Guardian

Chapter One:
The Bad Man

I know I shouldn't be posting this, but I couldn't help myself. Parasite will be finished, I promise.

Ever notice how none of the Elm Street kids ever have siblings? Well, poor Anna is going to make up for all of those siblings. In case you're not counting, she's got five to fret over, plus herself and two parents. The entire family will be introduced I the next chapter. :)

I picked up my brother, whose bare feet looked cold on the wet sidewalk. While I had warm fuzzy bottoms and a sweater, he only had an oversized T-shirt and a pull-up on. Like many young children, he firmly sucked on his thumb, pulling it out to eat and answer questions. In front of us was the silhouette of a man wearing a hat. Because his face was hidden in the shadows, I couldn't tell if it was one of our neighbors.

"Mikey. . ." I whispered to my four-year-old brother, "Who is that?"

For a moment, he pulled his thumb out. "That's the bad man." he answered, clutching to my pajama sweater.

That's when the figure started moving toward us. I didn't even have any time to ask Mikey who the Bad Man was. All I could do was run for my life, our lives. My feet pounded against the damp sidewalk, and I knew if I had to run for a long time, blisters would form. I couldn't even remember venturing outside, which made me wonder how in the world I wound up in this situation. In vain, I tried to pick out our house from the crowd, but they all looked the same. Actually, they all looked like. . . my house. Suddenly, I stopped in my tracks.

Mikey was crying. Amazingly, he'd been sobbing all this time without removing his thumb from his mouth.

"Shh, Mikey, the Bad Man's gone." suddenly, he wailed even louder, causing my ears to ring.

"No he's not!" Mikey sobbed. "He's behind you!" I'd never seen my little brother so distraught before. Obviously, he had seen this person prior to this event. Quickly, I whirled around to find that he was not behind us. So I turned back to keep running, and there he was, probably two feet in front of us.

"Glad to hear he remembers Freddy." the silhouette declared.

With a sudden burst of temporary intelligence, I remembered the laws of physics. Unless he could teleport, there was no way he could have ended up in front of me. Not to mention, I looked around at the houses. Suddenly, they had turned into only one house. This world was too distorted and abnormal to be real. I had to be dreaming, so I used my ultimate defense mechanism. Whenever I used to have a nightmare, I closed my eyes very tightly and then opened them. Once I opened them, I'd be awake in my bed instead of in the dream.

It worked. Instead of the dreamworld, I was lying in my bed, staring up at the ceiling, but I had still been spooked. So I decided to check up on my little brother. Reluctantly, I threw the warm bed sheets off of me and crept quietly into Mikey's room.

To my dismay, I saw him crying and tossing in his bed to the point where all of his blankets had been thrown off. That's not good. I heard him whimpering, as well.

"Mikey," I said quietly, shaking him. "Wake up, little bro." he became even more frantic, and I looked closer. There were little sores on his knees that weren't there that morning. They looked like he had fallen and skinned them, so I shook a little harder. "Michael! Wake up, now!" I shook him violently, and almost slapped him in the face. He woke up, screaming. "Are you alright?"

Instantly, he popped his thumb in his mouth, but only for solace. He was not sucking it, because he was too busy screaming. To comfort him, I picked him up.

"You dropped me!" he screamed at me. Still, he calmed himself, wrapping one arm around my neck, letting the tears out, and sniffling all of the snot back into his nose. "And then the Bad Man walked closer and stepped on me." I don't think any of my siblings have ever had a nightmare as terrifying as this one, nor do I think our dreams have ever been connected, except for maybe the twins.

"Calm down, Mikey, I'm here now." I told him. Then, I set him down to assess the wounds, which I thought for a moment that I might've been hallucinating. Nope, there were definitely little scrapes on him. The one on his left knee was nasty-looking, but it would certainly heal, and the worst one, a scrape on his left palm, would probably only blister. Still, to be careful, I took him to the bathroom to spray and bandage them.

When I sprayed the scrapes, he flinched and whined a little, but understood that it would help him heal. To make him feel better, I covered him in "X-Men" bandages, his favorite. I even put one of a raw patch of skin that didn't need a band-aid. However, all of this still didn't help, because he informed me that he definitely was not willing to go back to sleep. Against my will, I told him that I'd stay up with him for the rest of the night.

That was, until I stepped out of the bathroom and saw my mother and little sister, Franca standing outside the bathroom. When Mother saw her beloved three year old covered in X-Men band-aids, her voice became shrill and she demanded to know what happened.

"Anna dropped me on the road." Mikey said simply, as if he were talking about the weather. The X-Men bandages had certainly improved his mood and calmed him down. My mother, however, was confused as hell.

"What? Anna Marie Ricci, why were you outside with your youngest sibling in the middle of the night? And why did you drop him on the street?" Immediately, she snatched Mikey away from me before I could explain myself. Franca, a.k.a, "Franky," the sibling standing next to her, looked up at me inquisitively.

"We weren't outside, Mom. I had a dream that Mikey and I were running from this man, and when I woke up, I went to check on him, and he was covered in scrapes and screaming. Look at his bed sheets, they've been kicked to the floor!"

Suddenly, Franky piped up. "What man did you see? Was he bald, with a hat and claws?" her description was eerily similar to the silhouette of the man I saw in our dream. Before I could answer her, though, Mother interrupted.

"Franca Ricci!" she covered Mikey's ears. "I won't have this talk of a man with claws! You'll scare your brother. Now both of you get back to bed. We're doing a lot of unpacking and organizing tomorrow." She took Mikey into her room without interrogating me further, probably because it was three in the morning, and we did have a long Saturday of unpacking ahead of us. But Franky was not so easy to get rid of. She stayed and pried as much information as she could get out of me.

She tugged at my sweater excitedly. "Really, though, Anna, did the man have claws? I had a dream about a man with claws. We were in a hot room, but I woke up before he got too close to me. I did wake up all sweaty, though. It was the first day we were here. Was it the same guy, Anna, huh, was it, Anna?"

I rubbed my temples in frustration. "I don't know, Franky. I didn't get a very good look at him."

She did not stop her interrogation. "Well, it was probably the same guy. How much did you see? He had a hat, right? Claws? I saw a man with claws on one of his hands." she held up her right hand in a claw-like position and sauntered toward me in a predatory manner. "He walked like this and he'd wiggle his claws. Did he walk toward you?"

I almost mentioned that he chased me, except that it would excite her too much. "I'm going back to bed. Good night, Franky." She'd make an excellent private eye, one day.

Instead of giving up, she followed me. Over and over, she asked me about the Bad Man, testing my patience. Finally, I made it to my room at the end of the hallway. "Franky, I will tell you about it in the morning when I'm coherent enough to answer all of your questions. Now, good night." I shut the door hard, without slamming it. I didn't want to hurt her feelings. Being the oblivious, insensitive child she was, she wasn't too angry with me. She simply said, "Good night, Anna," before going back to bed. Finally, I was able to drift off back to sleep peacefully.

The next morning, I woke up to my brother yelling at someone. It must have been one of my siblings, because my mother did not tolerate people shouting or snapping at her. Unwillingly, I made my way out of bed once more just to figure out the cause of the ruckus. In the kitchen, I poured myself a glass of orange juice before checking out the source of the argument. Tony and Rico were wrestling at the top of the stairs, and Franky had somehow involved herself in the mess. On top of it, Mikey was laughing hysterically and clapping his hands, while Rita tugged at the mattress they were wrestling on.

"This is supposed to go on my bed!" she attempted to shout over the ruckus, "Mom said! Now get off!" harder, and harder she tugged, until she turned back and saw me. "Anna, make them get off of my bed." Franky already managed to pull herself away, and now complained about the sores on her arms caused by the feathers in the mattress.

"Where's Mom?" I asked Tony while he was in the midst of wrestling Rico, Rita's twin.

"She went to the store to pick up some gardening tools. She wants to plant some carnations, today." Tony easily talked to me whilst roughhousing with Rico. He had strong arms from working out, and flexibility from track stretches. I was jealous of his wiry, athletic build because I was more voluptuous and soft, with obvious flab in my stomach and arms. As a size eight, I wore larger pants than my younger brother, who only seemed to grow in height rather than width.

"And what exactly are you supposed to be doing with this mattress?"

"Relax," he said, keeping a struggling Rico in a playful headlock. "We'll bring it downstairs when we're done."

"Which is now." I kicked them off of Rita's mattress by gripping the side and flipping them off. They rolled onto the hardwood floor, and Mikey laughed so hard he started to hiccup. "Take this downstairs, or Rico and Rita will have to share another bed, tonight. And considering what bed hogs both of them are, I don't think either of them will want to put up with that for another night." When we go on family trips, I'm forced to share a bed with Franky and Rita, while Tony has to bed with Mikey and Rico. By far, the twins are the worst, going to bed in a vertical position and somehow waking up in a horizontal one. Tony and I usually sleep on the floor or the tiny obligatory hotel chair in the corner.

So, when Tony and Rico finally started their chore and brought the mattress downstairs, I headed to the fruit bowl in the kitchen, hoping Mother remembered to go grocery shopping this week. The apple looked discolored and shriveled, but the orange seemed alright, so I took the time out to peel it. Who else came walking in but Franca Ricci, Private Eye.

"You said you'd tell me more about the guy you saw last night. Did he say what his name was? He told me his name, but I won't tell you until you tell me."

"He said his name was Freddy." I answered, cutting off the ends of the orange. Though it was a minor detail, I distinctly remembered him saying something like, 'glad he remembers Freddy,' or something like that. Perfectly weird name for a freaky dream apparition like him. Actually, it's a totally normal name; he just made it sound terribly malicious. Just his name sent a shiver down my spine, despite the fact that it was very close to my sister's name 'Franky." Both started with an 'f' and an 'r', and both had two syllables. It was a stretch, but it was also enough to freak me out.

Franky freaked me out even more, because she did this long, dramatic gasp that would make any scream queen proud. "He told me, too! The man in my dream had claws that he put next to my face. Then he said 'you'll see Freddy, again,' and it scared me so much. I couldn't go back to sleep!"

"Well, Franky, maybe you should stop eating fruit right before bed time." Known fact in the Ricci household: If Franky eats fruit an hour before bedtime, she'll have freaky ass dreams, and crawl into bed with Mother and Father. Then, in the morning, she'll draw it out. Strawberries and blackberries are the worst for her, by far.

"Ha ha, very funny, Anna." she thinks I'm mocking her, which I half-heartedly am. It is my firm belief that strawberries probably caused her to hallucinate about Freddy. "Hold on, I'll show you. I drew him in my sketch book." she ran off to retrieve it, and returned within a minute. She flipped through the pictures before she finally found the one of Freddy, which she turned and showed to me. "Is this the guy from your dream?"

Franky's been drawing since she could hold a pencil, and while many of his features might have been crooked, she had a crucial eye for detail. I managed to look past the awkward cross-eyes and hands, and focus on the disgusting scars she drew. Immediately, I thought back to the previous night's silhouette man. He had a hat, just like Freddy in the picture, the same clawed right hand. It was too freaky for me to handle that early in the morning, and I ended up snapping at my little sister. "Jesus, Franky, just let it go! It was a nightmare we had. It just means we need to stop watching stupid movies, and you need to stop snooping through Tony's movie collection. You've obviously scared yourself."

Rita might have cried, but Franky furrowed her eyebrows and defended herself. "I don't snoop through Tony's movie collection, and I haven't seen a scary movie since I was five! Besides, you and Mikey had the same dream last night, but you're too scared and you brush it off as a coincidence! Anna, how did Michael get those scrapes last night?"

What a prying, and annoying eleven-year-old. Still, she had a good point, but I couldn't help but ignore my natural instincts and brush her off. "He had a fit when he had the nightmare, and hurt himself when he thrashed around in his bed." I shrugged, biting into a slice of my orange.

"You can't get scrapes like that in a bed!"

It was time to let this go and concentrate on the morning chores. "Franky, drop it. Come see me when you have another nightmare, or I'll come see you. And don't cheat and eat strawberries right before bed, got it? Just keep the drawing in your drawer for a while so it doesn't scare you, and I promise that the Bad Man will go away. OK?"

"Fine." she was totally pissed that I refused to let her talk about this anymore, but I was tired of hearing about Freddy. If she wanted to talk to someone, she could ask any one of our other siblings. Hell, Tony would give her every gory detail she wanted to know, but I was done with the whole thing. In fact, Freddy was the last thing on my mind. I had to go to a new school that Monday and make a good first impression, without being out-shined by Tony. Being a fairly social teenager, I expected fast friends, and I also wanted my room decorated by the time I invited somebody over. Franky was social too, and even though she offered to take the smallest room, which was essentially a larger-than-average coat closest under the staircase, she'd want it to look nice for her guests.

All in all, I had far too much going on to worry about a silly nightmare.

But soon, I'd be proven wrong; very wrong.

Whatcha think? I like this writing style better than 'Parasite,' but I'd like to know your thoughts. :)