by Summer Mccoy

Created on: May 30, 2010

The Guardian

(There is also a poetic version of this short story contained inside one of the poetry brackets)

            Each night as she went to sleep, Ophelia would look around her room, sensing a foreign spirit over her. Her parents always gave her strange looks when she explained it, and it was clear they didn’t understand. After the incident on the lake she’d been seeing a therapist to talk about how it felt to be trapped under the ice. Since that fateful day she’d felt the eyes upon her at night.

            The chilled air brushed through her window, sweeping a gentle wind across Ophelia’s bed. Sometimes, when the night was quiet enough, she could hear the faint sound of a pan flute, softly guiding her into the lull of the night. It held her close, beat softly against her as the rhythm of her heart gently sung to the quiet tune.

            In her dreams she was always back at the lake, sometimes trapped and sometimes free. Sometimes she would run through the woods like when she was a child, feeling the crisp autumn leaves under her feet, giving way on each step. Other times she was trapped under the murky glass surface, gasping for air and praying for help or deliverance to a better place, one that would never be found.

            On nights when she’s trapped, Ophelia would wake up screaming, gasping for the air she could feel leaving her shuttering body. Long ago her parents had stopped coming to her bedside and tending to her fears. Since then when she’d wake by herself, she’d stand by her open window, watch the trees sway by the night breeze and feel the embrace of the dark around her.

            Nights with the worst terrors would show their heads on occasion, to which Ophelia would cradle herself in bed and wish for morning. As she would fall back to sleep she would cease worry, with a vague figure next to her bed she would calm, she could feel her guardian watching overhead.

Learn more about this author, Summer Mccoy.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.