Chapter Two: A Freak Among Freaks
I awoke after who knows how long. I remember the discomfort of my clothes-I'd never grown fully use to the things. The smell was the next thing that I noticed. Dust, mold, and...something else. I opened my eyes. I was on a heap of torn, dusty pillows, in some dark, dusty room. Sunlight shone through the boarded windows is bright planes and slits, in which the suspended particles in the air were visible. I sniffed again. I remembered what that strange smell was. It was the smell of a park pond, of water, algae, bird shit and feathers. A rustling caught my attention. I looked about the room, my weak eyes straining against the darkness. Movement. Then I saw it. A mutant.
It had to be. It was tall, about six feet. It had yellow webbed feet, backwards-bending knees, and thick, muscular thighs covered with grey feathers. Its bare torso was also covered in feathers, ruffled and torn in places, and apairof great, grey wings. It had a long, protruding face, with no nose, only two slits for nostrils, and a broad, lipless mouth, set atop a long, serpentine neck.
"That's Goose. He can't talk."
It was a young girl's voice that I had heard.
The voice had come from somewhere near the back of the room. Stood up, and nearly fell. I recalled that I hadn't eaten, and probably had a dangerously low blood sugar.
"Who're you?" I stammered, trying-in vain-to sound intimidating.
"I'm Hecate."
I had trouble figuring out what it was I was seeing. It seemed like I was talking to a large, dark cloud. The cloud faded, revealing a small, bald, and extremely pale girl. Not a girl, a young woman, it was hard for me to tell, impossible to care.
"What's your name?"
"I'm Mys...Raven. Just Raven."
I sat down. I was getting a killer migraine. The kid was standing there, looking down at me with an annoying smile, while the weird goose-freak sat down and starting preening like a bird.
"What's your deal kid? What do you do? You know, mutant...?"
She gasped, exhuberant.
"Ooh! I can bend the light around me. You know, make myself invisible, or create total darkness, or look like a mirage-"
"Great."
I leaned up against the wall. "Oy, my head."
"You need some advil?"
"That's be great kid, thanks. Some food wouldn't be bad."
"I'll go get some. What you say, Goose? You hungry?"
The weird bird man nodded, making a faint squeeking noise in his throat.
I thought about my job, then decided fuck it. They want to fire me? Whatever. Nothing really matters anymore. I'm alive, that's all I need, and that's all I can really stand.
A few minutes later the kid was back with burgers, coffee, and what looked like the loot from a pharmacy robbery.
"I got a whole bunch of different crap. Advil, motrin, aspirin, tylenol...and some coffee to take it with."
"Thank kid."
For Goose she brought a bag of white bread. She the bread out of the bag and set it in front of him, discarding the two end peices. The freak turned out to have two fingers and a thumb in the joint of its wings, and set to pulling the soft centers out of the slices and placing them in its toothless mouth.
We sat down on the cushions of the bare floor to eat. The burgers were greasy and cold, but it was food. I think I ate about four of those stupid things. The eating made the headache go away, and the coffee helped even more. After we finished eating, I decided to get the story straight.
"So, was it you and Mother Goose over there that saved my ass last night?"
"Oh, I don't go out after dark. Only Goose and Al go out at night."
"Oh, who's Al?"
She stood up and led me into the next room. And there he was, hanging by a clawed foot from the rafters. My 'savior' from the night before. She told me that he was born Alec Wales. He now went by the name Alucard, "Dracula" spelt backwards.
There I was, a born freak, now a human, a freak amongst freaks.