The Angel On My Shoulder

Chapter four, Part one: The Angel

The next day, classes had begun. West had a 9 am science class, so he was gone before Damion had gotten out of bed.

Good.

Damion managed to rouse himself an hour later, to get to his first class by 11. He threw a change of clothes into his satchel and left R222 in search of the bathroom to shower.

The bathroom was empty when he got there, so he took his time. He stood in front of the mirror for an unusual amount of time that morning. Mirrors had this awful habit of showing more than just reflections. Damion blinked at his own tired looking reflection. He'd heard people say mirrors don't lie, but he'd hidden himself so many times that only he could see it.

Danny D. The name he used to go by, back when his mother was still alive, and his father wasn't hungover every morning. For a time, everyone had called him that. Friends, teachers, coaches and teammates. Danny D. was a happy-go-lucky ten-year-old, who excelled at football from a young age, knew half the school, was loved by all his teachers, had a future.

His name wasn't the only thing that changed the day his mother died.

Damion stared for a bit longer, he might've been the only person in the whole world that could still see Danny D. when he looked in the mirror. He could still see the smile. The smile with his spray of freckles and large dimples, his missing tooth and all. Even though he got an undercut and ran gallons of gel through his hair, the fluff still managed to show in places. His eyes too. He had the same blue eyes, just older and haunted. He'd tried so hard to bury Danny D, and he did.

From everyone but himself.

Eventually Damion had seen enough and bent down over the sink to splash water over his rebellious features. When he came back up to dry his face, his eyes picked up something in his peripheral vision. Lazily he glanced at the mirror to see over his shoulder without having to turn around.

Damion froze.

His gaze locked onto the mirror and for one wild and unthinkable moment he was stunned into utter silence. When the moment passed his brain began firing. He was dreaming, surely, he was dreaming. Or perhaps hallucinating. Maybe he'd finally lost it and was now psychotic. This wasn't real.

He found he still wasn't able to look away. They had actually made eye contact. Damion managed to swallow the weird lump in his throat, and still could not direct his eyes anywhere else.

Standing awkwardly on his shoulder, was a tiny winged person.

Damion's eyes remained trained on the mirror where he was meeting the winged persons eccentric blue eyes with his own darker ones.

Finally, his breathing sped up, and oxygen was able to flow into his brain again. He was dreaming, he was dreaming, he was crazy? Slowly, painfully, he turned his head to his shoulder.

The winged person was still there. Why was it still there? In fact, the tiny guy turned as well to look up at Damion. Before either could get a word out, Damion panicked, panicked like one would if they were to find a spider crawling on them, and he roughly snatched the winged guy off his shoulder. He felt feathers crumple beneath his suddenly very large fingers, and he heard a very real, very angry shout come from the guy.

The shout scared Damion more, and in a swift motion he turned and threw the creature as far and hard as he could.

It was extremely light, and so Damion's extremely hard throw caused it to sail through the air and slam against the wall opposite Damion. It made an awful cracking sound upon impact, and for the briefest moment Damion feared he'd hurt it. Then he remembered it didn't, or shouldn't, exist.