text: The first time that I remember seeing them, I was five and my sister wouldn’t give me the time of day. At first, they were just vaguely humanoid shapes that I’d notice just out of my peripheral vision. I’m not going to lie, they scared the shit out of me for a while there but, as time passed, they became less skittish and I less wary. The first one I saw up close was a little woman about four inches tall. She had green skin, yellow hair, and white eyes. I don’t just mean the irises were white, she had no pupil and no irises like her eyes had rolled to the back of her head. I had been outside playing in the garden and she had lighted on the grass next to me. She slowly creeped towards me, almost as if testing the waters. I sat there unsure of what to do. As she reached out her hand to touch me, my mother called to me from the back door. “Honey, lunch is ready!” The little being grinned, waved, and took off into the bushes. After that incident, I went to the garden everyday to look for my new friend. When a week went by without so much as a glimpse of her, I started leaving little trinkets in hopes that they would coerce her to come out. Two weeks later, my sister had some friends over and they had banished me to the other end of the garden claiming that I was a little kid and would ruin their fun. As I stood by the bushes pouting at the unfairness of it, a little voice called out, “Have you brought me more presents?” Startled, I whirled around to find the green lady peeking out of the bushes. “I-I don’t have anything else for you,” I said as I lay on my stomach to be level with her. “Is that why you’re crying?” she asked. I furrowed my brow. “My sister and her friends won’t let me play with them because they say I’m too little,” I explained. She cocked her head to the side and smirked. “Would you like to make them notice you?” I shrugged and quick as lighting she had moved to the other side of the garden and knocked into the stone birdbath the girls were sitting by. It seemed to fall in slow motion and fell right onto one of the girls’ legs with a sickening thud and audible snap. Screams erupted, the girl was crying, and my dad ran out and immediately lifted the birdbath. There was so much red, and her leg was bent at an awkward angle. The sight that forever haunts me was the bone protruding from the girl’s shin as my father carried her to the car. None of the girls ever came over again. After that, I didn’t venture back into the garden alone and I ignored any shadows that flickered just in my line of sight. It all changed when I was 14 and my sister was 18. We got along well enough even though she was a cool senior and I was her dorky freshman sister. She was going through her “partying stage” (at least that’s what my parents called it) and, since they didn’t like her going out alone and unsupervised, I was routinely drafted to be her chaperone and report and suspicious activity. They figured she wouldn’t get into so much trouble if she had her little sister to take care of. Boy were they wrong. I somehow turned into the (underaged) designated driver for her and her senior friends Stacy and Olivia. Some of the seniors were having a party in the woods just outside of town and lucky me got dragged along. She was talking to some boy by the fire and I went to get a drink. At parties my sister always made sure that I stayed in her line of sight, so it was weird when I turned around and she was nowhere to be seen. As I walked further from the party to the edge of the woods, I could just barely make out voices in the trees. I looked closer and realized it was my sister and a tall lithe boy. And I know what you’re thinking, “Why are you following your sister and some boy away from a party in the middle of the night? Don’t you know what they’re probably going to go do?” But trust me, what really happened was much worse. I followed a little way behind them and struggled not to make any sound as he deftly led my sister through the forest. They weaved through the trees...no the trees seemed to bend out of the way for them. That’s when I noticed that the night had gone deathly quiet. I barely had time to grind to a halt as they stopped at the edge of a clearing. She seemed to be stuck at the wood line as the boy went further in and stopped dead center. He beckoned her forward with his hand and I saw him muttering something. I figured this would be as good a time as any for chaperone little sister to break in. I yelled her name and the boy’s head snapped towards me. I marched up to my sister and pulled on her arm, but she wouldn’t budge. Slowly she turned her head to face me and I realized then that her eyes were a milky white. Eerily like the little woman in the garden. The boy stared at me as he called her name once more and she started to walk towards him. I was screaming at her at this point and pulling her arm so hard that I thought it might pop out of its socket. But this didn’t seem to phase her. As we neared the boy, I noticed that he was standing in the middle of a perfect circle of toadstools. I jerked back as if by some primal instinct and my body screamed at me to get the hell out of dodge. I realized my mistake seconds later and reached out for my sister again. Just as I touched her, her foot crossed the line and she vanished. I stared in horror at where my sister had been only moments before and slowly looked towards the boy. He cocked his head and smirked. “What the hell did you do with her,” I screamed at him. He stayed silent for a moment and his next words chilled me to the bone. “She is mine now. You could join her. Would you give me your name?” I paced outside the toadstool ring. “I don’t know what the hell you’re playing at, but I swear to God I’ll call the cops,” I threatened. His features shown confusion and quickly morphed to glee. “You have the Green Sight!” he chirped. And then he laughed and laughed and laughed. Tears of frustration pooled in my eyes. He stopped and straightened. He looked at me stoically and said, “I will not take you tonight. You will remember while others forget. But only for a while. I will come back for your name one day little one, when you no longer remember and when your Sight fails you.” And with that, he was gone. That was years ago. I am old now and I know my time is coming. I can feel it in my bones. I still live in the house that I grew up in, hoping it would help me remember. Its fuzzy sometimes but every now and then I’ll look into the garden and see green skin, yellow hair, and milky eyes staring back. They know what’s coming too. There are no photographs of her. It’s like she never existed outside of my mind. Even now, she fades, and I’m so far gone that I can’t remember her name. He took it with him, as he’s taken others and as he’ll take mine too.