Erwin opened his eyes to the scorching sun. His dried eyes burned with a stinging pain. His face was warm, most likely sunburnt.
In contrast, he felt the cold concrete wall against his back; its shade offered some cold and protection.
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.
And that moment was all he needed to understand what was happening.
In his hand, a rifle, smoke rising from its barrel. His fingers clamped to the pistol grip, one arm completely focused there, while the other hand hung loosely at his side, fingertips touching the scorching sand below, stained with blood from a wound on his chest.
The situation was clear, yet his body refused to wake. Feeling tired, heavy.
But adrenaline and instincts quickly took over once a bullet whistled over his head.
"Agh!" He raised his loose arm, the entire limb burned with a deep pain. He failed to raise it; the arm fell limp to the ground.
"Hells." Under the whistles of the bullets, he had to force himself. "Come on!"
Gruntingly, he tried again, and despite the pain, his arm rose. His fingers loosely grabbed the polymer handguard.
Using his good arm, he took out the magazine, taking a glance to estimate his count. "Still has some."
Then, 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.
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 under 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 tingled with pain, going all across. Followed by a chill that embedded all the way into his spine.
He felt the dreadful sensation of being watched, a feeling of a thousand eyes staring at him from beyond the abyss, more than usual at least.
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 raised his head, groaning as he did. His hair, long been unkempt, begged for a barber's touch. It reached a few inches below 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 empty. 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 fixed his conditions for good. Only slowed what was to come.
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.
He tried again and again until the ridges of the cap stamped his finger, and only then did he manage to get a grip and twist it open.
"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. He took quick breaths to speed up 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. He 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 with one hand, set it on the table, and grabbed a pair of chopsticks with the other. His nerve ends in his fingers had already numbed. Heat mattered little to them.
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. He had lost the ability to enjoy it long ago.
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, his eyes still stuck on the can. "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 picked up 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 hung up, putting the phone back in his pocket. "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 for 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.
"They won't come back."
His eyes then drifted to a crumpled letter, addressed to him.
[Mister Blade, we would like you to rethink our offer.]
Signed by yet another politician who wanted to use veterans. Some wanted their words to attack the government; some wanted them to support it.
In the end, both sides cared for their pockets first.
He had given up on getting salvation from them a long time ago.
Erwin closed the drawer and turned around. "Pain is getting better." He patted his legs.
"Time to go."
***
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. Causing the many buildings and establishments in the downtown to scatter across areas once seen as slum locations.
Once inside, he quickly took a turn to a corridor to his left, passing by 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.
The same feeling as in the morning. Something is watching him from just an inch away, yet always hidden, never reachable.
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 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 was 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 and pinch his arms, but nothing.
"I am still here."