S.C. Creative Sociology Writing Competition

NIGHTCRAWLER 

“I never thought about growing up,” Halima says, sitting on top of the sink counter, popping a zit. “It just happened to me.” 

Sahar makes a weird sound in the other room. It sounds like uehhh. She grabs a folded pair of Levi jeans, shakes them straight, and lines them up with her bare legs. Halima once told her she had thelegs of a bird. That they were long, skinny, and awkward but pleasant. Sahar took that as an insult. Halima swore it wasn’t and that she was overthinking things like she always did. 

“Was your transition cycle easy?” Sahar asks. 

Halima laughs. She pulls her fingers away from her sore cheek. “If that’s what you want to call it.” 

“Mom’s worried because I haven’t shown any signs of pupating.” “And?” 

“You were already molting at my age, but I’m not.” 

Halima starts laughing while trying to exhale a compressed cough. It comes out frenzied and rough. Sahar recognizes her particular laugh when her voice starts clearing. It sounds like a hyena cowering prey. How they show their sharp canine teeth and mock and taunt. 

“For some people, it comes more naturally than others,” Halima says, still suppressing giddiness. 

“What about those it doesn’t come naturally to?” 

Halima doesn’t respond. It becomes quiet. Sahar can hear the light sound of water running through the old tap. Then stopping. Then dripping. But it’s still quiet. It’s not a comfortable silence. Sahar goesout into the hallway and stops right outside the bathroom door. She notices Halima studying her appearance in the circular-shaped mirror hung over the dirty sink. There are wads of tissue and paper towels drenched in water everywhere. Every ten seconds, Halima grabs a wet cloth, pushes it onto her face, and then puts it back on the counter. Sahar knows she’s about to go visit her friend. He’s a tall, twenty-something kid. But he’s not that bad, Halima said once. She’s seventeen. You’ll know when you’re older. 

“You’re going to ruin your face,” Sahar says. “Then no one will want you.” Halima curses under her breath. “Really?” 

“Doesn’t matter how many pimples you pop.” 

Halima stops messing with her skin. She looks at Sahar, smiling funnily. Her hair is dark and thick. It falls kind of everywhere, mostly on her back. She has reddish-brown skin with gold piercings on her face that she isn’t supposed to have but has anyway. Sahar thinks Halima inherited most of their mother’s beauty. They are mirrors of each other. Once, they went to mass, and a woman said Halima was blessed. She put her aging, rough hands on Halima’s nose, slid fingers down the sides, and made throaty sounds that gurgled with spit and hums. Not Sahar, though. It wouldn’t be the first time she stood by patiently waiting for Halima to stop being idolized, worshiped, or looked at by every person who came by. There was something interesting about her. But after Halima’s transition cycle, things about her were so greatly provocative. Her legs. Eyes. Face. She was inside people’s minds like a disease. Sahar thought that when she shed her skin and molted thick, unique dermis, she’d be beautiful. Like Halima. No one’s like her.But Sahar would never tell her this. It’d blow her head up. She’d think she was some god. But in a way, she was to Sahar. Before her mother, there was her sister. 

“Well,” Halima says. She thinks for a moment. “I outgrew my larva stage. People will want me.” 

“People will want me too,” Sahar says. 

Halima stares at Sahar genuinely. At first, giving her a look that gives her hope and desire. It lingers a little. They’re both still smiling at each other, but Halima’s smile soon changes. It’s the same, but it also isn’t. 

“The only ones who’ll want you are creeps at NIGHTCRAWLER!” 

Sahar starts to laugh. Halima starts laughing, too. They laugh together at the humorous nature and truth of Halima’s words. NIGHTCRAWLER was something to joke about in private, never in public. It’sa bar located in a remote part of the city. People usually go there at night when there’s nothing else to do and have hopes of meeting someone who will make them complete in any way possible. Halima calls it the shadiest place ever. Sahar’s never been. She knows that a lot of young people, drifters and kids who’ve never changed end up dead there. 

Some go missing and no one ever finds them. Sahar thinks some of it is exaggerated. She thinks that it’s just folklore of destruction passed along, blown up, made like a fantastical shitshow. But she often thinks about NIGHTCRAWLER. Sometimes, that’s all she can think about. 

Halima slides off the sink counter, stretching her body. On the surface of her skin are these small but noticeable patches of shine. You can see them really well in the sun. They’re colors of purples, greens, and sometimes dark blues. Iridescent birthmarks. She had gotten them after clawing her way out of her own chrysalis. Some people had slick, ugly cocoons—but not Halima. Though, it didn’t matter how aesthetically pleasing your transition cycle was. All that mattered was that you did it. And once you did it, people could tell you weren’t the same person. For better or worse. It’s not a figure of speech. Everyone can tell when you’ve lost something that’s really there or isn’t. 

Sahar knew that people who couldn’t achieve metamorphosis or pupation were looked down upon. She knew the feeling was intense, to be a pariah of society. Growing up she often met and exchanged glances with girls who would later be shunned from their families onto the streets. Halima stopped being friends with a girl a year ago who couldn’t develop fast enough. She grew up with the girl. They went to elementary school together, then high school, and time passed, but she was still the same, youthful girl. Everyone needs to change, Halima told Sahar while doing her makeup sometime a year ago. Maybe it’s a punishment or something—a curse—to be the same forever. Sahar asked Halima how she knew that the girl hadn’t already undergone a change in her life. That possibly achieving the physical state of theirtransition cycle was something no one could rush. But Halima didn’t answer her. She smudged in some 

disco-pink eyeshadow onto her eyelids, mumbled incoherently, and said her makeup was done. Her friend was found dead sometime after that. It happened outside NIGHTCRAWLER. When people in the community found out that that’s where she was dumped, they seemed to pride themselves in knowing her death was foreseeable. Her body was stuffed in between a wall and an ugly, green dumpster. Sahar remembers the girl’s mother coming to their house that night in hysterics. She couldn’t stand straight and kept running around, then falling. The news stations in their city released photographic evidence of what had happened to her. Sahar remembered how young she still looked. Her cheeks were rounded and full, her lips swollen, and she looked like she wasn’t dead. The only thing dead about her was her eyes. 

“What If I went to a place like NIGHTCRAWLER to be someone different?” Sahar says, breathing in the humid smell of bathroom chemicals. 

Halima makes a funny sound. It’s not a laugh. A sound you make just to make the other person feel comfortable. She walks over to Sahar and gently taps her forehead. 

“You mean if it was a last resort kind of thing?” Halima asks. 

Sahar nods. Halima stares at her. She rubs her fingers against Sahar’s forehead. Then, she drags them down to her nose, slimming it, and pulls them away to spread her cheeks plump with baby fat. Sahar only sees something else on her sister’s face for a moment. It was like adoration, tolerance, and something else that she couldn’t recognize. Or maybe it wasn’t that at all. 

“You’ll always be my sister,” Halima says. 

She pulls Sahar’s head towards her chest, embracing her. It’s similar to how their mother does when they both return home from school or when something goes wrong and they both need someone. Sahar can hear Halima’s heartbeat. It’s slow and strong. The feeling of intimacy between them is overbearing with warmth and stifling patience. 

—————— 

The weather is unusually hot and wet. The night before was calmer, more quiet. The downpour of rain mixed with the muggy atmosphere created an irritable environment for Sahar. She cared for her appearance minimally. She washed and wore clean clothes, did her hair every morning, and did the best she could to present herself with sophistication. On normal days after school, her efforts didn’t go unnoticed. She’d sometimes see people smile at her. An older woman once told her she looked very nice. When it rained ugly and everything was gray, her attempts went unnoticed. In harsh weather, Sahar’s hair becomes unkempt. Matted. It’s no one’s fault, though. But it’s why she prefers being picked up and driven back and forth. Whether by her mother or Halima. She can lounge like a passenger princess, rest her feet on the dashboard, and point out the brands of cars. It’s not an experience. It’s a comfort. Sahar finds it pointless but looks forward to it every day. A lot of things in her life feel that way. It’s why Sahar wants to be different. She wonders if it’s scary to want such drastic change at a young age. If her body is simply rotting and she carries it from place to place. Halima let her crawl into her bed one night and let her talk about what made her upset. Sahar just kept saying everything, whispering about things that hadn’t yet happened and the future. Who do you think you are? Halima asked her. 

Sahar couldn’t answer exactly. She laughed about it. I’m probably turned inside out or something, she told Halima. 

Today, Halima can’t pick Sahar up. She has to walk home in the rain. It isn’t that far, Halima mocked. It’s only a few blocks from the school. People have walked longer distances before. Like their mother. She constantly reminds Sahar and Halima that being driven to school is a luxury. Whenever she didn’t have enough money for the bus fare, she walked in the only pair of black shoes she had. All her belongings were strung up in a sack she tied around her back. 

Everyday. Back and forth. Even when the weather made her body ache, her fingers numb and staticky. Sahar feels she has to walk to school sometimes out of an ode to her mother. It’s tiring. One of the only benefits is that she gets to pass by the park and see strange people. Wanderers who’ve undergone drastic changes or learned so much about themselves that they’ve gone crazy. Or people like Halima’s friendwho haven’t grown at all. Only on the inside. That’s where they’re dead. 

Around the corner from the coffee shop that sells simple drinks splashed with alcohol and fruits is the bar where Halima’s friend died. No one likes to talk directly about her death. 

Everyone simply assumes that the girl’s upbringing led her to where she wound up. She often reminds me of you in the most upsetting ways, Halima told Sahar. She makes me feel overwhelmed, as if all I’ll be is nothing worth becoming. It was hard to understand. Sahar saw the girl as some self-deprecating molt. Maybe that’s why people began to hate her. Some loved her naivety in perverted ways. It made the girl a victim, a wounded bird, and baggage. If she lived any longer, she’d more than likely endure a cycle of being used and forgotten. 

Sahar continues to walk by the bar. She’s made it her routine to keep walking whenever she sees it. Leave the school. Walk down the road. Ignore NIGHTCRAWLER. Keep walking. Go home. Things are simple like this. It’s tedious but simple. After passing the bar and coffee shop, Sahar knows she’ll be home in fifteen minutes. It’ll only be a matter of time before she sees the distinctive brown shutters on her windowsill in front of the long palm tree. From far away they look like large brown blocks. One of them has a painted yellow mockingbird on it. The other is simply plain and uninteresting. 

She walks and walks until she manages to stop to let a man walk by her. Though, the man doesn’t seem to stop right there. He walks awkwardly, hobbling on one leg and the other being bone straight. Sahar’s uniform feels tight on her body when he starts to approach her. Her body feels like it might leak itself onto the crackling lines of concrete. It’ll fill in the holes and lines with Sahar. She’ll be the ground. Unimportant. Pulsing. Good enough not to ruin anything else. 

The man walks slowly to Sahar like an approaching snake, dartedley. He looks at Sahar’s face. Bites the edge of his pink lip. Blinks with his raw-red eyes. And suddenly, Sahar feels left alone with herself. She begins to slow her movements. If he walked fast, she’d walk faster. But he’s not. And now she has to look at him without looking at him, but there’s no way to do that. 

“Hello,” the man says. 

The man has a rougher face. Broad nose. Messy blonde hair. He’s not completely a man. An older boy. Maybe a little older than Halima. His skin is ghostly pale. Sahar can see the blue veins on his neck. They’re thick and noticeable. 

She walks past him. “Hello,” Sahar says. 

“Where are you going?” The man asks. He begins to stop and follow her. “My sister’s job.” 

“Where is your sister’s job?” “Over there.” 

The man says something Sahar doesn’t catch. It’s a mumble-like agreement. Sahar attempts to point off in the distance at a building. She throws her entire arm aggressively to the left, shaking it. The man looks across, then stops. He starts jogging to catch up with her after a moment. 

“Your sister works at the bodega?” 

Sahar shrugs. She starts to say something else but doesn’t. The man is now hovering over her. He slightly pushes her body to the right, away from the sidewalk and road. It makes it hard for her to walk straight. She feels like how her mother must’ve felt when she was a girl. Having to push forward anyway without wanting to. She didn’t have a choice. Sahar tries repeating the routine she learned a few years ago. How to go straight home from school. The school…road…NIGHTCRAWLER. She has to be obsessed with it now. Sahar’s thinking about home. What she’s going to eat tomorrow. How Halima will bother her. What her mother will think. Where is her mother? Where will the change overtake her, make her strong, pounding, and able to say no? 

“How do you know about NIGHTCRAWLER?” The man asks. “I have to go home,” Sahar says. 

“Are you that type of girl?” 

“I should’ve been home by now.” 

“Oh, you haven’t developed yet. I can tell.” “My mother is coming soon.” 

The man smiles. He puts both of his hands onto Sahar’s uniform jacket, pulling her off to a narrow backstreet in between some shrubbery and construction. She tries to recognize the road, but she can’t. Sahar can’t make out any faces but his. Everything’s suffocating. All she can think about is NIGHTCRAWLER, and all the other girls like her are disposed elsewhere. They had their entire lives ahead of them.They were probably still beautiful without being anything more. They had to be. Did anyone else see it? They had to. If not, Sahar recognizes something deeply wrong. Her throat feels dry, but still, she screams. The man suddenly lets go. He’s shaken up. Sahar drops her backpack and begins to run. She knows Halima is waiting for her on the steps of their home, picking at her nails. Then she’ll say something loud and terrible and funny. And then Sahar will explain but not have to beg to be believed. She doesn’t like anyone else in the world at this moment. But maybe her sister. 

—————— 

“People like that have ugly cocoons,” Halima says. 

She lies in bed next to Sahar. The purple and black sheets are pulled tightly over their necks, swaddling them like babies. Her knees bend against Sahar’s torso but rest in a way that works for the both ofthem. Halima clears her throat. She looks at the ceiling fan, shaking gently. It makes a clicking sound. It’s one that’s not completely irritating but redundant. She kind of likes it. It creates an ambiance in the room. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Sahar says. “Whether they’re ugly or not.” “I should’ve picked you up,” Halima says. 

“They probably have the dirtiest insides. Nothing makes them clean.” “It’s all my fault.” 

“They’ll still be hurt. Even if they’re beautiful like you.” 

Halima looks at Sahar. They both stare at each other. Sahar smiles, and Halima attempts to do so, but her face falls flat. Her expression looks forced. Far from neutral. 

“It’s okay,” Sahar says. 

Halima brings her hands to Sahar’s face, gently stroking her cheeks. She pulls her head to her chest. Sahar begins to cry. Her body feels itchy. Thin layers of shedded, moistened skin crack at her hands and nails. 

Exegesis of NIGHTCRAWLER 

NIGHTCRAWLER uses metamorphosis as a metaphor for the social construction of reality, exposing how arbitrary milestones—such as beauty, maturity, and success—are treated as natural but, in fact, arisefrom cultural expectations. Sahar’s inability to pupate mirrors the anxieties of failing to meet societal standards, while her sister Halima embodies the celebrated ideal. Their dynamic reflects how identity and worth are formed in the shadow of family and community judgment, echoing Cooley’s “looking-glass self.” 

The stigma toward those who never transform illustrates Goffman’s labeling theory: the unchanging are branded as deviant, made invisible, even disposable. In this way, NIGHTCRAWLER critiques howculture equates transformation with belonging and survival, leaving those who resist or fail erased at the margins.