The Last Footprints

      Alexandria Rose Tyler saw them. She hadn’t seen them for a while. She had hoped the visions, the hallucinations, or whatever they were, had gone. But there they were, standing there right in front of her, completely nonchalantly, doing what, she had no idea. 

     Ever since she was a child she saw strange people walking around amidst other people completely unnoticed by them. They looked similar to other people, and yet they were different. They looked remarkably more beautiful, like they were all models. And they all appeared to be taller than the average person, at least 6 ft. They all wore similar clothing, almost like military uniforms, but more peaceful looking. And they always stood there or walked around seeming like they were doing nothing, but at the same time looking like they were actually just observing. Observing what, she didn’t know. Places? Other people? They always had some sort of device in their hands. They would punch buttons on the device and talk into it. She thought at first it was a phone, but it didn’t look like any of the phones she had seen. They stood out mostly by their antisocial behavior. They never spoke to any of the people around them, only others like themselves. They didn’t interact with anyone at all. But, that wasn’t all she saw. At times, she would even see strange objects in the sky, strange saucer shaped or cigar shaped objects just flying around or sometimes just floating in mid air. But despite how real the people and objects seemed, she knew they were just a hallucination, a condition she inherited from her mother.

     As far back as she could remember, her mother saw things, just like she did - strange people, strange flying objects. It had been happening to her mother ever since she was a child. Her mother’s mother, her grandmother, didn’t know what to make of it. She ignored it, at first, thinking it was just her overactive imagination. They were like imaginary friends. But it persisted as she grew older, into middle school and high school. It scared her mother, so much so that at times she was afraid to go outside of her house. She became a hermit, forcing her parents to home school her. Her grandmother began taking her mom to all sorts of doctors. They labeled her as a schizophrenic. They gave her all sorts of medications trying to stop what they said was hallucinations or delusions. But nothing worked. They just drove her into madness. After a while, she refused to take them. She was committed to psychiatrist institutions intermittently all throughout her late teen and young adult life. But her mother was strong, and despite all the medical problems, she managed to go to college and get her degree in archaeology. She landed a good job with a private archaeological museum. She was even able to get married and have a child. After Alexandria, or Lexa as everyone called her, was born, she tried hard to get her visions under control. She knew she needed to be the one taking care of her child and not being the one getting taking care of. She decided to try medications again. Fortunately, one of them worked. Her visions stopped, mostly, or at least so she said. Lexa couldn’t help but wonder sometimes if she still saw them, but just pretended she didn’t. Sometimes when she was with her mother, her mother would stare off into the distance blankly, as if she was looking at something, and then quickly shake her head, as if she was trying to shake the images or her thoughts away.

     When Lexa was old enough to understand what was going on, she told her mother about her own visions. Her mother was heartbroken. She felt terribly guilty for passing on her disorder to her daughter. After that, she decided it was best not to have anymore children. She didn’t want to pass it on to another child. Her mother wanted to help her. But she didn’t want to put her daughter on medication at 6 years old. She just told her to ignore them for now. She didn’t want her daughter to be afraid like she was, so she told her that they were just angels watching over mankind. And being so young, she believed it. For years, she thought that they were angels. Sometimes, she even saw them fly. Once she was old enough to know that wasn’t true, her parents had died. She decided not to tell her grandparents about them. She didn’t want to be sent to a mental institution. She just did what her mom said and pretended they weren’t there. But sometimes that was harder than others. And try as she might to ignore them, she was about to come face to face with them today.

     Recently, she hadn’t seen them in awhile. She had been spending so much time taking care of her grandmother, who was very sick, that either they just weren’t there or she was too busy to notice. But today, while standing in the middle of downtown Berkeley, waiting for her best friend, Gemma, to meet her to go shopping, she saw them. There were three of them, spread out amidst the weekend crowds. They were observing the crowds as usual, busy doing something on their phone like devices. She tried to ignore them, at first, just pretend that they weren’t there, but one of them kept walking closer to her. 

     Feeling uncomfortable by their presence, she decided to leave and text Gemma to meet her somewhere else. Just as she turned around, she bumped right into someone. Thinking nothing of it, she simply said, “Oh, excuse me. I’m sorry.” Then, she looked at who she bumped into. It was one of the strange people, a tall, burly man. She gasped. How could she bump into him, he was just a hallucination? For a moment, she couldn’t move, her body in complete shock. To her surprise, the man was equally shocked. He looked at her in disbelief, then he lifted up his phone like device and started, what she could only think of as, scan her. After a moment of awkward silence, the device began beeping, loudly, as if some sort of alarm went off. 

     The man looked down at her, him being over 6 ft and she only a petite 5’1, his eyes wide as if seeing something he couldn’t believe. “Who . . . What are you?” he demanded. 

     A part of her, the scientific side, really wanted to stay there and figure out what was going on, but the other part of her, the panicky side, wanted to get the hell out of there. Just as she was about to take off running, the man grabbed her by the arms, holding her in place. At first, she just stood there dumbstruck, completely in disbelief that what she always thought was a hallucination was now somehow touching her. And for some reason, he was irate with her. He kept demanding to know who she was, or more strangely, what she was, and what she was doing there, as if she was in violation of something. She assumed it had something to do with the fact that she could see him and the others and no one else could. She said nothing to his questions. She didn’t really even understand what he was asking. She was no one, just an average 20-year-old girl. But her silence seemed only to further enrage him. She looked around, frantically, for help, but no one seemed to notice what was going on. That’s when she noticed the other two strange people approaching them, quickly. She realized that in a minute she was going to be outnumbered, and then, it would be real hard for her to get out of this. She knew she had to get out of there now. 

      She began struggling, wildly, to get free from his grasp, but he was strong, real strong, like superhuman strong. He looked like some sort of elite soldier or Ultimate Fighting Champion. He held onto her tightly, like she had just become his prisoner. She tried to punch him in a vulnerable place on his face and neck, like his eyes, nose, and throat, but he was holding her arms down, so she couldn’t lift her fist to his face. And he was standing so close to her that she didn’t have enough room to give him a good kick in the kneecap. So, she did the only thing she could think to do, the thing she was taught in the self defense classes her grandmother enrolled her in. She gave him a swift, strong knee in the groin. He keeled right over, releasing her arms, and with all the power her small body could muster, she gave him a good right hook straight across the nose. The strange man stumbled backward grabbing his face in noticeable pain, growling words incoherently. She didn’t think she hit him that hard, when she realized that she had four pointy rings on her fingers, which she realized was probably what did the trick. Through the man’s fingers, she could see blood trickling down his face. 

     For the briefest second, she kind of felt bad for the man. She wasn’t the type of person who liked hurting others. But considering she didn’t know what the man was going to do with her, she got over that real fast, and got the hell out of there. After all, he was acting like he was about to kidnap her. So, she spun around and took off running. She didn’t know where she was running, she didn’t care, as long as it was anywhere but there. But to her dismay, all the strange men with the devices turned and looked at her. For the first time in all the years she had seen them, they noticed her, they were aware of her. 

     The man screamed, “Get her!” 

     They put their devices in some holder around their waist and took off running after her.

     Lexa’s eyes grew wide. She couldn’t believe what was happening. She tried to stay calm, but it was too late. She had a panic disorder, and it was triggered. Her heart began beating like an antelope in a circle of hyenas. Invisible arms wrapped around her chest strangling her lungs. She gasped for breath. Adrenaline shot through her bloodstream activating every muscle in her body. She ran, shaking from head to toe. She knew she shouldn’t let herself become panicked so easily, but ever since her parents died, that’s what happened when she became frightened or anxious. And right now, having her hallucinations seemingly becoming real or her delusions getting more severe, she wasn’t sure which was worse, she was freaking out.

     She ran as fast as she could, but it was hard to get around because there were so many people there, being a popular location to go on the weekends. She kept bumping into people, and like a bunch of dominos, she kept knocking them down. She was leaving a trail of irate people on the ground, a trail that the strange people were following.

     She turned down the nearest street, running as fast as she could, her legs imbued with the power of fear. She wasn’t an athlete or anything like that. She exercised to keep in shape, but she didn’t do it for any sports. Not that she couldn’t. She had a natural athleticism to her. She was very healthy. She had never gotten sick a day in her life. She had never even injured herself seriously, no broken bones, no sprained muscles. On the rare occasion she got a cut or a bruise, it always healed rapidly. And to the envy of all her friends, she had never even had acne. She always just assumed that it was good genes, because he mother was the same way.

     As she ran, she noticed more and more strange people turn and look at her and start coming after her. They were everywhere. There were more there than she had ever seen. Up until now, they had never noticed her, they had never paid any attention to her. And now all the sudden, all of their eyes were on her, and she didn’t know why. 

     Lexa ran through the town like a wild woman, arms and legs flailing. She was afraid of them catching her. But why? What would they do to her? That’s just it, she didn’t know. She had always thought that they were just hallucinations. But she touched one. She was sure of it. And he spoke to her. She didn’t know if he was real or if her hallucinations were just getting worse. Either option didn’t seem good. She ran past clothing stores, home goods stores, jewelry stores, every store imaginable in this quaint little shopping district. She ran past restaurants, longing to go in, her stomach growling having missed breakfast. That’s what this was, just low blood sugar. She hadn’t eaten enough, and she was imagining things.

     Lexa ran faster, pushing her body to its limits, her legs weighed down with lead. She was ducking behind people and buildings, making sharp turns down streets and around corners. She felt like she was playing a dangerous game of hide and seek. Just as she thought she lost the strange people behind her, more started appearing all around her, spotting her right away like a little flower in a sea of weeds. 10 men and woman were now running after her, coming from all directions. She spun around swiftly looking for a way out. Her vision tunneled as the walls began closing in on her. There was no where left to run. She was trapped.

     She stood there cornered, like a doe before a hunter, in front of a store. Her only option was to go in that store and hide. But how long would she have to hide in there? Could she even hide in there? Would they come in after her or would they merely wait outside for her to come out? Just as she was about to go in, the door opened. Someone reached out their hand, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her inside.

     Lexa stumbled inside and looked around to see who it was, but no one was there. In fact, she wasn’t in the store at all. There were no clothes for sale, no jewelry, no purses, nothing. She was in her bedroom in her house. She inhaled suddenly, completely astonished. It couldn’t be. And yet there she was. She felt around her room, her bed, her dresser, her armoire, to make sure everything was real. And to her surprise, it was. She was really there. How could she have possibly gotten there? It was a twenty minute drive home. She didn’t know. She tried to slow her heart rate and take deep breaths to calm herself so she could analyze this like a scientist, but it all seemed impossible. She couldn’t come to terms with what she was seeing. All she could do was convince herself that she never went downtown to meet Gemma in the first place, that it was just another one of her hallucinations. And came to the unsettling realization that they were getting worse.