The crack of my ankle bone radiates throughout the sold-out stadium. 

It’s so loud that it drowns out the drum solo and the screaming fangirls. All the people who just paid $500 a ticket to see me collectively weep. Whether it’s for their loss or my well-being, I have no clue.  

But my tears are tears of joy, the culmination of eighteen years of exhaustion finally, blissfully coming to an end. I’ve been my family’s sole source of income since the day I was born.

Interviewers love to pull up the old commercials and fawn over my bouncy black hair and babyish way of saying soda-POP. They don’t mention the fact that the $2,000 check I earned got me a hamburger at McDonald’s and ensured my family had a place to live for the rest of the month. 

My security guards, stage crew, and dancers form a protective circle around me, allowing me to hobble off-stage without my grotesquely flopping foot making it on the cover of TMZ.

Doctors prod at the source of my unfortunate accident, cutting the glittering custom heel off of my rapidly expanding appendage. They pop me pill after pill until the pain melts from a 10 to a 1 on their absurdly non-specific scale. 

And I am thankful. So thankful for the excuse to take a break. To finally step away from this non-stop circus of paparazzi, shows, meet and greets, Instagram lives, and studio sessions. 

My sweet trimalleolar fracture, my salvation. 

I scroll through the headlines on my phone. Hannie Hughes, 10-time Grammy Winner, Suffers Tragic Accident Onstage. The outpouring of love and well wishes is a welcome bonus. 

My mom never leaves my bedside, making sure the doctors are doing their job and asking the important questions like, When will she be back onstage? 

I tell her that I need time and rest. That this is my body’s way of telling me to slow down, but she doesn’t agree. You owe it to your fans, she rationalizes. 

But I think they will understand. They love me, right?

Mom finally leaves and I try to nap. But someone walks in and gets uncomfortably close to me. I open my eyes to see a woman two inches from my face. She’s ethereal and iridescent and undeniably dead. I scream and she laughs, Get back on stage or parish. 

Doctors, nurses, and security flood my room as I frantically explain what just happened. I point to her standing in the corner with her blue skin and unnatural stance, but everyone thinks I’m crazy.

How can you not see her? Are you all stupid? I thrash and yell as the ghost woman just smiles in the corner at me. A needle plunges and a hazy sedation settles in. 

When I awake again, I’m alone. I scroll the latest headlines, Hannie Hughes, On Drugs or Mental Breakdown? The Fall of an American Icon. 

The fame monster is here to devour me.