“I Was Almost Abducted As A Child” - The Story Behind ‘Pretty Girl’
We’re taught to fear monsters, but danger doesn’t look like one.
The obsession of serial killers is more of an American phenomenon. For those of us who grew up in Asia and Europe, human trafficking is embedded in the cautionary tales our parents told us from a young age.
But like the stories we hear on TV or read in the newspaper, they always seem far from the comfort of our lives.
What most don’t realize is how close we truly are to danger.
“I had a close encounter with a human trafficker when I was a kid,” said Katrina Yang, the brain behind Pretty Girl, a dark web intimate horror. “Later in life, I had a conversation with my mother, and she told me that the same happened to her when she was young.”
Kat spent her formative years in a city that was widely considered safe, with strong public security and a low violent crime rate. She lived in a close-knit community where everyone knew everybody.
“I grew up on a university campus, surrounded by students, academics, and their families, and they used to have this communal event every night when people would come out to the sports field and dance together, and one summer night, I remember distinctly that two men approached me in the crowd and asked me to come with them,” she said.
She was with her mother, aunt, and grandparents at the time. But separating her from the rest of the family took less than five seconds.
“Like every kid, I was taught not to talk to strangers, not to accept candies, but there was something about these two men — the way they talked to me, the way they approached me — they didn’t treat me like a kid, but as a person. They didn’t lure me with candies because they were able to make me like them instantly.”
The thought of how easy an abductor could disarm a person’s alarm is not something people like to sit with.
The mainstream portrayal of an abductor paints them as an obvious bad guy with forceful banters and creepy eyes. It’s as if someone could really tell just from the way they look, but all it does is make the fear feel manageable.
“Think of the last charming person you immediately liked and trusted,” she urged me. “Then imagine that person unleashes hell on you.”
The thought became Pretty Girl. In it was a performatively charming host and a young woman in captivity.
“The girl” wasn’t chosen. She was just one of many… Her fate was never in her hands, the readers knew, the host knew, she suspected.
She wasn’t foolish or naive.
She had an idea of what the host is capable of, but still, a part of her falls for his tricks, not because she loves him, not because it’s survival, but — “she felt something in those moments that she didn’t understand.”
That’s the uncomfortable part. The part people would shame you for admitting because you’re only supposed to be disgusted, angry, traumatized.
“A survivor’s experience isn’t straightforward,” Kat said. “Despite the danger, it was also the first time I felt seen — and the tragedy is that it wasn’t from my family or friends, but from two men who were going to do me harm. So you can see how it’s not black and white. And I was told for years that it was a traumatic event that fucked me up, but the real wound is having people shape your experience however they feel comfortable with and shove it down your throat so hard that you no longer have a voice.”
Pretty Girl was written from a wound. Just not the one most people expect.
“The book is about giving the protagonist a voice without romanticizing the danger she’s in,” Kat explained. “She’s not a narrative. Not a plot device. Not a cautionary tale. She’s a person having a very complicated human experience.”
Danger doesn’t cancel how she felt. How she felt doesn’t cancel the danger.
Pretty Girl is meant to be uncomfortable.
Read the opening chapter of Pretty Girl.
A standalone novella.
