The fridge hums louder at night.
It's the kind of sound you can only hear when everything else goes quiet—when the house is dark and the only thing moving is the clock hand, ticking its way toward morning like it's late for something.
I lay there, eyes open, not really thinking. Just… there.
The ceiling above me is cracked slightly in one corner. Not enough to matter, but enough that I check it every night. Like if I stare long enough, maybe it'll split open and bury me in drywall and plaster. Not in a dramatic way. Just... clean. Efficient.
People think if you're quiet, you must be calm. Peaceful.
Truth is, silence is just what it sounds like when you're screaming inward.
I roll onto my side and check the time.
3:12 AM.
Of course.
I sit up. My phone's dead. Figures. No messages anyway. I step over the hoodie I dropped hours ago, avoiding the loose floorboard that creaks if I breathe too hard. I've got it memorized—every fault in this place. The crooked stair. The bedroom door that only closes if you lift it at a certain angle. The window with the warped glass that makes the outside look like it's underwater.
The kitchen is dim. Moonlight spills in through the blinds, cutting the room into stripes. The fridge hums behind me, persistent. Insistent.
I open it, not because I'm hungry, but because it's something to do. There's a carton of milk that expired two days ago. Half a bagel in a Ziploc. Some leftovers I don't remember eating the first time.
I close the door and lean against it.
There's no sound in the house but the hum. No movement upstairs. Mom's door's shut. Has been for hours. She got home late again—maybe around midnight. I heard her heels click against the tile, then the quiet thump of her sitting on the couch and staying there. Probably didn't make it to bed. Again.
She'll be sorry about it in the morning. Or she'll pretend she doesn't remember. I honestly don't know which is worse.
I open the front door and step outside. The cold hits me like a slap—nothing sharp, just enough to feel real.
The street is empty. Of course it is. Everyone in this town either goes to bed early or drinks themselves unconscious by nine. There's no in-between. Not here.
Inside, the air is stale—like it hasn't been breathed properly in days. Maybe it hasn't. I shut the door behind me and lean against it. The silence presses in again, heavier now. Like it missed me.
I try to sit on the couch. Too soft. Try the floor. Too cold. Try pacing the hallway and end up right back in the kitchen.
The fridge is still humming.
I open it again like something new might've appeared. It hasn't. The light glows on the same collection of half-lived meals and expired intentions. I don't take anything this time. Just stand there until the cold air makes my skin feel tight, then let it close on its own.
Back upstairs, I flick the light on in my room. Then off. Then on again.
It's not that I don't want to sleep.
It's that sleep doesn't want me.
I haven't had a full night in… weeks? Months? I don't even bother pretending anymore. I go through the motions—lie down, close my eyes, breathe in, breathe out—but the moment I let go, my brain drags me through every memory I didn't ask to revisit. Every awkward moment. Every missed signal. Every sentence I wish I could unsay. On loop.
So now I just… exist. In the hours no one talks about. Between yesterday and not-quite-today. In the spaces where the world forgets itself.
I open my laptop and scroll through nothing. Social media feels like watching people I don't like pretend to be happy. I check my school email for the hell of it—no new messages, obviously—and end up clicking through old drafts of assignments I never turned in.
There's a folder on my desktop called "stuff". Inside it are short stories I never finished, photos I never edited, and music files I don't remember downloading. I open one at random.
It's a song—low, ambient, a little off-key. Something I must've recorded off a video or a dream. There's no melody, just noise layered over static. And underneath it all, a sound like someone breathing through a wall.
I shut the laptop.
Still no sign of morning. The sky just keeps simmering, slow and resentful.
I press the heel of my palm into my eyes until color blooms behind them. When I pull my hand away, everything feels heavier. Still.
I sit in the dark, back against the wall, knees drawn up, and wait for a kind of sleep that won't come.
Not tonight.
Maybe not ever.
The fridge is louder when the rest of the world is quiet.
I try not to hear it, but it fills every silence, presses up against my skull like it's trying to get in. It's not even a normal hum—it wavers. It pulses, like it's breathing in sync with me. Or maybe I'm breathing in sync with it.
Sometimes, when I'm half-asleep, I think it's whispering.
Not words. Just that tone. That static-y, low-grade hum that makes you want to dig your fingers into your ears until something gives. A sound that says you're wasting time, but won't tell you what you're supposed to be doing instead.
I sit on the kitchen floor until the light outside turns from gray to gold to something washed-out and hollow. I only move when I hear Mom upstairs—footsteps on the landing, her door creaking open, the familiar rhythm of her routine.
She won't check on me.
Not because she doesn't care. Just because we've both silently agreed to not make eye contact with whatever's festering in the corners.
I drag myself to the bathroom, flick on the light. My reflection looks like someone else's bad dream. Hair sticking up in defiance. Eyes dull, ringed in sleepless gray. My skin looks thinner than it should. I prod my cheek with a knuckle. Still there, unfortunately.
By the time I get dressed, I've been awake for over twenty hours.
The fridge hums through the walls.
****
School smells like bleach and anxiety.
The hallways are always too bright—fluorescent lights flickering like they're nervous to stay on. My locker squeals when I open it, like it's protesting being involved in my life.
People brush past me like I'm not there. I like that part. The invisibility of it. I've learned to move through the building like a ghost, drifting just enough to be ignored, but not so much that anyone thinks I'm weird. That's the trick—don't be interesting. Don't be memorable.
The only people who talk to me are the ones who want something. Answers to homework. Gum. Space in the lunch line.
I don't give them much. I don't have much to give.
Mr. Klein calls on me in English. I blink. I didn't hear the question. I never do. But I say something vague about "emotional repression in the subtext," and he nods like I've just rewritten Shakespeare.
It's easy to fake depth when no one really wants to dig.
The rest of the day passes in frames—like I'm watching a movie that's been paused and unpaused too many times. Hallways stretch. Clocks stutter. My thoughts glitch and rewind, always looping back to that same image: the girl on the tracks. Her stillness. Her gloves. The way she didn't flinch when she looked at me, like I wasn't a stranger. Like I wasn't nothing.
I don't tell anyone. I wouldn't know how.
Instead, I keep moving. Class to class. Chair to chair. Pretending I'm someone still inside his own skin.
The hum follows me.
It's not the fridge anymore—I know that. I left the fridge. But the hum hasn't left me. It's wedged in the base of my skull, vibrating behind my eyes. A dull, aching pressure that makes everything feel a few seconds behind.
Third period is history. Or maybe it's math. I don't remember. Doesn't matter. The room smells like whiteboard markers and teenage sweat, and the lights flicker with a low buzzing that tries to compete with the hum in my head.
I drop into my usual seat by the window—second row from the back, close enough to be ignored, far enough to disappear. I shove my hands into the pockets of my hoodie and let my eyes glaze over as the rest of the class drips in, one by one.
Then—a shift.
The desk beside me isn't empty anymore.
She walks in like she's not late—like she doesn't care that she is. Tall. Copper hair cut in sharp layers that frame her jaw like a threat. Brown eyes that don't look around the room so much as through it. And a black leather jacket worn with the kind of conviction that says she didn't borrow it from anyone.
She takes the seat next to mine without hesitation, drops her backpack with a dull thud, and leans back like she owns the air between us.
And just like that, something tightens in my chest.
It's not anxiety. Not attraction. Not anything I can name.
It's like the lights dimmed, just around me. Like a cold hand grazed the inside of my ribs and forgot to pull away.
The teacher's voice drones in the background, but I can't focus. My skin feels thinner. The air tastes stale. My thoughts get slower, heavier, like they've been soaked in lead. Like I've been soaked in lead.
I blink. Glance sideways.
She doesn't look at me. Just stares straight ahead, like this is all perfectly normal.
And maybe it is.
Maybe I'm just tired.
Or maybe I've finally gone so long without sleeping that I've started inventing reasons to feel worse than I already do. That would check out. That would make sense.
Except… the moment her elbow shifts a few inches farther from mine, something eases in my chest. Not relief, exactly—just less.
Less of whatever that was. Less weight behind my eyes. Less pressure crawling under my skin.
I look down at my desk. My pencil is still in my hand, unmoving. My notebook's blank. I don't remember opening it.
She hasn't said a word.
She doesn't take notes.
Doesn't even pretend to care what the teacher's droning on about—something about treaties or empires or how history repeats itself like a bad joke no one laughs at anymore.
Her posture doesn't shift. One leg crossed over the other, boot bouncing slow and steady under the desk. Her fingers tap the side of her knee, rhythmic and quiet, like she's counting something only she can hear.
And me? I'm not listening to a single word.
I don't want to look at her. But I do.
Not directly. Never directly. Just glances. Fragments. The line of her jaw. The way the sun catches in the copper of her hair. The tiny silver hoop in her ear. The small, half-faded scar near the curve of her temple—barely visible unless you're trying to memorize her.
Which apparently, I am.
Something about her… it messes with the air. Like the atmosphere gets thinner around her. Colder. But not in the dramatic, "she's-so-mysterious" way the guys at school would foam over.
This is different. Quieter. Wronger.
Like being in the room with a loaded gun that hasn't gone off yet.
I catch myself staring too long and snap my gaze back to the front of the class. The teacher says something vaguely rhetorical and no one answers. I think he glares at me. I don't blink.
The hum in my head—it's louder now. Not the same tone as before. Not the fridge. Not the usual static. This is… darker. A little off-key. A sound that doesn't make sense in daylight.
The kind of sound that digs roots under your skin and whispers that this is all there is.
She doesn't look at me once.
Not when the bell rings. Not when the class empties around us. Not when her boot scrapes against the floor and she stands.
She moves past me with that same heavy silence.
I stay seated for too long after everyone's gone, notebook still blank, breath caught somewhere between my lungs and my throat.
Lunch is a cruel joke.
The cafeteria is full of white noise—trays slamming, shoes squeaking, conversations layered over each other like static—and the food smells like it lost a bet. I'm not hungry, but I buy something anyway. It gives me something to do with my hands.
I take my usual seat in the back corner by the vending machines. Not hidden, but not seen. It's the sweet spot. No one talks to me here. No one sits near me, either. They stopped trying sophomore year. Too many dry comments. Too little effort to pretend I wanted to be part of the background music.
Today, though, something's off.
It starts small.
A ripple at the edge of my vision.
A table near the center of the room that wasn't there yesterday.
Not the table itself—obviously. But the people at it.
A group of four. All of them too still, too polished, too together in a way that doesn't match the stained linoleum and flickering lights.
And there she is.
Same leather jacket. Same copper hair. Same haunted silence.
She's sitting close—very close—to one of the guys. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dark curls. Ridiculously symmetrical face. He looks like he walked off a casting call for "brooding vampire boyfriend" and said, yes, this is the energy I'm bringing today.
They don't speak. At least, I don't see them speak. But she leans toward him just enough for the edges of their jackets to touch.
And I swear, for a second, his entire posture stiffens like he just bit down on a live wire.
The others at the table don't seem to notice. One girl scrolls on her phone without blinking. Another guy picks at his sandwich like it might try to bite back.
They're not talking. Not laughing. Just… existing.
Too quietly.
Too perfectly.
It's like watching a painting try to pass for a photograph.
She hasn't looked up once. She just sits there, impossibly still. Her fingers twitch once against the edge of the table.
That guy—the one she leaned into—he's breathing hard.
Not like he ran here.
More like he's fighting something.
Like there's something crawling under his skin and he's trying really hard not to let it show.
I keep my eyes down.
Pretend to care about the mashed potato paste on my tray.
Count the cracks in the tile.
Do anything but look up.
But it's too late.
I can feel it.
That slow, deliberate kind of awareness. Like a spotlight aimed straight through the back of my skull.
I glance up anyway. Because I'm stupid. Because curiosity is louder than self-preservation.
The tall guy is staring at me.
And not in that casual "who's that in the corner" kind of way.
No, this is different.
His gaze is sharp. Too focused. Like he's trying to decide if I'm a threat—or if I know something I'm not supposed to.
We lock eyes for maybe half a second.
And it hits me—
That same pressure from before. That same wrongness that clings to the air around her, only this time it's aimed directly at me.
His expression doesn't shift. No sneer. No frown. Just an unreadable calm, the kind that says, I see you.
His eyes slide away. Dismissive.
Or merciful. I can't tell which.
Either way, it feels like I've just walked back from the edge of something I didn't know I was standing on.
The bell rings.
I don't wait for the crowd to thin. I grab my tray and bolt.
The hallway's loud. Comforting, almost. Chaos means normal. Movement means distraction.
But as I walk to class, my heart still beats too fast and too loud, like it's trying to warn me about something I don't have a name for yet.
Like I've been marked.
Not for danger. Not exactly.
But for something worse:
Attention.
—
The fridge is louder at night.
I know that doesn't make sense. Appliances don't change their volume based on mood or moon phase. But here, in the dark, when the rest of the house goes still, it fills the silence like it knows what it's doing. Like it's trying to drown out my thoughts before they can finish forming.
I stand in front of it, barefoot on cold tile. Door cracked open just enough for the pale light to glow against the cabinets. There's nothing I want inside—just a wilted bag of spinach and two sad cans of energy drink I'll never admit to liking.
But I stand here anyway. Letting the hum vibrate through my bones.
It's the only sound in the whole house besides me breathing.
Well. Trying to breathe.
I didn't sleep last night. Or the night before that. It's starting to stack. The way exhaustion turns to static, and static turns to hallucinations—except the hallucinations talk and sit beside you in class with leather jackets and dead eyes.
I think about her.
Not because I want to.
She's just there. Like a splinter in the back of my mind. Quiet but impossible to ignore. That weird pull in my chest when she got too close. That ache behind my ribs like grief for something I never lost.
And that guy.
The one who looked at me like he knew how I'd die.
I rest my forehead against the fridge door. Cold and sharp and grounding. For maybe three seconds, I don't feel like I'm floating outside my own skull.
Then the hum shifts—just slightly—and it sounds like screaming.
Not loud. Not human.
Just the faint illusion of it. Like something too far away to understand, but close enough to know it's calling your name.
I shut the fridge.
Back away slow.
This is what happens when I don't sleep. The fridge becomes a chorus of the damned. School becomes a stage play of strangers pretending to be normal. And I'm just stuck here. Watching. Trying not to crack open somewhere quiet.
I head upstairs.
I pass my reflection in the hallway mirror. For a second, it doesn't look like me. Not really. Just some gaunt-eyed kid pretending to keep it together. Skin pale. Eyes darker than they should be. Lips pressed into a line like if he opens his mouth, something worse will come out than just words.
I flick the hallway light off and keep moving.
My room is worse.
Too still. Too sharp around the edges.
I don't bother getting into bed. Just curl up in the chair by the window and stare out into the street. Empty. Dead quiet. The kind of quiet that feels wrong. Like the world's holding its breath for something.
It's 3:17 a.m.
Again.
I don't need a clock to know anymore. My body's started keeping time by the ache behind my eyes and the weight in my chest. Every night around now, something settles over me—like a net made of needles. It doesn't hurt, exactly. It just presses. Like gravity forgot how to stop.
I rub my eyes until I see shapes.
They dance behind my eyelids, flickering things—like shadows cast by a candle I never lit.
I haven't really slept in four days. Not the kind of sleep that matters. Not the kind that resets you. I drift, sometimes. Thirty seconds here, a minute there. Long enough to fall into the shallow end of a dream. Just enough to see something standing at the edge of it.
I think it has eyes.
And I think it knows my name.
I lean my head against the windowpane. Cold glass. Warped reflection.
My mind feels like a room I left the light on in for too long. Too bright, too hot, wires buzzing under the floorboards. Every thought spins like a ceiling fan with a broken blade—wobbling, ready to come loose and take someone's head off.
And under all of it—
The fridge hums.
Even from here, I can hear it.
A low, droning sound with no real pitch. Just enough vibration to make the silence bleed.
I should try to sleep. Or eat. Or scream. Or something.
But I don't.
I just sit here and think about how her presence felt like absence. How that little slice of despair she brought into the room carved a hole in my ribs that hasn't closed since.
I think about how I didn't even say a word to her. Didn't need to.
Somehow, she still touched me.
And now I'm unraveling faster than I know how to stop.
Maybe that's the thing no one tells you about insomnia.
It's not just about being tired.
It's about watching yourself fall apart in slow motion, fully aware and completely helpless, while everyone else just keeps sleeping. Breathing. Dreaming.
Being normal.
I close my eyes.
Just for a second.
Behind the lids, something moves.
And it's smiling.
Gravity Tricks
Third period is where my body gives up the act.
The classroom is too warm. The blinds are cracked open just enough for sunlight to smear itself across the whiteboard, and the teacher's voice is background noise—low and droning like it's tuned to the same frequency as the fridge at home. I'm not even sure what class this is. Econ, maybe? History?
It doesn't matter. Nothing is getting in.
I fold my arms over the desk, resting my head sideways against them. I tell myself I'm just going to blink. Just rest my eyes. But the second they close, the floor drops.
Sleep takes me fast and hard.
No dreams.
Just black.
But not peace.
It's the kind of black that presses against you from all sides. Too quiet, but vibrating—like something in the dark is breathing out of sync with you.
And then—
A chair scrapes beside me.
Not loud. But enough.
My body flinches before my mind catches up.
Eyes open. Light. Movement.
And her.
She slides into the seat next to mine like a blade into its sheath. Casual. Mechanical. Unbothered.
But the second she settles—before I even fully register her face—that weight hits.
Heavy. Dull. Low in my gut.
It's not dramatic, not like falling to pieces. It's worse because it's subtle. A wrongness in the room that wasn't there a second ago. Like the air got thicker. Like gravity leaned a little harder in just one direction.
My chest tightens. I swallow, but my throat sticks halfway through the motion. There's no reason for it. No trigger. No sharp memory. Just this sudden sinking—like I'm wearing a coat soaked in water and no one else notices I'm drowning in it.
I shift slightly, putting half an inch more distance between us.
It doesn't help.
She's not even looking at me.
Just staring ahead, copper hair tucked behind one ear, chipped black polish on the fingers she drums once against the desk. Her jacket creaks with the movement—black leather, scuffed and worn like she's owned it longer than I've been alive.
The despair hums under my skin.
Familiar, now. Like the fridge's song. Like something I almost understand.
And again, I wonder—what is it about her?
What is it that sinks its claws into my ribs the moment she's near?
And why the hell does a part of me want to feel it again?
She doesn't say anything.
Neither do I.
But I can feel her.
That sounds dramatic, I know. Feel her. Like I've gone completely off the rails and started believing in auras and energy fields and whatever other garbage they sell in bookstores that smell like burnt patchouli. But it's not like that. Not... exactly.
It's just this constant, pressing thing.
Like her presence is a bruise I can't stop pressing on.
I don't dare look at her straight on. Not yet. I'm still trying to scrape together what's left of my emotional bandwidth, and eye contact might break the last thread. But I can see her in my peripheral—shoulders set a little too still, body angled slightly toward me. Not enough to be obvious. But enough to feel.
And then—
I feel it shift.
That tiny prickling at the back of my neck.
The kind of awareness you only get when you're being watched.
I glance sideways.
And she is.
Eyes on me. Deep brown. Unflinching.
Not dreamy or curious or even bored.
No. She's studying me.
Her gaze is sharp, dissecting, clinical. Like she's trying to take inventory of everything that's broken inside me just by looking at the shape of my slouch. Like she's been tasked with identifying rot.
And for a second, I get the strangest, most vivid thought:
She knows.
She knows exactly what her presence is doing to me.
And she's trying to measure how much.
I shift again. Swallow again. My fingers dig into the inside of my sleeve like that might anchor me to something real.
She looks away before I can say anything. Not fast. Not embarrassed. Just... finished.
Like I was the end of a sentence she'd already read ten times.
The teacher calls on someone across the room. Laughter breaks out somewhere behind us. Chairs squeak. Pencils tap.
Sixth period bleeds into seventh, and by then, the strange gravity of her has dulled into a low, gnawing throb at the back of my skull.
I try not to look for her in the hallways.
Fail.
She's easy to find.
Copper hair, black leather jacket, boots that echo a split second too long on the linoleum. She's always surrounded—by that same group of kids I haven't seen before this week. Always the same ones. Always just out of reach. Their conversations are low. Insular. The kind of group that laughs at things no one else hears.
But she's not laughing. Not smiling. Barely moving unless someone shifts and she has to follow. Always closest to him—the tall guy. Built like a brick wall. Hair slicked back, hands in his pockets like he owns the space around him.
And maybe he does.
Because people move when he walks by.
They don't say anything, but they move.
I don't realize I'm staring again until I hear it—two girls behind me at the vending machine.
Low voices. Just loud enough to bleed through the buzz of the fluorescent lights.
"—not even from here, I swear. No one knows where they came from. They just showed up Monday."
"Creepy as hell. Especially the tall one. He doesn't blink."
"I heard they're staying in that old building off Hawthorn. You know, the one that got condemned last year?"
"No way."
"I'm serious. My cousin lives a block over—swears he saw them out there at like three in the morning. Just standing around. Not talking. Just standing."
A laugh. Nervous.
"They're like some kind of cult."
"They give me the worst vibes. Especially her."
Pause.
"You mean the redhead?"
"Yeah. I sat behind her in first period. Swear to god, the second she walked in, I felt like someone was pushing on my chest. Like I was about to cry and didn't know why."
Something twists low in my gut.
The hum again.
Fridge-hum. Brain-hum. Her hum.
I don't turn around. Don't say anything.
Just slip my hand into my pocket, dig my thumbnail into the side of my finger until it stings. Until something reminds me I'm real.
Because now, it's not just me.
Other people feel it too.
I haven't spoken to her. Not once. Haven't heard her voice.
And still, I can't get her out of my head.
Not in the dreamy, high-school-infatuation way. Nothing about this feels romantic.
It feels like drowning in cement.
I type in:
sudden emotional shift around people
feeling depressed around someone for no reason
why does it feel like someone is draining my soul when they stand next to me
Click. Click. Nothing.
Mental health forums. Reddit threads that go nowhere. One Yahoo Answers post from 2010 where someone suggested the person had "a demon following them."
Funny. Almost.
I refine the search.
energy vampires
psychic aura effects
metaphysical emotional parasites
empathic overload symptoms
The rabbit hole opens its throat.
And I fall in.
Conspiracy sites with black backgrounds and lime green text. Comment threads littered with half-deleted users and wild claims. Photos with red circles and blurry shapes. Words like clair-empaths, psychic bruising, spirit siphons, anomalous influence fields.
Some posts are practically incoherent. Others read like the people writing them haven't seen sunlight in days.
But a pattern starts to form. People describing a sudden, inexplicable shift in mood when a certain person is around. Heaviness. Sadness. Irrational dread. Panic with no source.
There's one term that keeps popping up, buried under layers of fringe theory and deleted blog archives:
Carrion Touch.
A supposed condition—if you believe these guys—that causes an involuntary psychic discharge of despair during physical contact. No known cause. No cure. Just a lot of silence and destruction in its wake.
Sounds like a bad horror movie.
And yet…
I scroll.
Click.
Keep going.
Because something in me wants it to be fake.
And something deeper knows it isn't.