Guardian XXIII // ONC 2021

Chapter III- This is All a Dream

"I presume this is yours?" A pair of dusty jeans are handed into my trembling arms.

I nod, not able to look away, too mesmerized by his face and a sense of familiarity in his presence. With great effort, I tug at every fragment of my mind to see where he fits in this picture...in this puzzled life of mine that has just begun. A few words of remembrance and an old memory from centuries ago is not enough information to tell me who he is.

There is no picturesque scene of his sandy hair or deep set eyes that are darker than night, no recollection of his tall silhouette or broad shoulders found in the recess of my head except for the visage of us in battle and armor.

Sill, a moment of combat says a lot about the stranger staring right back at me, a heartless countenance that tells me we have quite the history together.

His eyes roam down to my legs looking at the now perfectly intact limbs that were just recently a horror scene. Which brings me back to the spine-chilling event that took place minutes ago.

"What just happened to me?" I ask cautiously wondering if maybe it had all been a part of a confused imagination. But I'm not sure how that fits in with my reality—Drunk girl flies out a window, cracks in pieces and is dragged off the hood of a mangled car perfectly intact.

Is this a night terror! Am I sleeping?

His head tilts as if examining a new specimen for the first time, intrigued by the nature of its survival. In doing so, the silence becomes climatic. It's as if he too has gone back to memories or is unraveling a mystery behind his stare, cloaked in secrecy and hostage thoughts.

Maybe this stranger has lost his memory too. Maybe we both don't have a clue of how we got to be here, misplaced in some parallel dimension.

"You don't know?" He asks.

Guess I was wrong.

"Know what?" I say still clinging tightly to my jeans in fistfuls of denim, shielding myself from him, more importantly, the inevitable truth.

"You fell and died a bit, Twenty-Three. Don't make it a habit. We mustn't be burdens to the cause." His fingers reach for my thigh, smearing the remnants of blood that recently poured out of wounds found only in bodies resting in morgues. "Remember, we don't always come back."

And just like that, everything around us fades into oblivion. The sirens and wails from before become muffled, stranger danger guy transforms into a murky silhouette, and the air from my recently collapsed lungs is stifled by my own frantic gasps.

Did he just say, I died? I died a bit? I'm fuckin' dead!

"No, no, no, no, no... this can't be happening to me." I lean heavily on the brick wall for support talking to myself and ignoring everything around me. "Wake up, Ezzie or Twenty-Three, whatever your name is. Wake the fuck up! This is all a terrible dream. This is not happening. There is no crazy person telling you are dead."

"I resent that."

"Shit! Ok, just ignore the voices in your head. They're not real. You're still very drunk from the night before." I start inhaling and exhaling with ease.

"In fact, I'm pretty sure you're the crazy one."

"Close your eyes." My eyes shut, blocking out any visible signs of the stranger's existence. "Hot, sexy guy is not really there. He never did. He doesn't exist. It's probably a hallucination triggered by a bump on the head or maybe a memory from last night. Yes! Quite possibly a lot of alcohol and a horrific, easily forgettable mistake!" I tell myself loudly.