So… I guess I’m homeless now.
It’s been a week since we crashed back down. I barely got a wink of sleep that day. After we overstayed our welcome, I gave Tibbs a phone, put in my number, and just… left. I tried calling my Mom’s number, but got some guy instead, and my Dad’s number was out of service… so here I was. Staring at a menu filled with overpriced ramen dishes downtown. I rolled my eyes and took another bite out of my much less overpriced, but lukewarm, chorizo taco I’d bought five of a few miles back. I’d carried it and two of its brethren in the rather large pockets of my oversized denim jacket I’d casually stolen from a thrift store (it was a charity place, I know, but if anyone needs charity it’s me), because Lord knows they weren’t gonna fit in my black skinny jeans (I got those from the hospital’s storage room, along with a T-shirt for some college around here, and gleefully discarded the awful, crusty jumpsuit I’d been wearing for the past couple months). STILL didn’t have shoes… but, uh, it’s not like any pair would fit my overly long feet anyways, and besides, I could still get around fine. I wasn’t even sore from basically running all the way here yesterday… Oh, right, here. The place I was enjoying my cold tacos was some kind of indoor food court that was supposedly pretty popular, Civic Court, situated in the fairly quaint downtown of this city, Cordova, surrounded by a mix of bars, restaurants, gentrified coffee places, clothing stores, construction, and… marijuana dispensaries, apparently. Huh.
I finished off the last bite of my banging Mexican street food and sighed. Honestly, anything resembling normal food felt like something to cherish when compared to the mushy, nearly inedible slop and… uh, I guess it’s not really cannibalism if it’s aliens, right? Eugh. That was… I try not to think about it too much. Anyways, something to be said about fresh tacos when compared to stale dumpster bread despite that. I flipped out my phone and tried not to notice how people were obviously sitting away from me. It really wasn’t anything special, just a thing I could call and text people with… and by ‘people,’ I mean Tibbs. Oh, and Vil too, I guess; I wrote down his number and punched it into my contacts after he called me yesterday evening. Apparently he got something worked out with the agent guy, and got a place to stay on the government’s dime… I really should’ve stuck around. Oh well. Say what you will about homelessness, but at least nobody’s actively trying to kill me and I can eat actual human food regularly enough.
I looked over the new texts Tibbs had sent:
> woahh thre’s a troop intown!!! can
yiu belive it
> im gonna call
> this i sso ncredible
I smiled for her. As much as I wanted to be jealous, I just couldn’t get mad at her for anything. Ever since I gave her that phone and showed her how to text, she’d been sending a whole lot of questionably spelled but intensely excited remarks and questions about seemingly everything, from how round all the cars were to news snippets and interesting stuff she found. It felt good to know at least one of us was having fun… Man, I bet she’d love watching Stargate–eh, thoughts for later. I shot her back a text:
Alright! Hope you make it! <3 <
> aww thank uuu
I sighed, content with this subpar hand I’d been dealt in life for the moment… and got domed in the back of the head with a big stick.
I staggered forward, stars plying my vision and searing pain blooming from my skull. I think I dropped my phone? Oh fuck, no! No, I can’t lose the last shred of human connection I have in this fucked-up world! I… I…
Shouts of alarm came up from around me and the restaurant, a clattering noise from some pot or pan rattling inside my ears. I turned to see some… stupid, dark-clothed figure with an incredibly gay feather cape and a red, hooded mask holding a metal bat, looking like they were fresh out of cosplaying the evil overlord at a fantasy LARP session. I’d sigh and roll my eyes if I wasn’t absurdly mad about dropping my phone.
“What the fuck is your problem, Darth Dickweed?!” I shouted at them, still holding onto my head and blinking stars out of my eyes.
Okay, that’s a… moderately creative swear, I guess I’m still… mostly decent. I scanned the floor for my dropped phone, and found it had skidded next to the ramen shop’s counter. Okay… okay, thank God.
“Fear not, citizens!” the figure – a woman, going by the voice – yelled in a needlessly bombastic voice. “Lady Condor is here to take out this trash!”
Did she just totally ignore my question? Well, if it’s gonna be like that…
“Oh, so you’re racist, gotcha.”
“Wh– uh–” she sputtered, before raising her stupid metal bat. “You’re disrupting this peaceful landmark! I got a call saying as much!”
“...It is three PM on a Friday and I am eating tacos, I don’t give a chicken-fried fuck if I’m mildly inconveniencing your hysterical white girl friend while you’re busy blowing up Alderaan, jackass.”
“Tch– shut up and fight me, fur hat!”
“Well, now, that’s definitely racist.”
I looked behind me at the several patrons looking on apprehensively, with a small crowd gathering on the far end of the hall, then felt the back of my head dribble with blood as I pulled my hand away, smelling the thick taste of iron on the tips of my fingers. Yep, she is so going down for this.
“Alright… Wicked… Bitch of the West– God, did you have to hit me so hard?” I scowled as hard as I could muster in-between the waves of radiating pain. “I’m gonna burn that cape of yours and make you watch.”
I didn’t trust myself to both move and fight with how woozy I was, so I put my fists up and smiled my biggest ‘look how confident I am’ grin, and let envy do the rest of the work. Sure enough, the dark patsy rushed forward with her bat raised in an overcompensating, but surprisingly competent, swing; I threw her off-balance with a feint… and ducked into another bat to the head and immediately blacked out.
Um. Wow, that was… embarrassing as hell. I thought with how many aliens I’d easily thwarted that a girl with a bat would be child’s play, but that was just… I really need to relearn how to fight normal people, clearly. I was such a good wrestler back in high school… how did I screw up that badly? Was it the head injury…?
I awoke on the floor to a swimming headache, sirens, and water over my face. I sputtered and batted at the stream of cool liquid, and opened my uncertain eyes to see a mob of people around and some tiny, punk-looking chick on top of me I remember was eating here with… someone? Eh, it’s all so fuzzy…
“Eh… mmph… s’m f– fuh– fffine,” I slurred.
“The pool of blood I just mopped up says otherwise, trash mammal.”
“Neh…” I weakly sat up, and blinked hazy at the girl.
“That was brutal,” she remarked. “I think I see bone.”
“You’re telling muh– mmm-me. Didn’t know you had friggin’, John Wick’s edgy cultist sister looking to s-start a fff-fight.”
What little I could see of the girl through the spots in my eyes frowned.
“Dude, you gotta go out in groups, they get brave when you’re alone.”
I sighed, accepting that I wasn’t about to get better in a reasonable amount of time, and accepted the free tip at face value.
“Well sorrr– ruh– goddamn stutter… I haven’t really gotten used to being luh-like this.”
“Ohh damn, you don’t say?” She laid a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Tell you what, how ‘bout I give you my number and we can talk later? ‘Cause, uhh, pretty sure the ambulance people are gonna be here pretty soon.”
“Yeh…” I suddenly remembered the whole reason I got so pissed in the first place. “Wait, wait, wuh-wuh-wuh– my phone! ‘Sunner the c-counter…”
“Got’cha settled there,” she smiled, and pressed a plastic brick into my hand. “Lemme just…”
She left for a moment, and returned with a note she slid into my pocket.
“Th-thanks…” I weakly said. “Wha’s… wh’s your name?”
“Oh, um, Sonia. How ‘bout you?”
“Ketty. Ch-chuh– ugh… charmed. Did you see… see where that bat girl went?”
I looked around at the concerned faces of… of… what’s that word? …Bystanders? – trying to parse the crowd for wherever my attacker was, but only came up with a disappointing slurry of blurry, featureless blobs.
“Nah, she ran off. Also she’s a bird, not a bat,” she giggled.
“Meant… ugh, sem differrrehnywaysss.”
I slipped between consciousness as the effort of sitting up tired me out, and weakly nodded as my vision blacked at the edges.
“I… sleep. Nice… meeting you, S-Suh…”
Sonia smiled one last sardonic smile before my world dropped into the abyss.
“Get better soon, broski.”
----------------------------------------
I came to in the hospital three days later, the same one we’d already gone to for Leon’s post-landing injury. Yeah… the sith girl knocked me into a coma… I’ve, like, half a mind to beat her into unconsciousness and see how she likes being attacked out of nowhere, but I decided to drop it. After all, I had much more important things to do… like recover from a skull fracture, and not lose all of my friends’ contacts. I called Tibbs, who came and fawned over me like a concerned parent, and Vil, dressed in actually normal-looking (if staggeringly formal) clothes such that I barely recognized him, who’d offered his condolences and asked if I wanted him to go hunt that vulture down like the real friend he was. Admittedly, tempting, but I declined his offer. Tibbs offered up the news that Abis was fine and working with a government integration program, which was good, and that she’d been accepted back into the Scouts as a volunteer, which was doubly good. I asked them to say hi to Leon for me, and spent the next few days watching TV, resting, eating nutritionally-balanced meals, helping fill out paperwork with the hospital staff, and telling the cops to screw off. Ahh, sweet, sweet medical debt. Guess I’ll just be even poorer than I already was… good job, Ketty. Good fricking job.
So anyways, the news sure was… something. Apparently Obama’s vice president was the current president, and everyone was mad about that guy from Home Alone 2? I don’t know, I didn’t really pay that much attention to the CBS channel; I got bored and watched reruns of this decent Western show for a while before I remembered that girl that slipped me her number while I was bleeding out on the food court floor. So, well, not having anything better to do, I put in her number.
“Yello?” The tinny voice on the other end answered.
“Hey, um, I’m not sure if you remember me–”
I heard a snort. “You’re kidding, right? I recognize that voice, Raccoon Bro – kinda hard not to – anyways where ya been? I’ve been waiting all week for you to call, dude.”
“...In a… coma…” I embarrassedly admit after a moment’s hesitation.
“...Well shit, dude, that’s rough. You’re like… in a hospital, right?”
I eyed the weather report on the TV, turned to low volume, the only sense of color in the otherwise sterile-white room, and sighed.
“Yeah…”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Saint Mary’s or Tryon-Kings?”
“Um… Tryon-Kings. Why?”
I remembered the logo on the forms I’d filled out yesterday. It was… definitely interesting having to talk with Dr. Plesintyne again; she was pretty understanding though, and when I asked her about the whole ‘I don’t have an address, contacts, insurance, or a dollar to my name,’ she said she’d try and get it written off as a tax-deductible loss. What a nice woman.
“Oh, nothing,” Sonia said with a tone that suggested it was not, in fact, nothing. “Just good to know they’re not sucking you dry over at Saint Mary’s. You sound a lot better, by the way, congrats.”
“Mm– yeah, thanks.”
“You got a Discord? I could send you one of those actually decent ‘You’re A Paranatural Now’ resources, ‘cause you said you were new at the game? Or actually, do you have like a laptop with you, something that can surf the Web? Anything that isn’t a flip phone? Bold choice, by the way, I respect it, I’d downgrade myself but they don’t let you order pizza for delivery over the phone anymore. Just like, as someone who’s been a paranatural for a while, I get the struggle.”
I stared at my phone like it had just grown teeth and was trying to bite my ear off; I hadn’t been on the Internet at all since I came back, and it was a… sobering realization. I guess I was just so used to not having it, but… oh, man, I have been really stupidly going about this, haven’t I? I could definitely look up actual information about where I am, maybe print some maps and–woah, woah, wait, what did she just say?
“What do you mean ‘no phone delivery pizza’?!”
“I know, right? It’s such bullshit, they make us go online to place orders like we’re still stuck in the Pandemic.”
“Uhh, what? Pandemic?”
“...Y-yeah?” Sonia stuttered. “You know… Covid? The government made us stay inside and wear masks for two years like a buncha fascists?”
I considered, briefly, the merits of somehow fast-forwarding fifteen years and avoiding whatever disease she was talking about, and then remembered that I still had basically nothing, hadn’t even been able to call my parents to let them know I was alive, just got my skull shattered for having the audacity to be experimented on against my will, only had friends who were even more clueless than I was, and it would be really nice to have someone explain to me just what the heck had happened while I was gone without sounding either crazy or stupid.
“Um… a-about that… I’ve kind of been… gone. For a while.”
“...Gone how?”
“That’s…” I sighed. “You’re not gonna ghost me if I tell you and it sounds ludicrous, right?”
“My guy. You are an honest-to-God raccoon. I’m not sure how much crazier it gets than that, and I’ll have you know that a good deal o’ paranaturals get their powers through some far-fetched events, so lay it on me chief.”
I mean, if she insisted. I spent the next quarter of an episode of the Ranger show (I flipped the channel again because it helped me relax) explaining that I was an abduction victim and that through stasis, relativity, time travel, or just plain weirdness, I’d basically jumped fifteen years into the future without going too far into the details.
I rubbed my aching head and exhaled. “...Okay. Whew. That… that feels good sharing, actually.”
“Uh-huh… soooo what you’re saying is that you’re basically Captain America if he was a furry from the Oughts?”
“...What’s a furry?”
“I… am not about to explain that over the phone. Or ever…So what, you’re like, uh, thirty-something, then?”
“Nineteen,” I snipped. “I’m not about to count skipped years.”
“...Wow. You know what, Ketty? You… have completely blown out any of my expectations. Just like… holy shit, bro. Do your parents know?”
“No, I… can’t call them, and… I don’t have a computer, so I can’t check on the Internet… or anything, really…”
“...Dude. What’s your room? I’m coming over, you need to get your ass learned, pronto.”
“...Six-seventeen.”
“A’ight. See ya in, like, an hour? That sound good?”
“I… might as well?”
“Cool cool.”
The line quickly went dead, and I stared at the phone with a blank face. What did I just talk myself into?
----------------------------------------
A polite knock interrupted my unappealing poking at a dinner of greens and something that closely resembled chicken, and the door of my room opened to let one of the nurses, the shy one, peek in.
“Mister… Radomir, there’s someone here to see you, a Sonia Burnett? She says she knows you?”
“Mm-hmm,” I nodded, “she can come in.”
The nurse nodded meekly, left, and came back a few minutes later with the expected girl. Now, I’d been fairly loopy when I first met her, considering… severe head traumas and all, so seeing her clearly for the first time gave me pause. She was, indeed, still absolutely tiny, I hadn’t gotten that wrong; in the right circumstance, I might’ve assumed she was a middle schooler or a high school freshman… Actually, was she? …I don’t know, but her demeanor definitely suggested someone a bit older than that. She wore, again, some of the most unashamedly punk clothes I’ve seen in this godforsaken city yet, a black, purple-misted skull T-shirt with some name on it that looked like a ‘90s graphic render, a plaid red-black short skirt with fishnet leggings, low-cut black ankle boots of some kind with silver accents, and a huge, rugged-brown backpack, so that’s cool; go figure, the punk girl’s the most proactively helpful and decent person around… but then I read her face. She wore tasteful dark makeup that highlighted her pale, button-cute nose, thin eyebrows, and deep, green-gray eyes, surrounded by freckles and a flow of shining ginger hair with a thick strip dyed black. And when she met my eyes, she smiled and waved.
“Heyyy, what’s up TBI?”
I– I think I’m in love. Maybe? Is that bad? Like…? My heart hitched in my chest for a moment as I stuttered for what to say.
“I-I– …TBI?”
“Traumatic Brain Injury!” Sonia spread her arms out like a cheerleader in emphasis.
…O-kayyy, no longer crushing on her. I set my food aside, and watched as the cute girl closed the door behind her and hummed to herself as she deposited her bag next to me and sat down in the bedside chair. She looked back at me and chuckled something to herself.
“Hah… no, that’s not funny, sorry,” Sonia admonished herself.
“What?” I would have glared at her if the aching behind my eyes would let me.
“It’s just… I dunno, the way they wrapped your head up with those little bumps where your ears are… It– it’s whatever, ignore me.”
She pointedly avoided my eyes for a moment, quickly digging through her backpack to take out a plain, black laptop computer of some kind.
“Bup-buhduh daaa~! Welcome to Professor B’s call-in lecture about how to survive being a paranatural in the year of our Lord twenty twenty-four! You’ll be needin’ this,” she passed the laptop over to me, “probably this,” she flicked a pamphlet of some kind onto the end table where I’d left my phone to charge, “and maybe not this, but hey you never know, right?”
The last item she brought out was some weird, esoteric electronic device that I didn’t immediately get the point of, but she placed it down gently on the end table anyways. I inspected the laptop for myself, and puzzled a look back at Sonia.
“What’s happening?”
“Good question, save it for the end of the class.” She opened up the computer on my lap, which booted up to a pretty graphically impressive blue screensaver and a prompt for the password for ‘RebeccaH’. “Alrighty, now before we start, I’ll let you know real quick that the password’s ‘Hexabeccagram oh-three,’ no spaces, capitalize the ‘H’ and ‘B’ and put a dollar sign between the ‘X’ and ‘A’, but you can change that later. My policy on a class syllabus is fuck ‘em, and you can call me back anytime if you need some help, ‘kay? This is very much not a graded course, unless you count quality of life as a letter gradeable rap sheet.”
“You’re… giving me this laptop?” I asked.
“Yeah, sure, no sweat, I got like… ehh, three spare ones? You need this more than me anyways.”
“...Thank you. Like seriously.”
Who has three spare laptops? Well, scratch that, I’m just glad for any spare shred of generosity to be had. I smiled at her, then proceeded to fail to input the provided password twice and just let her put it in for me.
“‘Kay ‘kay, now that we got this up, let’s start with Step One of the Paranatural Survival Guide: Don’t reveal that you’re a paranatural… kinda think we’re past that.” She flipped through the pamphlet, which I saw had a Tryon University logo emblazoned on its surprisingly thick-looking cover. “I mean, unless this whole deal’s an active thing, which I’m guessing no?”
I shook my head.
“Ehh, yeah,” Sonia shrugged, “like I said, there’s a lotta different paranaturals so you kinda need to cover all bases here. ‘T’s what makes this little thingy perfect for the job, it’s brief but comprehensive while keeping most of the facts straight. Okay… Step Two, figure out what’cha wanna do. This’un I actually know a lot more about than the pamphlet, but let’s just set that aside for now…”
She clasped her hands together and looked me dead in the eye.
“Look, man. Real talk. Did you go and register with the government yet? Do they know about this?”
“Uh… no? I mean, I did talk with this FBI guy for a little bit, but I ran off after I told him the bare minimum about the abduction thing.”
“Mm… look, I’m a real ‘ACAB-fuck-the-pigs’ girl myself, but if you wanna live like a… semi-normal life–you do, right?”
“If I can,” I shrugged.
“Well, yeah, then you’re probably gonna have to register since, uhh, I’m guessing you’ve been declared legally dead by now, so… seriously, go talk to someone that can vouch for ya. Like your parents, or relatives or… whatever. Anyone that knew you. Where’re you from, anyways?”
“Virginia.”
Sonia made a click with her tongue. “Ooh, that’s far… wait have you been homeless this entire time, or were you staying with someone?”
“The first one…” I avoided her eyes. “It wasn’t that hard, I got by fine. Although, I was planning on asking this guy I know if I could crash at his place once he got settled down, but I think he’s being watched by the government, so,” I waved my hand uncertainly.
Sonia sighed. “Christ… fuck it, let’s just… do your parents have a Facebook?”
I blinked at her. “Um. What– what’s that?”
“Oh my fucking god–Facebook’s not that old, dude, you should know this, it’s a social media platform with like a billion different people on it.”
“Social…? You mean like MySpace? …Look, man, we were dirt poor, alright? The most internet access I usually had was in the school computer lab, and they had a lot of websites blocked by the firewall.”
“Oh. Sorry… fuck, now I feel like an asshole.”
“It’s okay, I guess it’s something you’d expect?”
Sonia quickly pulled up a browser on the machine, and searched up some sleek-looking blue-white website which she put her account info into. The page then directed to what was presumably her personal account before she pulled up another search bar… or something like that.
“First name, last name, you know how it goes.”
She slid the computer back to me, and I eyed the unfamiliar site and its search bar warily. What if… what if I didn’t find anything? Or worse yet, what if I found something I didn’t like? Did they move on without me? …Is Joan on here, my little baby sister? She’d be, what, twenty-one by now? That’s older than me… hmm…
I tried ‘Tamara Gilanie Radomir’ first, and while I didn’t find her page immediately, a second try for ‘Tamara Gilanie Jackson’ found an account with a face I recognized. My mother’s page was… sparse, from what I could read from the timestamps, with only a burst of posts every week or two. A photo from two weeks ago caught my eye; it was a clean self-portrait shot with a shy young woman and an older, smiling face that was so recognizable, yet so alien, sitting together in a restaurant booth I knew all too well, captioned: Look who’s out getting breakfast with me this spring break! Isn’t she just adorable???
“Is that…” Sonia asked in almost a whisper, letting herself trail off.
“I– I’m pretty sure. No, I’m certain.”
“She looks nice.”
“She looks so old. They both do.”
Sonia glanced over at me.
“Okay, pro tip, don’t say that to her face. Ladies don’t usually appreciate that.”
“I know, I just… I– I think I need time to let it all sink in.”
“You need a moment? I can leave if that’s fine, I know it’s your life and I’m just some bitch who poured my drink on your face a week back and all.”
“N-no, you can– you should stay–hold up, let me see if I can find…”
I scrolled through photos with the laptop’s annoying trackpad, until a few moments later, I found a picture that was obviously different from its neighbors, a lower quality and different aspect ratio, not to mention older, picture. One that showed her how I remembered her being, hugging a me that I almost forgot with a medal on my chest.
“There. That right there.” I pointed to the lanky teen (I guess some things never change) with limp, curly brownish hair and an embarrassed expression. “That was me.”
Sonia pondered the image for a moment.
“Huh. Cute. What’s the medal for?”
“...I won a regional wrestling competition for my school?”
She nodded her approval. “Nice.”
“I just– I need you to know I’m not making it all up, right? It’s… I existed. And then I didn’t. And– and they took that from me. They took my life away…”
I stared at the digital render of that photo. It wasn’t even a year ago to my perception that I’d been heading up for the final lightweight champion wrestling match, against Freddie Lascaun and his grapple of death. It felt so monumental holding him down for the countdown, and being showered in the cheers of everyone there… my mother… my father… he took that picture with his own camera. I felt like a real superhero for once. But now it just felt like that last silly bit of fun I’d been allowed to have before the space voyage from Hell.
“...So um, did ya feel like keepin’ down Memory Lane, or should I send her a message now, or what?”
“Um– you can do that?!”
“Well yeah, it’s Facebook,” she shrugged.
I nodded with everything I had.
“Please, this place sucks so much–no offense meant.”
“Hey, you don’t see me disagreeing.”
Sonia took control back of the laptop and began dictating aloud.
“Dear woman across the country, you don’t know me but your son who’s been missing for fifteen years is in a hospital in Texas and is now a homeless raccoon, can you please come pick him up before he gets knocked into another coma? Kisses, Professor B… and send.”
“Don’t… don’t joke about that. It’s funny, but don’t, please?”
“Alright, just try’na lighten the mood.” She kept typing, scrunched her face, and typed some more before showing me a message box in the corner that had yet to send. “This look good?”
“To the mother of… my name’s Keaton, by the way, but yeah, she’d get Ketty pretty fast.”
“Pfft, fucking Keaton?”
“Yeah, blame my dad for that one, he was a big fan of Buster Keaton… mm, name’s Rebecca, but–are you named Rebecca or something?”
“No, that’s my sister, force of habit.”
“...but it has come to my attention that your son, reported missing April thirteenth, two-thousand nine, has been found by authorities in Cordova, Texas and is recovering in Tryon-Kings hospital from sustained injuries… This is really good. Also a bit of a lie, but that’s probably for the best.”
“Yeah, well, you know, I do what feels right.”
“Go ahead and send it?”
“Okie-doke.”
Sonia took the computer one last time, fiddled with typing just a bit more, and let out a deep sigh.
“There goes, my dude. Now we sit and wait for an answer… whoa, wait.”
“Wait what?”
“It’s seven forty-nine,” she pouted, “and visiting hours end at eight. That took way longer than I thought it would. Man, and I had that whole mock class act scripted and everything… Oh well, I was mostly just gonna read from that pamphlet anyhow. Um.”
She rifled through her bag and placed a big corded block on the end table while taking the weird wand device, then stood up.
“Guess I’ll preempt them and get going now. Again, if ya need anything, you can call or text me anytime, ‘kay? And I’ll let you know if I get anything back from your mom.”
I gave her a shy half-smile. “Alright… thank you…”
Sonia strode across the room, and was about to close the door before I called after her.
“Hey, wait, um. One thing?”
She turned back to look at me.
“Yeah?”
“When this gets sorted out… do you wanna be friends?”
“...Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that. But seriously, I need to teach you about Discord sometime.”
“Also can you turn out the lights?”
Sonia rolled her eyes and flicked the light switch down, plunging the room into peaceful darkness with a snip of the door behind her. I set the laptop down, and rolled over in my bed.
That was nice.