Page 3 of Guardian

She tried to scream, but no sound issued from her throat, just a helpless gurgle. Fear paralyzed her. This was how she was going to die. She’d seen it before. Seen too many times how the knife plunged into her heart and robbed her of her life.

She braced herself for the inevitable, steeled herself for the pain, because death wasn’t painless, wasn’t instant like people wanted to believe. But the green-eyed man stopped in mid-motion. It took her brain almost a second to realize what was happening. A sword sliced through the creature’s neck, separating the head from the body.

While the head dropped to the ground, rolling somewhere out of sight, green liquid spurted from the wound. Blood? Green blood! She had no time to move, to get out of the way, and was doused in it immediately. Some of it splashed into her eyes, blurring her vision. She could make out a man behind the falling monster, but couldn’t truly see him through the horrible green blood.

Before she could thank her rescuer, she saw more poison-green dots appear in the distance. More green-eyed monsters?

Frantic, Winter stretched out her arm in their direction, pointing at them, while she tried unsuccessfully to form words, realizing only now that she was chained to a wall. The man who’d killed the creature whirled around toward the approaching green-eyed attackers. She wiped her eyes with her hand, managing to regain some of her vision.

They were in a cave with flames licking along the rock walls. All of a sudden, the smell of rotten eggs assaulted her. Grunts and curses reached her ears. And more poison-green lights flashed. More monsters. Too many.

She cried out in desperation.

This was hell. There was no escape from this.

This was her end.

Winter collapsed. And just as quickly as the nightmare had begun, it stopped. She forced open her eyes and looked around. Touched her torso, her thighs, her face. No blood, no green stains on her clothing, no wounds. No monsters in her little shop.

She was alone. For now.

She managed to get up, shaky at first, but with every step she gained more of her strength. Breathing heavily, she walked to the other end of the shop, where a door with a sign saying Private led to her apartment. She opened it and walked through a small hallway into the large live-in kitchen.

On the counter next to the coffee machine stood a tray with several small, orange plastic bottles containing prescription drugs. She hated taking them, but when she went without them for too long, the daytime nightmares came more frequently. At least the pills dulled her senses and calmed her somewhat. Right now, she needed one, because she was shaking.

The things she was seeing had become more vivid in the last few months. More real, even though she knew none of it could be real. Monsters like that couldn’t exist. Poison-green eyes, green blood? Not even Hollywood could invent such ridiculous creatures, monsters that looked perfectly human apart from those two features. Yet whenever she saw them, whenever she saw the poison-green eyes, she was more terrified than she’d ever been in her life. Because she knew they were coming for her.

She felt them calling to her. Heard their voices in her head. And every time she heard them, she felt her blood turn to ice, because she felt the evil physically. Every cell in her body revolted. She knew she couldn’t succumb to them. Couldn’t give in to their calls. Or she would end up like her grandmother. She would spend the rest of her days in a mental hospital, clawing at the walls, claiming to hear voices in her head and see things that weren’t real.

Tears shot to Winter’s eyes, when she recalled the last few visits she’d had with her grandmother. The nurses had restrained her with leather straps bound to her bed for fear she would hurt herself or others. She’d had a crazed look on her face, and the things she’d said had made no sense. Two days later she was gone. Dead.

Winter swallowed two of the pills and closed her eyes. She was determined not to end up like her grandmother. That’s why she’d gone to a psychiatrist shortly after she’d had her first daytime nightmare, hoping he could arrest the progression of the disease she’d inherited. He’d diagnosed her with PTSD caused by the trauma of losing her grandmother, the last member of her family, even though that event had occurred two decades earlier. He’d prescribed anti-psychotic medication and suggested drawing the images that assaulted her as a way to deal with what she saw, as a way to make them less scary. He’d promised it would help her deal with the episodes, as he called them.

But she knew he was wrong. Deep down she knew it, knew that she was going crazy, that she was succumbing to the same mental illness that had taken her grandmother.

And no amount of art therapy, counseling sessions, or pills could cure her.