HER

I could have watched Her all night. There was something about Her—unique, extraordinary, and yet so painfully normal. Her face was plain, uninteresting; yet, when she smiled, her features filled with life, a portrait of thin red lips, soft dimpled cheeks, and bright green eyes. She moved to an anxious, staccato beat, wary of her movements, her pale legs moving with greater haste every time she crossed a halo of streetlight.

It was as if she knew she was being watched; as if she could sense my eyes upon her and knew what I had planned for her.

A rustle in the trees caught Her attention, Her eyes flickering to the source of the sound, Her hand hovering over a small clutch bag, ready to use it as a weapon should she need to. She stuttered, almost skipped, and then continued onward, happy to be clear of the rustling trees, Her subconscious mind warning her of what might lay beneath, even as Her conscious mind registered the sudden gust of wind.

In the unforgiving light of day, she would have been on her phone, lost in whatever distraction she could find, eager to avoid the telling stares of passersby. The device, with its tacky pink case and twee stickers, was her crutch, Her ticket out of the real world and into Her own, the same world she occupied every night when she cuddled up on the sofa with a bottle of wine, a bag of chips, and a cheesy rom-com.

During the day, that phone was the only thing that kept the real world at bay, an escape from something she didn’t want to be a part of. In the dead of night, however, it was an unnecessary and potentially dangerous distraction.

She was shy and introverted, scared and vulnerable, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew that every small-town horror story began with a young woman walking through the park at night. Quiet parks, though serene, were exposed—a breeding ground for every sadistic, ill-intentioned psychopath. People who preyed upon the lonely, took advantage of the vulnerable, and relied upon distractions and careless disregard for personal safety.

People like me.

During the day, I also faded into the background, out of sight, out of mind, out of suspicion. Social media wasn’t my crutch, but it certainly came in handy. You can tell a lot by a person’s demeanor, by how tightly they hold their clutch bag as they walk along a deserted park, by how nervously their eyes flicker as they hear a strange sound. Her pale legs suggested that she didn’t get out much; her arched back, strong shoulders, and flabby buttocks suggested that while she was fit and strong, she spent a lot of her time sitting and got her exercise in short, intense bursts, probably from home workouts; the state of Her frayed hair and smudged makeup suggested she had been eager at the start of the night but had lost interest a few hours in.

But nothing about the way she looked, from Her intense green eyes to Her thick dark hair and pale legs, could tell me where she worked, what Her name was, who Her friends were, and what Her hobbies were.

Small-town girls have small-town mentalities, hiding their faces, their names, their hobbies, their truth.

Small towns are breeding grounds for depravity—hotspots of degeneracy. In the big cities, this sickness is out in the open and can be found on every corner, from the sex workers forced to sell their bodies by callous, drug-addled pimps, to drug dealers hawking oblivion to the lowest bidders. In small towns, it hides behind closed doors, lurks in the shadows. It’s gossip, it’s hearsay, it’s speculation, but it’s hidden.

Social media brings these worlds together. It gives the gossips a platform, a false sense of security—a blinkered, insular, virtual water cooler where they can talk in private while the rest of the world is listening. Thanks to her small-town existence, I knew nothing about her. Because of social media, I had learned everything I could ever need to know.

But this wasn’t going to be the night. At least, not for Her.