Used to Be: The Kid Rapscallion Story

by Bousquet, Mark

  “What are you doing?” she asks. “This whole Penthouse Man thing you’re doing … all you’ve done, in essence, is stop being Rapscallion’s sidekick and start being Vogelsung’s. What’s wrong? What’s going on in your head? We haven’t slept together since before 9/11, and you haven’t done anything but the synthetic coke the Big Brains have been giving you. So … why now? Why tonight?”

  “In the morning,” he says, rolling over and pulling the covers up to his shoulders, “you can interview me.”

  “Interview you?” Nancy asks. “About what?”

  “Turn on the news,” he says. “But do it in the fucking living room.”

  3

  Nancy throws on one of Jason’s dress shirts as she moves into the living room. It’s a stupid thing to do, she knows, tempting her back down the path of being in love with him. She’s dated a few guys over the last year, and hooked up with Andres a few times, but there has not been anyone serious.

  And whether she wants to admit it or not — now, she will, but later she’ll try to deny it — it’s because she’s still holding out the hope that Jason will somehow become a better man than he has ever been and think about her in ways he has never done.

  Perhaps, she thinks, she is feeling what all objects feel.

  She flops onto the sofa and wonders idly about how Jason afforded this place.

  She turns on the television and sees Kira Erdrich staring back at her from outside of a large estate near San Francisco. For just a moment — the moment between her eyes seeing the graphic at the bottom of the screen and her brain processing those words — she thinks Kira looks good. Not that it matters, Nancy thinks. Kira’s threat of destroying her and Jason’s lives fell dead after Foggen cut a deal with the DA’s office.

  And then her brain processes these words sitting beneath Kira on the TV:

  RAPSCALLION COMMITS SUICIDE

  Disgraced Hero Found by Former Sidekick

  4

  “Thank you, Melanie. Tragic events tonight, as I am standing outside of the San Francisco estate of billionaire venture capitalist Francis Flack, who I can confirm has spent the last 22 years as the costumed vigilante, Rapscallion. While the District Attorney of California forced Rapscallion into retirement, tonight marks the final act of Rapscallion’s career. Sources from inside the SFPD have told me that Francis Flack was found hanging from a noose in his Rapscallion costume in the grand entrance hall. He was found by his former sidekick, Indigo Impster. We do not know why Impster was at the house tonight, and I am told that while she is being held by Homeland Security for questioning, she is not a suspect and no foul play is suspected.

  “Infamously, Rapscallion was on trial last year for child endangerment. It is a sad irony that one of those children was forced to endure one last disturbing event because of her association with Rapscallion.

  “This is Kira Erdrich, reporting for RED News.”

  5

  Nancy’s eyes are wide and her body is on edge. Kira’s reporting is being picked up by the national cable news network, RED, and Nancy feels her heart sink as she realizes Kira is on the way up while her own career has stalled. She knows she’ll have a good story in the morning when Jason gives her an exclusive interview but even after a year of trying to work her own angles with Andres and the 20-Sided Dice, she got rolled by Jason being behind it all.

  She shakes her head, not even hearing Kira’s words, as she contemplates going on air tomorrow and outing Jason as the head of 20SD.

  It’s a fool’s thought, because she’ll never do it, and she knows it, but it’s the kind of fantasy we all engage in to help get us through a tough moment.

  As that hot moment passes, Nancy’s thoughts remain on her career. For the first time since she was hired by Channel 10, Nancy starts thinking about an exit strategy from her chosen career.

  She is still only 23 years old.

  6

  Colbie does not attend Rapscallion’s funeral.

  7

  “What the fuck do you mean she just vanished?” Kid Rapscallion yells as he sits in the back of a black SUV after the funeral has finished.

  Captain Trisha Foggen points to the video playing on a laptop computer. Indigo Impster is sitting in a room, and then she isn’t.

  “How the fuck does that happen?”

  “If I knew that,” Trisha says, “I would tell you instead of letting you yell at me.”

  8

  Jason pours himself into finding Colbie. He understands — even without Psychic Navigator’s help — that some of this is his way of working past his emotions towards Francis. But he believes, too, deep down, that he has let Colbie down. That he knew what Francis was like, that he was well-meaning but obsessive, and that something broke inside Francis when Winton murdered Sandra.

  “Why do you think that was?” Psychic Navigator asks.

  “Because he realized his obsession with being a hero led to a lack of attention on what happened in the rest of Flack Mansion, which led to Sandra adopting, and later abusing, me. She was constantly telling him how much I looked like a younger him, remember?”

  “So it was guilt? Is that why he killed himself, do you think?”

  “The suicide note said —”

  “I’m not asking for a book report, Jason.”

  “I think he killed himself because he couldn’t be Rapscallion anymore and life wasn’t worth living if he couldn’t put on that costume. He didn’t know what else to do with himself.”

  “And what would you do, Jason, if you could no longer be Kid Rapscallion?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Do you think — ?”

  “I don’t want to think about it,” Jason answers, darkness descending, “and so I don’t.”

  9

  That Kid Rapscallion can’t find Colbie Cross anywhere isn’t surprising.

  That Psychic Navigator can’t find her, is.

  10

  Months pass. There is so little crime committed by super humans that Jason’s nightly patrols become less and less intensive. 9/11 has turned the nation sour. No one wants to see heroes running around punching villains because it’s a reminder of the punches that weren’t thrown that day in New York.

  Quietly and messily, Jason disbands the 20-Sided Dice and tells Joey Vamps to cancel the contract on Kid Rapscallion’s life. Every second of his day is devoted to finding Colbie. He starts 2003 with over $1 million in the bank, but by July he is down to his weekly salary of $14,423, which is no sooner placed into his account as it is spent on tracking down leads.

  He spends a month in Paris, including a two-week detour to 1963, where he tries to sleep with a hero named The Partridge and fails. He tells himself it’s because sex doesn’t matter to him, anymore, and on some days, he believes that.

  He travels to China, to Thailand, to West Lafayette, Indiana, and a dozen points in between, but all of these leads dry up like a drop of water in the desert.

  The Revolutionaries help in the search but eventually other matters take precedence, and finding a minor hero like Indigo Impster falls into the background of their lives.

  At every therapy session, Jason asks Psychic Navigator if he’s got any new information, and there’s never anything more than one of those empty leads.

  Nancy suspects he’s back to taking cocaine, but Jason swears he isn’t and Nancy never catches him with anything. She worries about him and hates herself for it and has decided to quit the news station and find another job.

  One night, she’s sitting in the Grand Vegas, mindlessly playing the slot machines, when Jersey 121 sits down next to her. He’s drunk and obnoxious and she manages to diffuse the situation before it escalates by bringing him back to his hotel room, filling him with vodka, and putting him to sleep in the bath tub.

  She does not know this until much later, but it is this act of stopping a problem before it becomes a problem that catches the eye of the Grand’s owner, Old Man Cuellers, and will lead to her second career in the hotel
business.

  Without a discussion on the matter ever really taking place, she starts living in the large house in which Kid Rapscallion had planned to be the headquarters of a double life.

  11

  “Is Kid Rapscallion here?” the tall, thin, black man with creepy eyes and green eyes asks Nancy.

  “Um …?”

  “Oh, right, secret identities,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Humans.”

  “You’re not human?”

  “I’m a Martian,” he says, holding out his hand. “Ro’meo is my name.”

  “Romeo?”

  “Black Martians are big fans of Shakespeare,” he smiles. “We’re all named after his characters.”

  12

  “Delicious,” Ro’meo smiles. “Absolutely delicious. What is this beverage called?”

  “Red Bull,” Nancy says. “It’s all Jason has in his refrigerator. He used to have an endorsement deal with them.”

  “And are you the girlfriend of Jason Kitmore?” Ro’meo asks. “Or the sex receptacle?”

  13

  On September 6, Kira Erdrich publishes her story detailing the lives and identities of Kid Rapscallion and Indigo Impster, a behind-the-scenes account of the deal brokered between Captain Trisha Foggen and California District Attorney Caldwell Sanchez. She details Kid Rapscallion’s murder of Domina Tricks and his involvement in the murder of Duplication Girl. She makes it clear that Las Vegas Channel 10 news reporter Nancy Cathall knew all of this information but kept it from the public, even though she knows with absolute certainty that Nancy does not know the whole of that story.

  The story hits the public at the right time for them to turn on everyone named in the story, but none of the principals are all that upset to have this part of their life over with.

  14

  Press Release from the Office of Las Vegas City Councilor Gerta Bont

  September 7, 2003

  In light of information contained in the RED News report from Kira Erdrich, I will move to rescind the city’s contract with Kid Rapscallion. Failing that, I will move that his contract not be renewed.

  15

  “Hi, hon,” Jason says, entering his house after another fruitless trip, this time to India. “I’m home.”

  Melody isn’t.

  There is a note on the kitchen table saying she has moved back to Oklahoma.

  16

  “Hi, babe,” Jason says, entering his crime house. “I’m home.”

  Nancy isn’t.

  There is a note on the kitchen table saying she has gone to Mars with Ro’meo.

  17

  Jason runs out of his last vial of Flack Farmaceutical’s Peak serum in October.

  He does too much of Joey Vamps’ coke (hidden in the Blood Zone dimension) and almost dies. When he recovers, he breaks into Flack’s laboratory facility in Palo Alto and is arrested by local PD.

  18

  “This is the end of the line, Jason,” Ms. Stagger says, arms folded. After Kira’s story broke, Congress asked her to resign, and she was all too happy to do it. She is back in costume, back with the Revolutionaries, and stands before Jason in her black and gold costume. Striped Star, Eagle ’62, Psychic Navigator, Saint George, and Zafer stand around her, but she is the one delivering the news.

  “Says the gods on high,” he spats back. He is seated inside a glass prison cube and the Revolutionaries stand around him in his igloo.

  “You are being cut off,” Stagger continues. “You will not be given anymore of the Peak serum and the Big Brains have been ordered to stop their attempt to replicate the formula. You’re done being a hero.”

  “Who are you to make this call?”

  “Eat me, you little shit,” Ms. Stagger roars, pulling off her domino mask and throwing it at the glass wall of his cell.

  “That’s Stars job, isn’t it?” Jason asks. “You firing her from the one thing she’s good at, too?”

  Ms. Stagger hits the cell wall in front of Jason’s face so hard she shatters her hand.

  19

  Jason is still being kept in the Stockade inside the Fort when word reaches him that Melody Macomber’s body is found, in a ditch and drained of blood, two houses over from the home she shared with Jason Kitmore.

  PART

  TWELVE

  2015

  1

  “What does Domina want?” Jason asks. “I get that Joey wants his drugs back. Fine. I can give him the interdimensional coordinates.”

  “You’re not giving a drug dealer his drugs back,” Mr. Monster says, flatly, and then realizes how far he’s come on the road from bad guy to good guy. “Jesus,” he mumbles, “listen to me …”

  “Jason,” Nancy says, moving to put a hand on his arm, “you’re going to give them the drugs.”

  “The hell he is!” Monster snaps. “Crap on my sac, I was the bad guy, remember? Why am I now the sensible one?”

  Nancy looks up to the worn face of the old tough guy and doesn’t avert her eyes. She’s been working with Mr. Monster for years and knows when he can be pushed and when he needs to be pulled and when it don’t matter what you try to do because his feet have been anchored to the Earth’s core.

  Lucky for her, this isn’t one of those latter times.

  “You’re going to let us give Joey Vamps his drugs,” Nancy says, “because in exchange, Domina is going to give us the one thing you’d do anything to get.”

  Jason’s body seizes. “No …”

  “Yes,” Nancy says. “Joey Vamps and Domina Tricks have found Colbie Cross. After a decade of looking for her, you can finally save her. Wouldn’t it be nice to be an actual hero for once?”

  Jason thinks it would, but he also thinks about the real reason he’s here, and just how unhappy the people who put him here are going to be if they don’t get those drugs.

  Fucking space pirates and intergalactic cops …

  PART

  THIRTEEN

  2013

  1

  “Two houses down? That’s one depressing farking story, Kid.”

  “Yeah, you’re bringing us down.”

  “How about instead of the mopey stuff, you tell us about what it was like to assfuck the hottest princess in the goddamn universe? I shit you not, I would pay good money to see that, let alone do it.”

  Jason Kitmore laughs as he looks around the kitchen of the small spaceship that has been his home for the past two months. It’s been a decade since he stopped being a superhero, though he can never really stop being Kid Rapscallion. He’s he’s back in a variation of that uniform (mostly red, with a wide vertical black stripe down the left side of his body and white highlights around that), a gift from Jula, the heralded “hottest princess in the goddamn universe” who was his wife for the better part of the last four years.

  There’s the ship’s purple-skinned, Martian captain, Zenaforn Guez: middle-aged, given to wearing leather jackets stolen from Earthers, and stealing hearts wherever he goes. Zen sits opposite Jason at the white, round table, drinking fruit-flavored water.

  Between them on Jason’s right is Lavinia, a red-skinned alien soldier from Jula’s home world of Faunakyat, who was imprisoned when it was discovered her grandmother was a Black Martian, hence the Shakespearean name. Wearing an outfit of leathers and furs from animals she’s killed, it was Lavinia that set Zen on the path he’s on. She was the lover of one of his battalion mates, and after their army abandoned them to enemy forces and that lover died, Zen and Lav found themselves exiles with no one else to turn to, and so they became pirates.

  On Jason’s left is Tribold Pal, a massively tall and muscular old man of whom it was said that he would be dead, except that Death herself was afraid of him.

  Two months ago, Jason was in a Faunakyat prison, awaiting death, when it was hit by Zen’s crew. Jason signed on with them, accepted instantly after he saved Lavinia’s life by shooting a Faunakyat guard before she could shoot Lav. That he’d once teamed up with Zen back in the day when he was Rapscallio
n’s sidekick didn't hurt, either.

  “I was a wreck,” Jason admits. “Twenty-years old and at the end of the line as a superhero. I couldn’t get any drugs to make me strong and I couldn’t get any drugs to take me back down. Not that I stopped doing coke, mind you.”

  “Well,” Zen laughs, “you’re a better crook now than you were then, and we appreciate you being on the Temperance.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Jason says, and four pirates clinked glasses of fruit water together and drank heartily.

  2

  The Temperance is a small, agile spaceship a few generations old, and Jason’s quarters are small but adequate. The room is done in green metal that has restorative capabilities. Flora-infused steel, is what Jason is told and while he doesn’t know exactly how that works, he doesn’t need to.

  His bed is a hammock, tucked into an open section of the left-side of the room. A full two steps away is the right side of his quarters, where a musty, puke-yellow couch sits. He sleeps there some nights.

  There is another reason why he was welcomed aboard Zen’s ship: he’s a recovering addict.

  “No booze, no drugs on my ship,” Zen told him. “You get zero do-overs. Screw up once, and we’ll leave you on whatever planet we’re on.”