He hurriedly slipped on his beat-up sneakers and ran out the door, yelling goodbyes to his friends inside. Leaving the front doorstep, he felt raindrops hit the top of his head, seeping through his hair and stinging as they fell into his eyes. He quickly zipped his jacket up to his nose and pulled the hood over his bangs before running down the dim street, his sneakers slipping a bit on the pavement. His eyes strained to see the road through the late afternoon dusk, being aided by the few houses with automatic lights in their driveways. After a few blocks, his lungs burned from the icy air. The warm lights quickly whipped past him as his run turned to a jog, eventually slowing to a stop for him to catch his breath. He unzipped his coat down to his chin, letting his hot breath puff out in front of him. He tilted his head back, letting the rain hit his face and soak into his hair, turning it a dark amber. It cooled his red cheeks and settled his breath.

I need to know what’s wrong with me. Why can’t I just express my emotions like a normal person? I feel like such a fucking hypocrite. I always tell my friends and brother that there’s nothing wrong with expressing their emotions. I try to be there for them when they cry and make sure they know that I care about them. But when I feel sad or angry or anything that isn’t happy, emotions are disgusting and shameful. Why do I think I’m so special? I feel so disconnected from everyone else. I want to show other people how I feel, but I can’t.

Am I just broken? Am I missing some key part of what makes me a person? I cry just as much as the average person, but if I’m near anyone, it just wells up inside me until my chest burns and my voice is caught in my throat and I run away like a fucking coward. Objectively, I know that expressing emotions is healthy and normal, but whenever I try and doing it, I feel like such a fucking spectacle. Something to laugh and jeer at. Something to pity and weep for.

I wonder what my friends think of me. Do they think that I really don’t feel strong emotions? Or that I don’t think they’re worth seeing my emotions? I wish I could express my emotions in front of them, but there’s something wrong with me. God, why does emotional vulnerability have to be physically painful?

Slipping on his beat-up sneakers and running out the door, Cole yelled goodbyes to his friends inside. As he left the front doorstep, raindrops hit the top of his head, seeping through his hair and stinging as they dripped into his eyes. Zipping his jacket up to his nose, he pulled the hood over his bangs. Cole ran down the dim street, sneakers squeaking against the pavement.

Cole’s eyes strained to see the road through the late evening dusk, being aided by the few automatic lights that flipped on and off as he zipped by. A few blocks later, his lungs burned from the icy air. The warm lights whipped past him as his run slowed to a jog, gradually easing to a stop for him to catch his breath. He unzipped his coat down to his chin, letting his hot breath puff out in front of him. Tilting his head back, Cole let the rain hit his face and soak into his hair, turning it a dark amber. It cooled his red cheeks and settled his breath.

Suddenly, Cole felt that something was off; there was some strange presence near him. Uneasy, he brought his head back down, opening his eyes and looking around. He saw someone. They couldn’t have been more than 30 feet away on the sidewalk, and Cole couldn’t see their face properly through the pouring rain, but he felt that there was something amiss about them. It seemed as if they were staring daggers into him, even though he couldn’t see their eyes. He was probably just overreacting. Being outside this late at night in the pouring rain doesn’t automatically make someone suspicious. Cole was out there, too, and he wasn’t a dangerous person, so why should he just assume that this other person is?

Squeezing his eyes shut, shaking the anxieties from his head, he started walking again, looking back to the mysterious person. Their gaze followed. Cole whipped his head back to face forward as his pace quickened. After a few more steps, he snuck another peak behind his back. Still watching him. Jogging now, he could feel their gaze burning through the back of his head. He felt ridiculous. This person was standing perfectly still, now much farther than before, and all they were doing was looking at him. Cole looked behind him one more time, and they were now right behind him. His mind froze. What? Last time he looked, they were over 50 feet away, with their shoes fixed on the sidewalk. Legs moving faster than his mind, Cole attempted to pick up into a sprint, and his sneakers flew out from under him. Cole hit the asphalt with a wet thud, scraping the fabric from the knees of his pants and elbows of his hoodie, the rain diluting the small amount of blood seeping from his wounds.

Still reeling from the impact, Cole felt a heavy weight on top of him. It was the mysterious person. They were straddling him, pushing the remaining wind from his lungs that hadn’t already been knocked out when he hit the ground. He tried struggling, using his arms to push them off him. It was no use; they had some inhumane strength over him. They gripped one of Cole’s forearms, rolled his sleeve down to the elbow, and sunk their teeth into the damp flesh of his arm.

Cole had never been bitten before, had no siblings or pets to get him used to the feeling, but he never could have imagined that it would hurt this badly. He could feel his nerve-endings screaming. For a moment he thought that he could hear them as well, before realizing he was just hearing the noise from his own throat. He tried prying his arm from their mouth, but it only caused them to clamp down even harder, like a dog unwilling to let go of their new chew toy. Tears welled up in his eyes, dripping down his hot cheeks, into his screaming mouth. Cole’s vision began to fill with inky spots; his eyes buzzed. The spots got bigger and bigger until they took up his entire view. Sounds of raindrops pattering slowly faded away into nothingness.

There was a shadowy figure on the other side of the glass door, shifting from side to side. I walked up to it and pulled on the handle, a musky air rushing through as it opened. If this was a horror or thriller, maybe it would have been some horrifying creature or tortured killer on the other end. But this is not that kind of story, so the figure standing at my doorstep was my friend, Matt. His head whipped up from the phone in his hand when the door opened, his other hand resting lazily against his worn jeans. Floppy hair covered his eyes, soaked from the heavy rain, with a few drops falling onto his flushed cheeks.

“Oh hey! That’s funny timing, I was just about to text you that I was here,” Matt said as he moved a hand through his wet hair with a lopsided smile, then clicked off his phone and shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans.

I chuckled a bit, “It’s a glass door, I could see you from the couch.” I gestured for him to come in. He walked in, bringing with him the stench of a drenched dog, and slipped off his damp sneakers without having to be told to. I looked down and saw that his socks were covered with some fancy-looking cats having a very sophisticated tea party; I couldn’t keep a small snicker from escaping my mouth. Matt followed my gaze, and his face beamed when he realized what I had laughed at.

“Aren’t they adorable,” he practically yelled as he grabbed one of his feet and lifted it up to show me the design, almost toppling over before setting a hand on my shoulder and stabilizing his balance.