Return of the Titans

CHAPTER FOUR

Being dead smelled like Popeyes.

I was slow in opening my eyes, and was the same speed when it came to comprehending. The last thing I saw was a flash of light, sudden and painful, and I fell unconscious to the eighteen-wheeler's droning honks. My face stung as if badly burned. It was as if a lightbulb had exploded right in my face.

My eyes stung and my body ached a thousand sores. When I tried to move my fingers, to make sure that I still had them, I felt their joints creak under the tense muscle. Every move was calculated, like a doe with a twisted hind leg, and as painful as you could guess.

I knew that I was in a car. My head might have been reeling, but I could hear the distant roll of tires crossing over uneven road. Every once in awhile, I bounced a little. I felt myself moving without actually moving. It made me nauseous, quite frankly. That, and the balls of light that danced in my eyes, that I couldn't tell if they were in my head or lamplights.

One thing was certain: it wasn't day. Not anymore. The shadows that were cast over my lap whenever we passed a sign spread out to touch my head. Everything else was washed in a brazen glow, and chilled by the night.

I was swimming, and it was hard to stay afloat. Once or twice, I slipped back into unconsciousness, but each time I felt the pain ebb away. The ringing in my ears was the first to go away, and I was able to make out voices around me.

I recognized Doc over the dying trill. He didn't sound nervous, as would anyone that just ran from a trio of monsters -- or, better yet, just finding out that they were real. His voice sounded disheveled, and a bit high, like he was yelling at someone I couldn't see.

"...goose!"

Goose? What the --

"HONK!"

A blur of white burst from the backseat, and suddenly, I was up. Tires screeched, and a tight grip constricted from my shoulder and down toward my chest, lighting it up with invisible flames. My mouth opened to cry out in pain, arm shooting out to grab the door of the car to brace myself, but it closed when something akin to a soft bowling ball fell in my lap.

Wings unfolded, and George Washington raised his head to nudge my chin with his beak tip. Just like the pain, my tense state slipped away, now knowing that there was no reason for alarm. I didn't question how he was there, or even why. It was just good to know that whatever had tried to get to me didn't reach him.

No one messes with the goose.

"Easy, there," Doc said, who I could see was the one driving. "You've been through a lot."

That was an understatement, but I was wondering (with a mind that was slowly beginning to process things again) why he wasn't, either. Doc might not have ran halfway across Lompoc, but he was being chased by a pretty formidable being. I would have kept the Twins over Mufasa any day, and if I had said that sentence yesterday, rest assured I would have checked myself into a home. At least there, I would have had an actual bed.

Questions danced in my head to the same song as the lamplights, and there was no sign of them stopping. Each second, a new one was added, and no matter how much I wracked my brain for clues, all I got was a head full of headache. And something incredibly itchy.

"Uuh," I moaned, closing my eyes tightly as a drilling echo reverberated in the pit of my head. The rest of my body was fine now, but it was just my head. What I would give for a hammer and a chisel.

George Washington honked again, but it was in a softer tone. His dark eyes had a concerned light in them. Are you okay?

Through the searing numbness, I worked out a smile, and tore a hand from kneading my temples to brush the goose's head feathers. His wiry neck slid into my palm on request and he laid his head in the space between her thumb and index finger. A smaller, almost whisper-like honk left his beak. For a second, he wasn't a self-conscious asshole of a waterfowl.