Return of the Titans

CHAPTER ONE

I jerked awake so fast, I got a headache that felt like sledgehammers against my brain.

A heavy pile of feathers flew off from the trajectory. My lungs ached as much as my mouth did, and my eyes burned like fire. Coughing once, I rubbed fists into my eyes and cursed at myself for sleeping, once again, with my eyes open. I promised myself to scavenge for a face mask when something honked below me.

Leaning to the side of the coffin, I saw my companion struggling to collect himself. He had fallen onto the crypt's floor when I had thrown him off and was rolling on his sides to get to his webbed feet. He honked angrily when he caught me staring.

"Sorry, George," I apologized.

I gave my head a quick rub before I turned over in the coffin so that I could be sitting on my folded feet. I then reached down to give the flustered goose a gentle nudge. One of his feet was able to plant itself onto the ground, and with his wings, George pushed himself the rest of the way. Up and over, he turned, until he was able to straighten fully.

"Better?" I asked.

"HONK!" George answered, and clicked his beak in my direction. His clump of feathery poof bristled on top of his head.

"I said I was sorry," I murmured. It was now my turn to climb out of the bed, legs wobbly, but I got my bearings once I was upright. I rubbed the back of my neck, which was sore and throbbing. "I had the weirdest dream..."

George Washington wasn't much of a listener. I knew that he didn't care about my needs unless they coincided with caring for him. He was stingy like that but in a charming sort of way. He understood that the caretaker needed to be equally as happy if he wanted to get the best results, so once in awhile, he sat down and let me talk. I could never tell if he ever was paying attention, but that was his secret.

I began to explain my dream, mixing it with my daily ritual of the morning, and George hopped up onto the pedestal of one of the few statues that were kept in the crypt. Erosion and years of neglect made the statue look less like the guardian angel it was supposed to portray, and more like a faceless, hunched block of marble with nubs where wings used to be.

I was about to go into the elk when I stopped and looked at the Post-It Note that was stuck to the Walmart bag that held today's clothes. I forgot if I was gifted with them this time, or if I lifted them off of someone. Whatever it was, I took it off to inspect its contents.

It wasn't anything fancy: just a normal pair of jeans, a black-and-green camo T-shirt, and a brown-and-pink windbreaker. The jeans had no holes or stretch marks, and they were a dark navy, just like I liked them to be. Anything light made me easily detectable, and when you survived by living in the background, that, you couldn't have. The shirt was nice, too. The pattern could have been changed, but it was also dark, so I didn't complain. The windbreaker was the real problem.

I already had a coat, and one with a history.

Homelessness wasn't a bad thing because it was all that was there. I didn't remember anything else. But my mom and I, we made do. Half was because people with money to spend pitied our circumstance and thought one act of goodwill would tide them over; half was because my mother had connections.

I didn't remember a time when we didn't walk into a shelter or a soup kitchen and no one called my mom by name. Not me, her. It was as if everyone else were just normal hobos and street urchins, but us? It became the norm to walk into a shelter, one that we've never been to before, and volunteers pour out of the kitchens and back rooms to embrace us. Again, complete strangers, welcoming us as if we were returning home from a perilous quest.