The Grey's Curse

Chapter One - The Monster

They say your life flashes before your eyes just moments before you die, that everything slows down and it's as if you're just...watching, almost like an out of body experience that Josh, a dad of one, could now confidently say was an almost accurate description to what he experienced.

He remembered being blinded by headlights, hearing the awful screech of tires squealing that was soon replaced by a big boom before he woke up, dazed in a hospital bed attached to multiple machines with a sling around his broken and stiff right arm.

It was almost accurate, because he lived, paralyzed by the pain that pulsed in his body mixed in with the numerous wounds but he lived, he endured and although ecstatic that he was even alive, he didn't want to acknowledge the pure grogginess he felt along with being uncomfortably stiff.

"Ugh..." he pitifully groaned, whatever medication he was given while unconscious was beginning to wear off, giving leeway for pain to assault his battered body that was bed bound by both pain and the machines he was attached to, he could do nothing but watch the hands on a plain clock that was hung on the wall slowly tick away as his eyes burned with the need to sleep.

'I'm so tired and sore'

He's already attempted to sleep multiple times but the constant beeping that echoed throughout the otherwise silent and dim hospital room made his head throb and kept him up, he was slightly scared to audibly complain as he knew he was the only patient in the room and didn't want the hospital staff to think he was crazy or under the influence.

'That's the last thing I need' he settled for a big sigh, well as big as his ribs would allow.

In all reality, Josh was just a simple man in his early thirties who had been driving to his mother's house when the accident happened, he remembered that a car had been driving the wrong way and hit him head on, everything else was pretty much a blur.

All he could do now was anxiously wait for sleep to take him away with a seemingly permanent grimace etched on his face as he prayed for the head throbbing beeping to quiet down so that maybe the sweet embrace of sleep would overcome and save him from the pain of his broken arm and surely bruised ribs.

Every little breath he made felt like sheer torture.

It didn't help that every time he closed his eyes he would be haunted by the sounds of tires squealing against asphalt and a sudden flash of bright headlights blinding him, the tired man huffed and puffed before he could finally feel his conciseness begin to slip away and his body slowly relax as sleep began to take him away to a peaceful dreamland.

That is, until the sound of shoes hitting the floor in the hallway caught his attention and snapped him wide awake.

He wanted to cry, he was so close to sleeping and he groaned when the sound of their footsteps stopped by his door, thinking it was a Doctor or Nurse he forced himself up with a huff and opened his bleary eyes and saw someone standing in the doorway of his room.

'Let's get this over with'

He had to squint his eyes to clear his blurry vision and once he could start to make out things in the room, he searched for the person that startled him awake; ready to complain about having been woken up but when he saw the thing, he swore his heart stopped then and there as standing outside his room wasn't a Doctor or Nurse but a dark crimson blur that immediately set off alarm bells in his head.

'No...no no no it can't be!'

Josh struggled, he fought to sit up, fought to get away from it as it grew closer to him with every second that passed, the thing's movement were smooth, almost as if it was floating towards him but the familiar sound of footsteps echoing in the room proved that illusion wrong.