I came home from work and crashed on the bed. While I was lying there, my pants phone began to vibrate. Who was calling me now? If it wasn’t Katie or Jeff or Mom, I wasn’t going to answer the phone. Caller ID said it was Jeff.

“Hey.”

“Hi. Are you at home?”

“Yeah, I just got back from work,” I said.

“Go online and do a search for ‘Man or Bird?’”

“Ah, man,” I whined, “that means I have to get up.”

“Trust me, Dude, you’ll appreciate this.”

An involuntary groan emanated from me as I stood up, crawled over to my desk and hit the power button. I dropped into the desk chair and slouched over the desk as the computer warmed up. “Is everyone this exhausted after work? I can’t believe people do this several times a week.”

Jeff lectured me, “not to minimize your pain, Scott, but in the old days, people worked all day long just for the species to survive.”

“Thanks for keeping things in perspective.” The computer was now alive. I opened the web browser and started typing. “Man or Bird. Okay.” I hit the Search button.

The first website listed was for an obscure comic book villain, Man-Bird, who once fought Mr. Wonderful. Jeff once said that comic was really valuable, because it was the only appearance of that villain. He was cocky. Nobody liked him; that the character had faded into oblivion.

Another website had an animated video of a man and an ostrich singing a duet. Evidently, it was from some kids show on the web. The thumbnail of the video looked ridiculous; I’d have to check that out later.

The third website was obviously the one Jeff wanted me to see. The heading read, “Is It a Man or a Bird?” The picture below the heading was dark and grainy; you couldn’t really make out details, but...

“Is that..?”

“That’s you, Dude. Someone took a picture of you the other night with their camera phone.”

“Wow.”

“The good part is that this guy isn’t sure if you’re a bird or a person for some reason. Maybe he was drunk.”

“That’s actually pretty cool,” I said. “Look! People can vote whether they think the picture is a man or a bird. So far, 83% think I’m a bird. Have you heard anything about the kid who was being chased? I hope he’s okay. You know, it’s not like I was just some guy flying around without a purpose. I was doing something good: I was protecting the people of the city.”

Jeff hesitated. “My point is if you really want to continue what you’re doing, you need to be more careful. You’re no longer below the radar. You’re not below the radar any more. People know you exist. Maybe we should finally paint the wings. White just stands out too much, even in the dark.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “On the website, the guy says ‘for a second, I thought it was an angel with big, white wings.’”

“Yeah, well, that guy was drunk. Other people are not going to be as confused about what you are. Someone is going to investigate.”

Jeff’s warnings didn’t stop me, though.

“Dad, I’m going out with Katie tonight,” I said later that night. One foot was already out the door.

He looked up from his drawing, “Oh? You’ve been seeing a lot of each other, haven’t you? Are things getting serious? Is my little boy growing up?” he said, teasing me.

“Dad!” Since my parents divorced when I was ten, in my dad’s mind, I stopped aging at that point. I’d be a hundred years old and I’d still be his little boy. “No, we’re just having fun.”

“Alright,” he said. “Don’t stay out too late, though. I don’t want you to get sick.” He returned to his work.

“Okay. Have a good night.”

It was all a lie. Katie and I did keep in touch via text messages such as:

Hey, how RU? and

Hey, auditioning 4 a show and

Didn’t get in the show >;;-( Lunch?

That was about it, though. Most of the time, she was preparing for an audition or out with her boyfriend, Whathisname.

Most nights, I’d tell my dad that I was going out with Katie and/or our theater friends. Dad was just happy thinking I had a girl and was playing nice with other kids. You know how parents are. Also, he was a workaholic, so he wouldn’t really miss me. He always knew when I was there, but his art was his primary focus.

What I was really doing was actually camping out near Central Tower, a triangular building in the middle of the city and, at one time, the tallest building in the world. It was the city’s first skyscraper, 100 stories high. Every tenth floor had an observation deck. My father actually designed the stone lions at the three corners of the deck on the tenth floor.

So, there I was, hanging out with the lions and the pigeons, on the tenth floor observation deck of Central Tower, watching the city below and waiting to see where I might be needed next. One of the lions and I became quite chummy.

“You think anything is going to happen tonight, Alphonse?” I said to my lion friend.

Alphonse just stood there with that regal look on his stone face. He was too busy watching the city below to answer me.

“One night I’m going to bring Morty with me,” I told him. “You two will have plenty to talk about, I’m sure.”

Once an hour, give or take five minutes, a security guard came out onto the deck for a smoke. I used that time as an opportunity to fly buzz around the neighborhood.

I soon realized that, as heroes went, I was pretty useless and (I’m sorry to say) a little lame. Seriously, gliding was about all I could do. No super strength. No cool weapons, just that pipe I used once. I had gotten pretty good at sneaking up on people and scaring them, though.

During the first week, I managed to stop what I was pretty sure was a small time drug deal going on. Really, it was There were, at least, two teenagers and some stuff in a bag. I could see they weren’t carrying weapons, so I swooped down. The sound of the wind against my wings was enough to startle them. “What was that?” one of them said. They saw my looming shadow and went running. Good thing they didn’t have the time to look too closely and see how totally useless I was.

“You know, it’s possible that the deal just went down at a different place and time,” I told Jeff later.

“Maybe,” he said. “Or, maybe you scared them so much that they won’t try that stuff again.”

I knew he was just trying to make me feel better, so I humored him, “Yeah, maybe.”

Another week, I noticed a guy stealing a woman’s purse.

“Dude, that’s such a cliché,” Jeff said over the helmet’s speakers. I didn’t care; I was already in motion.

Just like the others, he heard me before he saw me. He glanced around, shouted an expletive and then started running, the purse still clutched in his hand. I chased him down a darkened alleyway.

“He’s cornered,” I said to Jeff.

“Don’t do anything crazy!” Jeff responded. “Try to reason with him.”

“Just drop the purse,” I shouted to the thief as I landed. The wings slowly folded and disappeared into the backpack.

He quickly and nervously looked behind him.

Who... ? What are you?"

His breathing was rapid. There was nowhere for him to go.

“All I want is the purse,” I said, trying to calm him.

He responded by pulling a knife out of his pocket.

“Whoa! Hey, r-relax, man!" I said, stumbling backwards. "I’m not going to fight you!”

“What?” Jeff said. “What’s happening?”

The thief lunged at me. I pivoted and tried to block him with my right hand. “Whoa!” I jumped up the air... wait, no, the rocket boots went off! He must have hit the button on my chest. The wings popped out of the backpack and I kept soaring up. The force knocked over the thief.

While I was still in the air, he used the opportunity to get up and run away.

"Get away from me! Get away!" He ran off down an alleyway, leaving the purse behind.

“Scott!” Jeff was yelling. “What’s happening?”

“I’m okay. The guy ran away.”

Once I landed (and regained my composure), I went back to where the robbery took place. The woman was no longer there. Probably, she went to find the police. I looked in the purse, only to find some kind of identification. There was a wallet with an ID card, so I took it to the address on it and left the purse in the doorway.

“I didn’t see any cash in there anyway,” I said to Jeff later. “This is the age of electronic money, so she may not have missed much, if the guy had gotten away.”

Jeff reassured me, “Then she’d have the hassle of canceling her credit cards and replacing the rest of the stuff in the purse. You did a good thing.”

Some of the neighborhood people had seen the incident and were starting to approach me.

"I’ve got to get out of here!" I said. "People are coming."

I turned and started running in the opposite direction. With the familiar whoosh, the wings popped out, I pushed off and flew away from the scene. Sirens blared in the distance.

As I flew away, several people shouted:

"Wha-what’s that?"

"Is that a bird?"

"A guy with wings!"

Apparently, word about the ordeal had gotten out. There was the tiniest article about it on a news site. Jeff read it to me: “The victim is quoted as saying, ‘a guardian angel must be looking over me.’”

“Oh, good,” I said. “She got the purse. That’s the second time someone’s called me a ’guardian angel.’ I hope it catches on. It’s way cooler sounding than Guy With Wings.”

Also, on the ‘Man or Bird’ website, now only 77% seventy-seven percent of people still thought I was a bird.

Most of the time I went flying around, however, I didn’t see a whole lot of action. I’d had dreams of uncovering some elaborate underground operation. What I saw was way too much of was the seedy underbelly of the city: prostitution, drug use and especially, homelessness. I saw even more of it on my way to work in the morning: people sleeping under bridges or awnings to stay dry, people sleeping near furnace vents to stay warm. What could I do for those people?

Next Chapter: Chapter Eighteen (unedited)