The man opened his eyes to the scorching sun. His dried eyes burned with a slight pain. He felt the cold of the concrete wall against the heat on his back gave him some shade.
His skin tingled with a strong itch from his dark-brown, pale-olive uniform, stained with blood, sweat, and dust.
He shook his head to gather his mind, push the dizziness away, even for a moment.
A moment was all he needed to understand what was happening.
In his hands, a rifle, smoke rising from its barrel. His left hand gripped it tightly, while the other hand hung loosely at his side, finger tips touching the scorching sand below. Sand stained with blood from a wound on his chest.
His name was Erwin Blade, a soldier who was supposed to have retired long ago.
Erwin found himself staring blankly; his head wouldn't steady. His pupils were static, his breathing slow and deep.
But his instincts quickly took over once a bullet whistled over his head.
He raised his loose arm, entire limb burned with a deep pain which he ignored.
His fingers loosely grabbed the magazine and clutched it with the last of his strength.
A glance showed he still had ammunition. Checking the safety and cocking the gun afterward was second nature.
Without much thought, he peeked out of his cover.
***
Erwin opened his eyes, covered in sweat, lying half-naked on his bed.
On his forehead, a phantom pain gathered on a narrow point.
After his quick move, his body froze, as if it did not process that his death was nothing but a dream.
Alone in a quiet room, Erwin listened to his heart's slow beats as he adjusted his breathing. The burning sensation in his lungs eased as he did.
With his left hand, he pinched his temple and pulled it down, wiping sweat on his face.
"Once again with those dreams…"
It wasn't the first time.
"How many nights until they end, free me from their torments?"
He put both hands on the bed, supporting himself to get up.
His limbs shook as they carried the weight of his body. His muscles tensed, showing the scars on his arms, and a large, star-shaped mark on his right shoulder.
Once standing, Erwin's body came to a stop.
He felt the dreadful sensation of being watched, more than usual. Many eyes, from a distance, he couldn't perceive them, watching, tracking his every movement.
His eyes bounced around the corners of the room.
His ears were open to any noise.
But there was nothing.
He got up and dragged himself into the bathroom. "Paranoia is getting worse. I didn't take my medicine yesterday." His legs shook with each step, sending a shockwave of pain across his body. It was from a meniscus tear he ignored with painkillers on the field, until it reached a stage where his doctor scolded him like a child.
Once he slipped past the semi-open bathroom door, he lunged forward in pain, barely managing to stop thanks to using the sink as a support.
"Damned first hours."
Erwin lifted his head, groaning as he did. His hair, long been unkempt, begged for a barber's touch. It reached a couple of inches lower than his jaw.
With one hand, he tossed the strands blocking his sight to the side and opened the closet before him.
Rows of medicine bottles, some empty, some close to. With a hasty motion, Erwin swept through the bottles, gathering them all at once.
Antidepressants, painkillers, antipsychotics.
"All but a slow poison." He called them.
None managed to fix his conditions.
"Painkillers don't heal my knees, sleep medicine only suppresses the nightmares."
He gritted his teeth.
"But I can't do without them."
Erwin reached for the painkillers first, encouraged by the sharp pain in his groin, but his hand slipped on the childproof cap as he tried to open it.
"Finally!" He started pouring the blue and white pills into his hand and took twice the recommended dosage in one go.
Risk of internal bleeding, or building a tolerance, meant nothing as long as the pain was gone. So much so, even his doctor gave up on him after countless attempts to drill medicine safety into his head.
Erwin took a deep breath, trying to wait for the painkillers to kick in. Taking fast breaths to hasten his blood flow.
He knew they weren't miracle medicine, and required more than a couple of seconds to kick in, but he just fooled himself into thinking they worked.
He kicked the floor a couple of times until the pain in his leg became bearable, and grabbed the rest of his medicine before skipping to the kitchen.
His pain slowly numbed on the way.
Once at the door, he grabbed the frame for support and looked inside.
There were all sorts of expensive appliances, but none had been used in years, except for a cheap microwave, unfit for the room.
It sat on a marble counter, next to a mountain of plastic plates, one-use chopsticks, and sporks.
"Somehow, not as depressing as me." Erwin reached into his fridge.
A mountain of water bottles and stacked premade meals welcomed him, but his eyes fled to beer cans shamefully hidden behind them.
He grabbed a meal, and his other hand lingered before a water bottle for a moment, until he moved it around and grabbed a beer.
"They told me to eat in a certain order for nutritional balance and stuff for my body, but…" Erwin looked at himself with pity. The muscles he gained during his service were fading. "Not that this one needs much loveanyway."
Erwin closed the fridge, threw premade food into the microwave, and took a couple of sips as he watched it spin with a buzz.
"I wish they just gave some of those powdered meals."
The microwave pinged.
Erwin grabbed the steaming meal from inside with one hand, slipped it onto the table, and grabbed a chopstick with his other hand. His already dead nerve ends did not care for the heat of the plastic container.
He ripped open the plastic cover. *"*Fish, some root vegetables, and boiled rice."
He took a piece and nodded.
"Needs some salt, but still better than rations."
He said aloud, his voice echoed in the empty house as the wooden utensils tore the white meat.
Erwin looked at the meal before him. "Better than rations, but…"
He mixed whatever food was before him and gulped it all down.
Taking a long sigh after finishing.
Erwin turned to his pill bottles. "Now time for you."
He grabbed his usual dose of antidepressants and antipsychotics.
But before he took them, he looked at the beer can in his hand.
"Right, I can't take you both." He sighed. "Damn it, this is a waste of good beer."
He pushed the can away, took the pills, and washed them down with some tap water, too lazy to grab a bottle from the fridge.
As he did, his phone rang. Its sound came out muffled from deep inside his pockets.
"Wonder who it is." He pulled his phone out. It was sturdy, reliable, and more brick-like rather than technological.
It wasn't anything modern, but Erwin loved it. "Don't break easily, can go for days, even have satellite messaging."
The actual truth was different.
Many pills he took caused him to feel dizzy and lightheaded. Combined with his deteriorating physical state, be it sudden losses of strength in his limbs to constant pain, made him drop and break the last two phones he bought.
"Martin? Wonder what he wants." He opened the call.
["Mornin. You woke up yet?"]
A low-pitched, playful sound greeted his ear.
"Wouldn't open the call if I wasn't."
["Good, good. I was planning on calling you until you gave up. Escaped my claws early today."] Martin snickered, ["So, about the next session, one you've been postponing for two weeks.]
Erwin shook his head, pinching his temple as he did. "We did have one…"
["Indeed, it's also mandatory, unless you want to go through another mental examination."]
"Fine. I'll be out in a minute, meet you at your office."
Erwin closed the phone. "Mandatory therapy, mandatory pills, mandatory diet, feels like a fever dream… Did all those crash-outs lose them enough votes to make those greedy bastards finally do something?"
Erwin turned to the kitchen counter and pulled open a drawer filled with newspaper clippings, all with similar headlines.
His eyes bounced between some of them.
[Veteran Suicide!] [Veteran killed himself before the Victory monument!] [Terror! A crazed veteran opened fire on a crowd, killing 10!]
Dozens of similar headlines stayed in that drawer.
Erwin gathered them in a span of three months, till they started issuing media blackouts and forcing mandatory mental health medicine or therapy sessions to veterans.
"I heard they were even talking about creating a pension for families of dead soldiers."
Similar scenes flashed before his eyes. Same grassy graveyard, same black suit, different faces, same cries.
Erwin closed the drawer. "..."
"They won't come back."
***
Erwin parked his car outside an old brick apartment building, converted into a makeshift serviced office after the bombings took the business center of the city down.
Once inside, he quickly took a turn to a corridor to his left, passing before an empty reception desk.
"The receptionist girl is absent. Probably on a smoke break. Well, it's not like Martin isn't aware I am coming."
He didn't think more about it, though he had a bad feeling inside.
The feeling of being watched.
It was as if thousands of eyes were behind him. Watching from just an inch away, but hidden.
At the end of the corridor was the entrance to an elevator, old enough to still have iron bars for protection.
He entered, pulled down a lever, and picked his floor. The machine came alive with a metallic screech.
With each floor, Erwin felt his body getting colder.
"We are still in fall, this much cold, it is not normal." Still, he didn't think much of it.
But once he arrived at the top floor, he felt a shiver he hadn't felt in a long time.
He stepped forward, his teeth shaking. He hugged himself, rubbing his arms to feel any warmth to no avail.
"Martin… Crazy bastard, are you trying some new method by freezing the entire building!?"
Once at Martin's office, he hastily reached for the doorknob. "What is this weather!" Erwin shouted as he barged in.
But stopped as he did.
His eyes widened as he froze in his place.
"W-what?"
What before him wasn't a cozy office with wooden flooring and a worn leather therapy chair, but a frozen forest with knee-high snow.
Erwin quickly turned around. "If all wasn't enough, am I having a hallucination episode now?" He swung his arm to reach for the door, but there was nothing.
Surprised, he tried to rub his eyes, pinch his arms, but nothing.
"I am still here."