 I grew up in a small community in the south of Minnesota called St. Gaul. We were eight families, all loosely related, uncles and aunts from both sides of my family, along with grandparents and two outsider families, not directly related by blood. It was a remnant of the hippie era and my mother grew up out there. It was originally meant to be some sort of farming commune for people who wanted to live on their own terms without going completely off the grid. It isn't like a religious gathering or a cult as many believe. It was all about a different way of life and living closer to the earth. My mother left St. Gaul for a few years to study sociology and that's where she met my dad. I was in accidental pregnancy and my dad didn't want to stick around. My mother moved back to St. Gaul and had me in the early 90s. I was born in the house I grew up in. Life out there wasn't as odd as one might think. I still went to school, I just had to take an earlier bus. We still went into town at least once a week and I had many friends that I got really close to over the years. Still, there was always that error of being different around me. My mom explained that a lot of the parents of the kids at school didn't like the people from St. Gaul because we were different, a bit odd. My mom was terrified of a lot of things, but mostly blood. That was her number one fear and if I ever hurt myself she would try to cover it up as fast as possible. It was strange because I saw kids skin their knees at school all the time without anyone freaking out. I never hurt myself like that since my mom was adamant about being careful. It came to the point where I sometimes had to wear elbow and knee guards to school which landed me in plenty of trouble from bullies. But my childhood came and went. Elementary school turned into middle school, which turned into high school. Things got rough then, fast. On the best days I was a Gaul kid, but most of the time they just called me Jesus freak or cultist. I was branded an outsider without there ever really being a reason. I guess that's just what it's like being a teenager. I also refused to take precautions my mother asked me to. I stopped wearing elbow and knee guards to gym class. Our teacher had a deal where kids could go to the gym instead of playing team sports, but I was tired of being separated. I'd compromise with my mom by wearing several layers of clothes, but I'd usually just wait for her to be out of sight before I took something off. If she ever knew I was pretty good at both soccer and basketball, she would have had a heart attack. It was during those first few PE classes that I started noticing something was different about me. Sure, we were all still growing up, but I was growing a bit different. I was almost completely hairless in comparison to the other boys and my hair was growing lighter. I'd gone from brown hair to strawberry blonde in about two years. I would also start to notice a weird smell coming from the other boys. They really stank. It took me several weeks to notice that they weren't actually the ones who were different. I was. They smelled like people were supposed to smell. My sweat, on the other hand, was sweeter. Not necessarily in a good way, but just weirdly sweet by comparison. Not sugary, but more like the smell of thick dairy. I hadn't thought about it. I just figured that was the way sweat was supposed to smell. It wasn't. I'd made one friend in high school, Darren, short guy who dropped in and out of social clicks like it was his job. I talked to him about it and asked him to smell me weird, I know. And he agreed that something was off. He convinced me to talk to the school nurse, thinking it might be something like diabetes. I was scared as hell. He'd tell someone about it, but he never did. Good guy. I had a long chat with the school nurse, Anita. She was very reassuring. Apparently puberty can have all sorts of weird effects on the human body. A sweet smell coming from your sweat was hardly the worst she'd seen, or in this case smelled. It was weird, sure, but this was a weird time to be human. Still, she decided to run a few blood tests just to make sure my iron levels and white blood cells were okay. As soon as she poke the needle through my arm, she recoiled and crinkled her nose. The syringe dropped to the floor and I got up. She got a tissue and started to blow her nose repeatedly over and over. What the hell was that? She exclaimed, What did you? I had no idea what she was talking about. I looked at the drop of blood poking out of my arm and I didn't notice anything odd. She just put a band-aid on it while Anita tried to regain her composure. Come back, come back tomorrow. She coughed. We'll talk more, okay? But she was sick the next day. I felt uncomfortable with the whole thing and I wanted to talk to my mom about it, but I also didn't want to get her worried. When you have someone in your life that's always on the breaking point, you make a habit out of stepping carefully. It took Anita the rest of the school week before she returned to her job. I was immediately summoned to the nurse's office. She'd lost weight. A lot of it. She was drinking water from a large bottle when I got there and she had dark markings around her eyes. She didn't seem well, but she lit up as soon as she looked at me. Anita asked me for a new blood test and I agreed. She lined up for syringes. Her hands were shaking, but she regained her focus once the needle got closer to my arm. Step by step, she filled the syringes, but she seemed to get more and more excited as she did. I can swear she was sniffing my neck. The whole thing was weird and I left as soon as she gave me a band-aid. She promised to run some tests and let me know as soon as she was done, but she wanted me to return at least once a week for a checkup. Apparently, sweet smelling sweat was a bigger deal than I'd anticipated. I asked her if I should see a doctor, but she just shook her head. As I left the nurse's office, I looked back. She was standing in the doorway, staring at me from across the hall. Her eyes never left me. She was staring at my neck, drinking from her water bottle. This time, I told my mother I had no idea how much she would overreact. Instead of talking to nurse Anita, she pulled me out of school the same day. She threw our entire lives into boxes, breaking at least half of our dinnerware in the process. In less than a weekend, she'd packed everything and hired a truck. I barely had the time to hug my grandparents goodbye before we were out of town. I was forced to switch phone numbers, and my mother swore that if I didn't remove my social media accounts, she'd smash every touchscreen we owned. I'd never seen her like that before. I was terrified. That's how we ended up, in Sabre, Michigan. Of course, my mom couldn't check on me all day long. I did get time to check in on my social media. Darren, still in disbelief about me leaving so soon, told me things had gotten weird at school. Nurse Anita had started asking questions about where I'd moved and when the principal couldn't reveal that information. She'd gotten aggressive. The police got involved, and it was revealed that she'd taken my blood samples home. Things got unclear at this point, but Darren, whose mom works at the sheriff's office, had spoken over dinner about nurse Anita, apparently drinking blood straight from the syringes. But that wasn't all. In the days that followed, she was taken into custody. She was doing some sort of hunger strike and couldn't even keep water down. She actually died from dehydration right there in the county jail, surrounded by paramedics trying to understand why her body was actively resisting an IV. By now, my mom and I had settled in at a small three bedroom apartment. I confronted her about nurse Anita and what had happened. My mom finally opened up to me. You know what capsaicin is? She asked. It's the thing in spicy food that makes your tongue and throat hurt. It's a kind of self-defense thing that just is supposed to make us stay away. I'd heard about it, and I was aware of the concept. This thing that's supposed to make us stay away just makes it more enticing, she explained. People can get addicted to it. To many, it has the opposite of the intended effect. It became something to be desired instead of something that protects the plant. Do you understand what I'm telling you? I did understand. Our family is different, she told me. I was hoping this wouldn't happen to you, but it did, and we had to move. She really did try to bring me a normal life. She tried not to worry, but whatever is inside me was growing extremely potent. I started to understand why our family had lived isolated and why she wanted me to be careful around the others. As a kid, it wasn't as dangerous, but as a teenager, it was stronger than ever. That's why even I was noticing my own smells, they'd gotten stronger. But the years passed, my mom got a job at a gas station, and I helped out as a farm hand and cherry picker. Things were going pretty well, all things considered, until last year. I was picking up my mom from the night shift early in the morning when a truck on the opposite lane ran a red light. We were hit. It wasn't a bad hit, but it was bad enough to send us into a spin and into a nearby ditch. Mom had been looking through her purse and smashed her head against the passenger window, and I head bashed the steering wheel. The passenger side of the rear half of the car was folded like origami. I barely even remember what happened next. I remember the truck driver coming to check on my mom only to drag her out on the pavement. I remember paramedics and a police car. I remember eyes looking at me, delirious and dark, open, bloody mouse, tendons snapping, a sweet flowery smell drowning out the gasoline pouring from the car. I remember red. I remember seeing a half eaten face slowly being torn apart, eyes that used to comfort me, having lost their light, a slack jawed nightmare, having clothes and limbs torn apart and splayed on the concrete like a flattened toad. I don't remember much about getting away. I was chased through a field of wheat and threw up into a water bucket next to a well. I hid in a barn and covered myself in hay to dampen the smell of my blood. I remember a flashlight passing over me as three people left, desperately looking somewhere else, bloody mouse, still chewing, pupils so large, their eyes looked black. They were barely even breathing. Their breath so short, I couldn't even see their chest move. I made it. I would never speak of this in person as I don't want to risk anyone finding me. I've moved twice since that incident, and I'm starting to understand what I am. The problem is, I've started to get cataracts. I know it's an early stage, but it's definitely there and it is progressing rapidly. I'm going to need surgery. Someone has to operate on me. And I just, I fear that I'll never wake up from it. I have no idea what to do. I can't live like this, constantly fearing someone will get too close and catch a whiff of me. No wonder my mom had to leave my dad. No wonder she was always afraid. You're all hunting me. You just don't know it yet.