There are times when one can fool himself that life is perfect and nothing can rock their world. A feeling of this invincibility that is not plausible in this tinged, imperfect, sin-soaked world. The innocent are the few good, undamaged things in life, whether innocence in mind or body, it does not matter.

I live in a small town in Texas. It has no name, no city hall nor bank. This town simply… is. We exist as a community in the outskirts of the middle of nowhere. Most of us have no family to go visit or give complicated direction to, you’d be surprised how many people couldn’t find nowhere, so we became our own tight-knit family. We were innocent. We were but now we’re not.

We had lived in peace, being nobodies living in nowhere, until they came. They were neither ghost nor siren, living or dead. They just simply were.

Where the summer sun scorched us, chasing us away with an all too powerful heat, these things tempted us. They seduced us in every meaning of the word. No one fought it; no one believed they were real.

They slowly stole our innocence, little by little, until there was no more. I wish I had seen it sooner. It tore our tightly knit family apart, thread by thread. Nothing and no one was spared.

Deep, dark secrets that had never existed before would come to the surface, memories we didn’t remember having, thoughts and feelings that were never there before, all grew and spread like a disease.

Over the course of one summer we had chased the sun away. The scorching sun had no effect; any cold wind would not bite the skin. There were shadows seeping around every corner, soaking in what little life that was left.

Want to know the scariest part? I watched it happen. I watched myself cause it all. I saw what no one else could see but they also couldn't see me. Where I was the beings had form. They were small white creatures whispering into the ears of everyone I knew and loved. They had big, black eyes that held no other color in them and a long snout with small, razor sharp teeth. They could sit in the palm of my hand with room to spare. Their white bodies had white arms and hands attached but crimson claws jutting out. Their small wings were sharp and jagged, same crimson red from the claws bled onto the tips.

I was forced to watch as they ravished the town with nothing but their whispers. They knew everyone’s desire and turned it into temptation. They preyed on the strongest first, stripping away all self-control and faith. They made sure to kick them where it hurt and continue kicking them when they were down.

I had been stripped away from my body, left helpless and at the mercy of these creatures. I watched them torment the ones I called my family all the while someone, or something, else the one thing I thought was mine.

I was made to watch my friend kill herself knowingly with a combination of not eating and many, many drugs. I watched her husband beg and fall to his knees as he watched her life gradually slip away. I watched their son, ten years old, hate the world and everything in it, already being led to the same path that his mother was led on.

Everyone’s lives crumbled around them and I was there every moment. I screamed, yelled, and cried, anything to get their attention. No one saw me; no one heard me. The creatures then ripped at my skin with their claws and gnawed on my bone with their teeth. I would cry out more but there was no one to save me.

The town is quiet now. It is not peace that makes it quiet but it is an eerie silence. I still walk the streets, watch my friends, feel all the pain, but I have no control and I am not heard. I watch my body live a life I would have never lived, watching it go through one abusive boyfriend after another, and I, in this prison outside of everything, felt all the effects. Sometimes, when it was alone, the thing in my body would turn to me and look straight at me, dead in the eyes, and smile. It had my eyes but it was not a human look; it had my lips but it was not my smile. The look was one of evil and victory. It had triumphed over all I fought for.

We used to be nobodies living in the town of nowhere but now there is no life in this place. Any living was forgotten long ago.