My bodyguard
Flash Fiction Story
By Andrea Tillmanns
Sometimes I think no one can see this being. But it has always been with
me, for as long as I can remember. It rarely speaks, and when it does, it’s not
in my language. I don’t know why it’s here, only that I feel safe in its
presence. And I know that it protects me. I knew it earlier in school, when the
boys who once wanted to beat me up in the schoolyard and were just held back by
a teacher suddenly disappeared. I knew it even more so in college, when the
professor who wanted to fail me for the third time disappeared.
But I’ve never seen it protect me – until now.
This time, no one else is here to help me. This time, the creature has
to react while I’m there.
I see its dagger-like claws and fangs sinking into the two men who were
chasing me. I hear the strangers’ screams, hear their skin tearing, see their
blood glistening in the moonlight as they finally fall silent.
When it looks at me afterwards, its gaze changes. Now I know the price
for my previously carefree life. I can’t hide from it that I cannot accept it, as
I lie trembling and sobbing on the ground in disgust and fear.
Unexpectedly gently, it pulls something out of the inside pocket of one
of the dead men and hands it to me. A police badge, lying bloody in my hand.
When I look up, the creature has disappeared, for the first time in my life. I
begin to understand when I hear the sirens in the distance. Too many deaths in
my immediate circle, perhaps more than I realize. And now these two police
officers who have been following me, surely not without informing their
colleagues, and my bloody fingerprints on one of the police badges … I have to
get up, get out of here, but even if I can escape the police this time, my legs
trembling and almost blind from tears, I won’t have peace for long.
I fear this was the worst moment to chase the creature away.
Andrea Tillmanns lives in Germany and works full-time as a university lecturer. She has been writing poetry, short stories and novels in various genres for many years. Her poems and stories have been published in The World of Myth, Hawthorn & Ash, SciFanSat, and other journals and anthologies. She has also published more than twenty books in German. More information about the author and her texts can be found on her website www.andreatillmanns.de.
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