The world darkened around him. The energy drained from his body, as though someone had taken a straw to his lungs and sucked out all the air in one clear wisp. He dropped to his knees, gazing ahead of him.
The women zeroed in on him their cold black eyes filled his body with anguish. Long, spiraling veins rose on their arms as they opened their mouths.

Chris recoiled in horror. The women haunted him in his dreams again, always coming at him with their nasty scowls and wretched faces. And the cold, almost unbearable. But it was all a lie made up in his head, a figment of his imagination. Wasn’t it?
“Chris, are you awake?”
Chocolate brown eyes appeared in front of him, accompanied by long, coarse black hair. His roommate, Quinn studied him a moment before offering a smile.
“Does that answer your question?” Chris smirked. Quinn rolled his eyes before returning to his bed across the room.
“Not until you started talking. Did you know that you sometimes sleep with your eyes open?” Quinn replied.
Hmm. That was new to him.
“Did you realize that you have enormous ears?” He retorted.
Quinn swung his backpack over his shoulder, “Well, you’d better get ready to leave for class in about five minutes.”
Chris frowned and gazed out the window next to his bed. Light barely trickled out into the sky. Was it even six yet?
“I’ll meet you there.” He mumbled, his thoughts returning to his nightmare. The women haunted him in more than one way.
He took one last look out the window before grabbing his backpack and shuffling out the room. Barely noticing the severe change in temperature in the room.

He dropped his backpack to the floor and plopped onto his bed. Chills washed over him once again, radiating through his body before he had the chance to cover up with his blanket.
He couldn’t remember being warm for the last hour. Was he getting sick? Or maybe an after effect from being so worked up from his dream?
“Jesus, Chris! Getting ready for the winter already?” Quinn exclaimed, as he walked into the room.
Chris wrapped his arms around his body, bringing at least a little warmth. But even that wasn’t enough.
“Chris, are you all right? Chris?”
He felt his consciousness slipping away from him, drifting into darkness before he could stop anything. It was as if he was being sucked into a black hole, where no light or warmth existed. His eyes rolled back.

Waves of exhaustion washed over him and images flickered through his mind. His parents. The women standing over them.
Tears filled his eyes as he watched his father’s pain. Blood seeped from his ears, life lurching from his body as the women screamed at the top of their lungs. And his mother. He couldn’t tell where her face ended and the floor started. But the worst part of it all was that he knew it was all his fault. Swirls of emotion ached within him. An overwhelming sense of deep sadness for the people that had left him in the dark his whole life, but also rage that threatened to fill him to the top. They never once allowed him to decide things for himself. But that didn’t matter when those same people were suffering in front of him. He couldn’t stand to see it happen.

“Christopher William Hackett!”
Chris’s nostrils filled with the aroma of stale chemicals and soap. He sat up on the lumpy mattress beneath him and gazed around, dazedly. What was his father doing there? And where was he?
“Good grief! How long were you going ot make me wait before you answered me, boy?” His father spat.
Chris scratched the back of his head, still confused about how he’d gotten from his dorm to this desolate room.
“Where am I?” He asked his father.
His father stopped yelling at him for a moment, “The school called us, letting us know that you were in the infirmary.”
Then the cold man gave him an accusing glare, “What did you do this time?”
Pain shot through Chris’s eyes as he stood up, but anger lit inside him. He had been in the infirmary and all his father could talk about were his failures?
“I didn’t do anything! I—I don’t even know what happened exactly.” Chris sighed.
Wind smashed into the window, blowing cool air through the small opening. Goosebumps rose on Chris’s arms immediately. He didn’t have a chance to warm up before his skin laced with chills again  The sound of chattering teeth reverberated throughout the room.
Worry flickered over his father’s face and for a fleeting moment, Chris thought that the old man might’ve cared for him. But if that was the case, his father wouldn’t have shipped him off to a boarding school as soon as his brother died.
Ringing blared through the room, drawing Chris back to reality. It was his father’s phone, of course. And his father would answer it, leaving Chris alone in the room again. Just like he had done years before, when he was saying goodbye. Maybe forever.
His father opened his mouth to say something, but Chris raised a hand, halting the goodbye.
“I know. Just go back to work. I don’t need you here, anyway.” Chris spat.
His father looked a little hurt, but brought the phone up to his ear, and left like usual.
His heart ached, yearned for both his parents, but he would never act on the feeling. Both his parents had condemned him after the car crash involving his twin brother. They blamed him for his brother’s death, and for the most part, it was, but it was also his parents’. They had never paid attention to either of them when they were growing up in the many houses. They hadn’t even been nice enough to hire a nanny to watch over them.
Chris rolled over onto the bed, pushing those painful memories out of his head. He was beat.

A man and woman sat around the table, exchanging looks of worry. The baby’s eyes sparkled a radiant blue before returning to the brown they had been only a few seconds before. The baby was so giddy, but he had much to fear.
He and his legacies shared the same gene that granted them the power to banish all the evils into Tartarus once more. And until he reached eighteen, that power would be dormant and the Black Beauties would stop at nothing to kill him before then. It was a race against time and they had brought this all upon him. They had begged Zeus to save their poor baby, and he had. By transforming his lifeform into a boy of eighteen every hundred years.
Zeus had called it a blessing, but the woman disagreed. It would be a curse for the boy his whole life.
“Let us leave now.” The man said.

Pain raced up his legs, settling there a moment before spreading to his chest. Chris opened his eyes only to feel that he was dreaming again. It couldn’t have been true. It was impossible. Impossible that the woman from his dreams was standing in front of him. Her forked, long, black tongue trailed up his body, as if getting a mental picture of him.
He flung himself out of bed, kicking the hideous woman off him before she could cause him any more pain. He didn’t know how she did it, but whatever was on her tongue put him through more pain than he’d ever felt before. He made a mental note to stay away from the tongue.
“The Chosen stands before me. What a pleasure.” The woman hissed. Somehow, he didn’t think that was how she felt, according to her scowl, anyway.
She rushed at him, leaping off the ground with such force that he thought the floor would’ve caved in. Her long black nails tore into his neck. A screech erupted from his throat, only silenced by the loss of breath. 
Her nails dug into his chest, excruciating pain driving a hole through him.
Her nails punctured his heart, “It is the end of you, Chosen. Say hello to Genea for me.”
And then she walked away, leaving him to bleed out. To suffer until the air finally left his lungs and the life left his eyes.
Chris took deep, quick breaths, trying to prolong his death, but it was no use. The more he tried, the shallower he got. He could feel the life dripping from him and taking over his mind. Within a few minutes, he was completely gone. His eyes remained open, but he wasn’t sleeping. He was dead.
The nurse walked into the room a moment later, only to find the carcass of her dead patient. Her jaw dropped in horror, before she realized that her patient probably wasn’t going to come back.
She dropped the vials of blood she’d been holding and pulled out her phone.
“Help! Help, someone! I have a patient here! I—I don’t know if he’s still alive.”

The funeral wasn’t too big, only a few close friends and his parents. Both were full of regret, fearing that he had in fact, taken his own life. But they couldn’t find the weapon used to cause such a fatal injury.
His friends left before the coffin was lowered, but his parents stayed. They owed him. By sundown, the poor boy was lowered into the ground, and he was alone. Left in the ground. Everyone knew that he was dead; there was no need to ever think that he could be alive. His heart had stopped completely, and he had lost so much blood.
His parents walked away, holding each other up from another loss of their children. And full of guilt. For the majority of his life, they had been absent. And now they had to deal with it.
Nothing could be heard for miles. And all was quiet. For a little while.
Chris’s eyes snapped open, and he gulped in air. His back arched in pain until he could reach no further. His head throbbed as he gazed around in confusion. Darkness covered him. He tried sitting up, but found that there was a solid cover over him. Where was he? And why couldn’t he move an inch?
His heart raced. He pounded on the top, hoping someone would hear him.
Above ground, no one was around within a mile radius, except for the grounds keeper sitting at his desk, searching about mysterious deaths involving puncture marks to the heart. Almost like fingernails.