The Colossus Rises

surroundings, and stopped when they reached Marco, Aly, and me. It was a blank stare—alive but not human, moving but bloo

through the jungle in a toga, chased by snarling, drooling, piglike beasts, whose screeches fill the smoky sky. Nice, huh? Usually I awake from this dream when a gap in the earth opens beneath my feet.
But this time, I fell in. Down into the darkness. To my death.
At the moment of contact, the Gaseous Giant burped in real life. The sound woke me up.
The coffeemaker-volcano alarm went off. And the Ugliosaurus whacked me between the eyes.
Which, in a nutshell, is how the worst morning of my life began. The last morning I would

lying on the bed

Tailor, Soldier, Sailor.

Sailor, Tinker, Tailor.

leaned right and headed toward school.

sped onto the sidewalk

tinged yellow-green with age

puffy winter coat

pushed aside a mass of rat-brown hair