I See You

On a hot summer's day a teenage boy comes home from summer practice. He walks in his room, throws his bag on his recliner, turns on his air conditioner and falls onto his bed.

"Geez, why did the coach have to work us so hard like that?" He complained.

As he lay there he turned on his TV, as he was trying to find something to watch as he cooled down, his eyes struggling to keep focus. He tried to fight the overwhelming fatigue but to no avail. As he drifted off to sleep, the temperature in his room became colder.

As you can see the boy's chest rise and fall with every breath he takes, you can see the cold on his breath. The boy's eye slowly opened, the cold finally biting deep into his exposed skin. As he got up to turn off his air conditioner he noticed that it was night already, he checked his watch, it was already past midnight. He shook his head in disbelief that he had slept the whole day. He went to grab his bag to put his clothes away, but as he went to reach for it, his bag was gone. Confused, he looked around for his bag, to his surprise the bag was in his closet. He just shrugged it off, as he went to go change his clothes he heard his recliner start slowly rocking.

The boy glances back at the recliner, only to see it slowly come to a stop. The boy put his hand on the recliner to steady it, looking to see if anything could have possibly shifted to make it move. With nothing that seems out of place, he chalked it up to his imagination. As he continued to change he heard a plastic bag begin to rustle near his recliner. "What is going on!?" He proclaimed with frustration. As he called out he heard the bag drop as if someone was holding it and had just let go. At that moment all the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. All of a sudden the air in the room grew colder even though he knew he shut off the air conditioner.

He slowly turns around towards the recliner, his eyes widen as he sees a small hand crawl up on top of the back end of the chair. With fear and panic taking over, he shuts off the lights to the room and rushing to his bed. As he gets in and takes to get his covers he sees another hand creep up next to the first one. He quickly covers his head. After a short time he took a look, and with shock he saw a small girl standing next to his recliner. The boy covers his head again but as he does his grip slips on his sheets and as his view of the girl returns he sees her raising her hand and holding up her and waving her index, as if saying, "I see you."

The boy finally was able to grab his sheets covered head once more, and this time he is determined to not risk another look. As he stayed in his bed curled up like an infant baby, he could hear his recliner rocking once more. Even though he was covered from head to toe, he shut his eyes and rolled to face the other side hoping and praying that he would wake up from this. That he was just over tired, that this was just a fever dream. As he was trying to make sense of all that was happening, he finally noticed that the rocking had stopped. He slowly relaxed his face and turned back around, he didn't even notice that with being covered and squeezing his eyes shut, he fell asleep. Looking at the watch on his wrist he saw that it was now 4:30am.

"That was crazy." He said as he breathed out a sigh of relief that it was all a dream. A little hesitant to pull the covers of his head. With a swift swing of his arm he threw the covers off, keeping his eyes closed. He opened one eye at a time, after realizing that there was nothing there and risking a glance at his recliner, seeing that his bag was sitting right where he threw it he let out a big sigh.

"So yes, it was all just a dream." He said with relief.

The boy got up and started for the door to head for the restroom, as he left the room the recliner started rocking ever so slowly. Creeping around the corner of the chair was the head of a little girl with long hair covering her eyes, a big toothy grin on her face. She raises her hand with her index finger waving up and down as she mouthed wordlessly.

"I see you."