Torin nodded. “If we’re going to get the synthesis right with this constellation of players, Kardassian, Davenport, and Dolari among them, if the synergy is going to procure something much larger than the parts suggest, we have to get our parts right. I got you.”
If Dolari was right, Kendra realized, and they were now fending off global catastrophes as masterminded by alien civilizations, she’d picked a hell of a time for a showdown with her father. All on the dim hope that it might enhance her chances of success in saving all life from obliteration, instead of inviting it upon them. Her defective childhood psychology was much better at drawing these End Times events to her than resolving them. And that had to change.
Robbed of their childhoods, both she and Torin seemed all the better attuned to time bandits looking to steal from an Age of Abundance in order to ease suffering in their timelines. Those time bandits were trying to force a mature, self-actualizing society on a relatively more childish and immature one, robbing the era of its natural development.
But to ascertain the whereabouts of these time bandits and to bring them in, Kendra and Torin needed to better understand the hurt child the time bandits were trying to heal in themselves. It was quite possible all the evil in the world was perpetrated by villains acting on their hurt inner child.
If Dolari was right, moreover, it occurred to her that even the alien civilization looking to close the experiment they’d initiated by seeding life on Earth, was trying to keep this age from maturing any further. In a way, it wanted to foster the same arrested development that child abusers wanted to foster to perpetuate their domination of them. That made them out to be time bandits as well.
How did she and Torin land on chasing after and apprehending time bandits as the ultimate tonic for what ailed them? Wouldn’t it just make more sense to chase after child abusers in the here and now? But then they would be saving one life at a time, instead of protecting the early development psychology of everyone in an entire era.
When putting their heads together, what’s more, Kendra’s overdeveloped rational mind and Torin’s overdeveloped intuitive mind, it still had not been enough to give them a clear sense of direction, far less to get them to close a case. So they continued to enhance the mating of their respective psyches by yielding to techniques specifically designed to attune both hemispheres of their minds better, and to open them up to the guidance of their higher power, such as by observing synchronicities. Perhaps in other timelines, different versions of themselves arrived at different ways of maximizing effectiveness. So far, their self-empowerment games seemed to be working. Not even the city AI knew enough to focus in on Clyde Barker, or any of the time bandits.
Was she stewing again? Or was she just appreciating the output of an unconscious that had been brewing on these issues for some time, the realizations finally bubbled up to the surface past how many layers of conscious resistance?
They say a long journey begins with the first step. Both she and Torin had been kidding themselves all along as to what that first step was. The time for denial was over, and the time to face dear old dad was upon her, as Torin would have to face both his parents.
The thought of owning the hurt her father had caused her and confronting him had her thinking of one of the many times she’d confronted him as a young girl to no fruitful end. Of the many nights awaking with just such PTSD flashback dreams of how the last confrontations had gone.
***
Kendra’s dad dropped down to one knee to attend to her dress, to neaten it up, but mostly to look into her eyes so she wouldn’t miss out on the sense of desperation etched into his face. She had long since wised up to all his tricks, even at the ripe young age of twelve, but he wasn’t beyond putting a new spin on each of them.
Today it was the careful attention he gave to her, as if this was what loving parents did, pour undue consideration onto their children. She’d grow up to realize the poor boundaries of parents who alternated between over-involvement and under-involvement in their kids was just part of the m.o. of addicts. They were either too stoned out of their mind to know or care what their kids were up to, the under-involved phase, or they were over-compensating with guilt with the hyper-involved stage.
In her dad’s case, he was clever enough to make sure the extra love was married to his latest plotting, scheming idea to milk some patsy for money, money he could use to get high on, thus aiding with her buy in to doing something that never felt entirely right to her.
Kendra was aware she was lucid dreaming, recalling the incident as a young child, but married to her now adult consciousness, which just made the moment that much more lurid in her mind as she tossed and turned in bed, trying to wrestle with the dream’s significance.
“You need me to run through the con with you again?” her father asked.
“I’m twelve now, Dad. Not three. Is that when all this started?”
“No, it started when you were still an infant. You were quite the money magnet back then,” he said cackling from the fond remembrances. “I’d find mothers who were desperate to have a child, with fallow womb, who didn’t qualify for adoption, and make their dreams come true for a week or two, less if the money ran out earlier than expected and I had to steal you back sooner. You were a real money earner, Kendra, from day one. No one could look at that beguiling face of yours and not want to love you to death.”
“Keep talking. When I’m all grown up and I become a detective, I want to make sure I have all the evidence I need to arrest you.”
“You should feel privileged to learn a trade from such an early age. Most fathers don’t take the time to pass on what they know. What kind of provider would I be if I left you without any skills in life?”
“You just handed over all the child-rearing, all the diaper changes, and burdens to someone else. Lots of someones to get out of even having to pay for a nanny. But you keep trying to make it sound like you did me a favor, go on.”
He smiled ruefully and clapped her on her upper arms. “Well, I think that’s enough reminiscing for today.”
“That look of guilt in your eyes, pretending to not be able to deny the truth of what I’m saying or how much it hurts you… Good one, dad. Glad to see you’re not losing your touch, what with me doing all the heavy lifting for you the last twelve years.”
“You don’t have to sound so adult all the time, Kendra. I realize with me being the child in this family, I didn’t leave you with any options, except to be the parent as well, scolding me at times like today. But don’t forget, you have a little child inside you too that just needs to have fun. Now you go in there, run that con on them, and have some fun!”
He swatted her on the butt. She didn’t bother to continue laying into him. She figured there’d be time to continue his parenting later. He was right. Playing the adult in the family and parenting her father was exhausting.
By the time she stepped inside the door in back of the nondescript building in the anonymous alley, she was entirely in character. She didn’t have to be. As it turned out she had a very dark staircase to meander down, giving her plenty of time to set her face up just right. By the time she got to the foot of the stairs, overlooking the basement full of gambling tables, she was all teary eyed, and the image of the perfect rape victim.
She didn’t have to say a word. Just shook, look traumatized, sob a little, until she had every pair of eyes on her and the din inside the room had faded to nothing but squeaking chairs and hoarse breathing from the more cancerous among them.
Then she pointed to the staircase.
That’s all she had to do.
They moved like a heaving sea at high tide, almost in one motion, grabbing anything they could get their hands on. Most had guns, some had baseball bats, others had knives. It was a gambling saloon in an area of prohibition, in a zone earmarked for addicts, where gambling was simply not allowed. And they, being all addicts, knew everything there was to know about compulsive behavior that couldn’t be held in
check, like one rapist’s tendencies to force himself on young children.
They nearly trampled her in their efforts to get up the stairs. One goliath of a man, the bouncer, standing guarding the place was just fast thinking enough to yank her out of the way of the mob. Then he set her down, waited for the last one to run past him, cracked his knuckles like he was getting ready for a fist fight, and pranced up the stairs, the boards under his feet flexing under his weight and complaining mightily for all their burdens.
That was her cue. She dashed from table to table, yanking the money boxes from under each in which bills had been stuffed in exchange for chips. Her jacket was double-lined and oversized. Far too thin for the weather upstairs, street side. But by the time the jacket was “inflated” with all the money, it would look just heavy and convincing enough to be the perfect cold weather parka, fit for the Alaskan tundra, or for a New York snap snow storm heading their way from Canada, in point of fact.
His father, to give credit where credit was due, was busy playing his part right now. Pretending to be searching for the little girl to give her some more. Drooling, holding out the wallet sized picture of Kendra to the mob, pretending to be too falling down drunk and oblivious to realize what the mob was coming for. Instead just saying, “Have you seen my little girl?” Adding incest to the picture was just the final crowd-gone-wild straw.
They’d beat him to within an inch of his life, but pull back just enough to make sure he lived to see the inside of prison, where his real hell would begin. Like him, after all, they were all pros, all plotters and schemers, and so someone in that crowd would get the others under control by advising them of the best way to mete out this guy’s real punishment.
She, meanwhile, was sneaking out the subterranean casino dive with the money, entirely unnoticed. If someone saw her running away, they might even applaud her and give her all the time she needed to put some distance between her and the vile man with the clown face taking the beating, with the swollen, bulbous red nose, and cheeks painted in blood.
As to how his father survived those beat downs, he was often too drunk to feel them. But he had other advantages. Bones broken so many times previously from prior beatings, a bit more regulated and controlled, were damn near unbreakable now, like some karate master hardening his bones by striking blows to cinderblocks, with his hands, his feet, his forehead, or tackling cement walls and throwing every other part of his body against them. And then there was the stuff they gave the military guys, strictly off limits on the civilian circuit. You had to know somebody. You drank the cocktail and it repaired you in record time, numbed the pain better than opium. In fact, you got high off the stuff and addicted to it. One of the tricks for keeping the soldiers in line, making them fearless, and so that not one of them wanted to do anything but re-up with another tour of duty every time their tour ended.
Her father had never been a soldier, though he’d threaten her with it, saying the high was just that good to sign up and leave her behind and that they might just take his sorry, broken down old ass, not for combat, but to lead some division, be the brains of the outfit, a role she could well see him playing masterfully, lending credence to the threat. But he would never leave her, of course, time would prove that. Because in the end, he had all the leverage he needed with his little girl for obtaining any drug he wanted, and he wanted them all. Why settle for what the army could offer when the whole world was his oyster? No, that wouldn’t make any sense. What did, at least to him, was giving the john supplying him the wonder drug the blow job of his life every blue moon, just when he ran out of all other options, and was down to this, his least favorite, and probably not because of the shame of going down on the guy so much as having to choke on the size of his erection. Her father may have been creative after a fashion, but he was nothing if not a real-world pragmatist.
Laughing at the thought of him choking on some john’s inflated penis was probably what woke her from the dream, had her sitting up in bed. “Control your thoughts, Kendra, they affect people at a distance. If you’re getting off on the idea of your father choking on some john’s dick, chances are someone else is too, using that same psychic energy, sucking on it like a battery, to justify what they’re doing.” Isn’t that what Torin would say? God help her, she didn’t believe any of that New Age nonsense, but the last thing she wanted was to give some perp in her reality or some other all the sense of self-righteousness he needed to continue violating innocents.
She got up from the bed, walked to the window, pulled the blinds on the schoolyard across the street and all the happy kids playing and enjoying a childhood she never had. Maybe she should think of getting a kid of her own, a little girl, she could give the kind of childhood to that she never had. Yeah, right. Far more likely to carry over the horrors of your father, in a hundred different ways you’d never be conscious of. That, or overcompensate. Either way, you’d be the worst parent on earth.
Tired torturing herself, she closed the blinds, put any thought of her past and at least one potential future out of her mind, and padded back to bed.
***
“Morty?” Four Star General Mortimer Wrenfeld turned to his young assistant, who went by the entirely endearing name of Derringer, currently addressing him. Derringer was nervous and insecure and frequently shook from a hyperactive nervous system. He had a wiry, firm, if underdeveloped build. Real runt of the litter stuff. Ordinarily, Derringer was someone he’d step on like a bug before he went on to breed, and feel the human race was better off for it. But for all his faults, Derringer did two things well, the first was pick holes in Mortimer’s grand designs, and Mortimer valued anyone who had the courage to speak up to him before he made a decision that could negatively impact millions. And then there was Derringer’s even more valuable saving grace of being able to suck Morty’s dick better than a Hoover, all while making choking sounds indicating it was just too much too handle, which made Morty’s dick all the harder. He was positive Derringer was straight, and just allowing himself to be bullied, which after all, is what runts of the litter did. Had he realized as much sooner, he’d have changed his attitude towards runts of the litter, assigned them their rightful place in the world.
“What is it, Derringer?”
Derringer held his whiskey in his hand from Mortimer’s wet bar, sipping it to help settle his nerves. He was pacing Morty’s living room, a place to which they frequently retired at the end of the day, often bringing work home with them in the form of carry over conversations from earlier in their day spent at the Pentagon. “I’ve been thinking of Clyde Barker’s apprentice, Notchka.”
“I’d be damned concerned if you weren’t. We haven’t been able to track her since she started playing hopscotch across the multiverse.”
“What I mean is, I think we oughtn’t to be trying to entice her back.”
“Come again?”
“Sure, the power’s enticing, but we need someone that’s more controllable. A dumbed down, watered down version of her.”
“Go on.”
“The ashes of the woman she combusted outside the gym. I had our people sift through them. Turns out the flames were no match for Notchka’s cells, the very evidence they were trying to conceal. There was a fair amount of damage to them, sure, but I believe we have enough to concoct our own poor man’s facsimile of her, which I’m thinking may actually serve us better.”
Morty nodded. “I like it. This is one time not coming away with the prize goose may lead to an even greater feast. Speaking of feasts, Derringer, it’s time for your nightly milkshake.”
“Yes, sir,” Derringer said in that whipped way of his, “right away, sir.” He scurried over to Mortimer, dropped to his knees, unzipped Morty’s fly and started making this wet, gurgling, chocking sounds that Morty loved so much. “Drag it out, Derringer. I don’t want to come too soon. I need the time to think with my head clear, ponder the full ramifications of this new road we’re heading down, the next generation of psi-soldiers.
” He sipped at his whiskey. Derringer made choking sounds to the effect of “yes, sir.”
THIRTY-TWO
Notchka materialized alongside Clyde on the latest Ley line adjacent world he wished to attend to. The countryside was ablaze with autumn color. The forest as alive as Sherwood Forest in Robin Hood he read to her as a child, only the riot of colors made the whole experience feel a bit more psychedelic. The wide wending trail before them led up to a castle at the summit, to which they were headed.
They hiked high enough up to appreciate the many valleys, not just the ones adjacent to them on either side of the mountain range, but the ones in the far distance. In each of the adjoining valleys flew a dragon, each one policing its area, occasionally meeting up at the mountain ridge overhead to breathe fire at one another, test the boldness of the other, and mark its territory. At other times flying into one another’s territory and needing to be chased out by the offended dragon. Hiking the trail, taking in the drama of the dueling dragons, pleased Notchka to no end.
“I see you’re not beyond a little rhetoric when it comes to recruiting my assistance,” Notchka said. “I am terribly fond of these fantasy worlds.”
“You’re not beyond a little rhetoric yourself, I see. That’s a hell of a climb up that mountain. You could have just beamed us inside the castle.”
“Well, all work and no play makes Notchka’s life way too dull. I don’t suppose we could take time out to fly one of those dragons.”
“Don’t push it, little girl.”
“That’s okay. Something tells me we’re going to see plenty of action soon enough.”
“What are you referring to?”
Notchka smiled ambiguously. “You’ll see.”
As they headed up the mountain, the smaller, more camouflaged creatures, a lot less eye-catching than the dragons, slowly revealed themselves as they moved about. Clyde fetched a fallen branch to use as a walking stick, and he joined in the game of alerting one another to the animals.
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