse throbbed under her firm grip. Pain blossomed from the pinpricks on your neck as she drew your lifeblood from you. No sound exited your lips, not even an exhale of breath, you were utterly frozen.
Was this a dream? Some horrible dream conjured by your endless searching? It had dominated at least a year of your life at this point. All your connections to others had waned in the meantime—were you so desperate for contact that you’d dream of some fantastical assault?
You couldn’t deny, even in the grips of the dream, the fact that seeing her again comforted some part of you, even as she held you in hands like steel vices, cold and unmoving.
Slowly, it ended, and she pulled back from you, her lips tracing for just a moment over your skin. You were still unable to move, caught in her grip, even as she stood you back up properly. Your body hung there, as if on hooks, even though nothing remained to keep you upright as her hands left you. Without their chill, you were warmer, but your heart crystallized with ice.
“I didn’t want to do that,” she said, her voice quiet, like the wind passing softly through the trees, “But you keep not giving up. This is the only way to make you forget.”
Forget? You didn’t understand, you could never forget her.
You opened your mouth, barely able to speak through what felt like miles of cotton shoved down your throat, “Everything is going to be okay.”
You couldn’t help but say it. It was the only thing you could think of to say, the words you’d been fantasizing to tell her as soon as you found her.
A dim sadness twisted the corner of her mouth. “Yes,” she agreed, “It will. Goodbye, Samantha.” A gentle scarlet light lit up on her fingertips, tracing across your line of vision, and then everything you knew faded to black.
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The sun was already shining brightly through your blinds when you woke up and managed to drag yourself out of bed. It was Sunday, so you didn’t have class or work to get in the way, leaving you to take your morning slow. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do, nothing to worry about.
You sipped a cup of coffee and watched the traffic of LA flow below your apartment. You pulled out your phone to text some friends to see what they were doing with their days. Maybe you could all go out to that romcom that came out recently.
You sent the text and let out a slow, calm sigh. Everything was okay.