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There are monsters all around me.

They tower over me by at least three feet and I’m hand-to-hand with one. He (she?) lands a good blow to my ribs and then does it again. I try to move away to no avail; the monster lands another blow and I wince at the pain in my ribs.

“GET UP! YOU DON’T BELONG HERE!”

I open my eyes slowly and comprehend. A dream is all it was, but the pain in my ribs is real. I look up at the man who obviously was kicking me, only partially awake. He’s beyond angry and into the range of outright venomous. “I said get up. You homeless people think that you can just be anywhere, and it doesn’t affect anyone. Who wants to come into a business with some homeless tweaker sleeping in the doorway?”

“Sorry,” I say, head down, embarrassed. “I’ll leave.” I reach for my backpack, and it’s gone. No matter, I guess. It’s not like it’s the first time it’s happened. I keep my phone, ID, and EBT card in my pockets. Those are really all I need out here. I get up slowly, not fast enough for the man in towering over me who is now standing there, arms crossed in front of him. “I’ll call the police if I have to.”

I shake my head, still a bit disoriented, and start to get pissed off. HE woke me up and now wants me to act like I’ve been awake for hours and just hop to. I keep my head down and slowly keep moving toward my goal of walking away. I could hit him. With his arms crossed like that, he’s in a poor position to defend himself, but then he would call the police and they would most certainly take his side in the matter, even though technically he assaulted me first.

I look back briefly and he’s still standing there glaring at me, arms still crossed in front of him. Fuck. I’m on my way, man. What more do you want from me?

***

Mom calls. She calls me daily to make sure I’m okay. She says something and I’m so high that I don’t understand and ask, “What?”

“I asked if you need anything.”

I traded my EBT card for drugs and I could use some money. I sigh, though. She’s been onto this particular game for a while now and the last time I asked, she outright said she can’t help me if I trade my ability to get food for drugs, but I try anyway. “I could use some cash.”

The line is silent; she’s silent and I can feel her disappointment in me through her silence. She sighs hard. “Again?”

I’m silent. My way of agreeing without actually having to admit it.

“You still have half the month to get through.”

Duh. I’m not that fucked off.

“Where are you?” she asks with resignation in her voice.

“Uh…”

She waits for me to finish and realizes I can't and testily says, “Text me when you figure that one out.”

“Uh, okay.”

“I love you.”

She doesn’t; she wouldn’t have kicked me out if she did, but I play along, “I love you too.”

Two hours later, I figure out I’m by the north gate of Camp Pendleton and text her that.

“I’m at work. Can you text me where you are when it’s closer to 4?” comes back.

“Sure.”

I notice the sun starting to set and text her: “In Vista now.”

About an hour later my phone notifies me of a text. “El? Stop doing this to me. It’s nearly 8 pm and I should be able to relax after work. Can you get closer to home?”

“Nevermind.” I don’t want to get on the Sprinter that would take me to Escondido just for a few bucks. Besides, I’m too high to figure it out.

“Ok. Be safe.”

***

In the morning I hear, “Get up. You don’t belong here.” The voice is familiar, soft, comforting. Mom. My eyes open and she smiles at me softly. “Hey, Elliott.”

“Mom,” I acknowledge groggily. I wonder how she found me. Later, I figure out it’s because I sent her like 24 texts that made some sort of sense the night before, obviously if I typed all that shit out, but zero sense stone cold sober and one of those texts gave her my location. She sits down on the grass with me; the people I was with the night before moved on without me. She knows that with or without drugs, I’m not the type to just bounce up happily from a dead sleep and sits there patiently while I pull it together.

She’s quiet and studies me to assess just how fucked off I am. Obviously, by the look of concern on her face, I don’t look so hot. She has a backpack sitting beside her and waits while I get from a prone position into a sitting one. I haven’t eaten in days and that’s a hard enough task.

“What’s in the backpack?” I finally ask.

“I found another couple of pairs of jeans for you and there are new socks and underwear in there. I figured it was about that time.” Her voice sounds kind of dead; like I’ve killed something in her.

She isn't the one living on the streets. What the fuck?

“Thanks.”

“There’s $50 in there as well and a few packs of smokes. Make it last. That’s all I have to help you out with.” She stands up and gets ready to leave.

“Can’t you stay?”

She shakes her head no. “I have to go to work. I’m already running late.” She gives me the ‘you couldn’t disappoint me more if you were a fucking serial killer’ look; one that she’s perfected, I assume, through her 25 years of parenting. I wonder if the first time she used it if it was as effective. Probably not, but I was so young that I can’t remember it.

“Thanks.”

She gives me a “no worries” through her worried expression then walks off.

***

“GET UP; YOU DON’T BELONG HERE!”

This time, I’m not taken off guard and I fight, but they’re getting the better of me. This time, though, I land blows, fighting the monsters off, scared shitless, fighting for my life. One tackles me and slams my face into the pavement and screams, “DON’T MOVE OR I’LL SHOOT.”

I start to move and there’s pressure on my back and I struggle to get free, but I can’t, and my head is again slammed into the ground and my arms are suddenly behind me and I hear metal wrap around one wrist and then the other.

Using my arms, I’m yanked off the ground and put into a patrol car.

A day after landing in the county jail in Vista, I call my mom, sure that she’ll get the machine asking her to enter her credit card information in order to accept the call from Vista Detention Facility from Elliott Rotor and decline to do so.

I’m surprised when she pops on the line. “What happened?”

I tell her about fighting the monsters, but they weren’t monsters, they were San Diego County sheriff’s deputies. She’s silent. I add, “They beat the shit out of me. My face is swollen, and my wrists are torn up.”

All she says is, “Mm.” It’s her disappointed ‘mm’. With Mom, mm means anything from I’m disappointed in you to I’m thinking to agreement or disagreement. It’s her particular verbal tic. It's all in the inflection on what it might mean.

“I think I might have a couple of broken ribs and my shoulder hurts,” I add, looking for sympathy.

She’s not really the sympathetic type. Loads of empathy, yes, but sympathy isn’t in her wheelhouse. “How long until you’re in front of a judge?” she asks.

“Not until Friday.”

“So you should be released on OR Friday.”

“Can’t you bail me out?” I ask futilely. Family rule number three: If you end up in jail, Dad and I won’t bail you out.

“You know better than that. I can’t afford this call so I’m ending it with this: if you can test clean on Friday, you can come home with conditions—you have to stay clean. Can you do that?”

I start to stammer that drugs are more available here than they are on the street, but we’ve already been here with things, and she cuts me off with a hard sigh saying, “If you can, you can come home. If you test dirty, you’re back on the streets. Call me when you’re released. I love you," and then hangs up the phone.

When I try to call her back, she won’t accept the call. In the morning, there’s $30 on my books. I’m grateful.

Someone offers me meth; I shake my head, go to the commissary and get a couple of protein bars, which is all I feel I can handle, and head back to my cell. I eat quickly and lay back down and am off to sleep quickly.

It feels good to have a bed, no matter how shitty of one it is.

It feels good to not be cold.

It feels good to be able to sleep and know that nothing will be stolen.

It feels good to know no one will kick me awake.

When I wake back up, hearing the call for breakfast, I stand while the door to my cell is unlocked. I walk in line, get my breakfast and Gerry, an older man I know from being on the street, a heroin addict, says he has shit. I shake my head no, memory of how good it felt to sleep in a bed and not shiver all night making me rethink how I’ve been living things lately, and he shrugs. “More for me, I guess,” he says and examines my swollen face. “SDSD?”

I nod.

“You can’t fight ‘em, man. You have to cooperate.”

“I didn’t know; I was high, and thought they were monsters.”

He nods like he’s been there, done that. He probably has. He’s been on the streets a long time now—nearly a decade. “You don’t belong here,” he says. “They’ll take you back if you clean up, but I think you know that already or you would have taken me up on my offer.” He means my parents, of course.

“I'm not sure. I beat the shit out of my dad and, uh, yeah."

"Parents are pretty forgiving people as a rule."

I study him, not sure, but I want to go home and nod at him in agreement. "I'm tired," I say and get up to leave the dining area.

“Good luck, kid.”

“Thanks. I’ll see you later.”

***

“Clean?” she asks after rolling the passenger side window down in her old SUV.

I nod yes and she examines me and motions for me to get in the car. “Welcome home.”

Just those words fill me with warmth as I get comfortable in the car, but I’m worried about what I’ll find with Dad. “How does Dad feel about all this?” I was high and he was another monster to fight. She really isn't the reason I'm gone, I am. I hit my own DAD, for fuck's sake. I tried to kill him, actually.

“He’s gone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t have anything to do with it,” she says softly, “we had other issues.”

“It couldn’t have helped.”

“Mm. I guess it probably didn’t,” she agrees.

“You look old,” I observe. She shoots me the serial killer look and I put my head down. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she says in her it’s not fine voice.

I understand with that ‘fine’ that it’s going to take some time for her to heal up and am silent until we get home and she hands me a test cup. I’m afraid something will still be in my system and nervously go off to the bathroom. After, she examines it, gloves on and smiles. “Go upstairs and get some sleep.”

I nod okay and finally notice Sasha our dog is missing. “Where’s Sasha?” I ask tentatively and Mom tentatively informs me that it’s another thing she told me that I was too high to process, and I realize why she looks so old. Her oldest son all fucked off on drugs and homeless, husband gone, dog dead. I hug her and she allows it. “I really am sorry.”

“I know. Get some sleep," she says reassuringly.

I go upstairs and sleep for days, comfortable to be back in my own bed; comfortable that I'm home again.