Flashback (Out of the Box Book 23)

by Robert J. Crane

  “I don't want to,” little me said, not looking up from her dolls. She was clearly right in the middle of something and was not brooking any interruptions.

  “If you go now, I'll read you a book,” she said, “and grandma will tuck you in.”

  Little me straightened, looking up at her with bright eyes. “And Debra, too?” She glanced over her shoulder at me and smiled.

  “Uh, sure,” I said, “I can tuck you in.”

  Little me sprinted off, disappearing into the back hallway before I could even fully process what I'd just agreed to.

  My mother must have sensed my apprehension. “Just sit on the bed and talk to her for a couple minutes. Tell her a story, maybe.”

  “It's easy,” Lethe said. She shared a look with my mom. “I guess this tells us where we stand in relation to grandchildren and great-grandchildren, though.”

  “Hey, I've been busy living my life and saving the world...and stuff,” I said. “It's complicated.”

  “It always is,” my mother said, and disappeared down the hall after little me. I heard them in the back, water running and some muttered arguing about best practices for brushing teeth.

  “Do you want children?” my grandmother asked after a few minutes of silence.

  “I'm not violently opposed to them or anything,” I said, still watching the dark hallway where my mother and little me had disappeared with something akin to quiet dread. Tuck-in at bedtime? I'd done this job for Eddie Vansen while babysitting, and it was always a combo of weird and hilarious, because kids tended to come up with the most bizarre ideas, ones that seemed to be good for a laugh, always.

  “That's good,” my grandmother said, “because they tend to put people who violently oppose children into prison.”

  I puckered my lips. “Well, that's not me.” Boy, would she get a charge out of the irony of that statement if she remembered it in twenty years. Since she had, in fact, busted me out of prison.

  We settled into an easy silence, just listening to my mother's entreaties to little me. There was a little back and forth, every word of which we could hear.

  “How long are Debra and grandma staying with us?”

  “I don't know, sweetie. I think we need to move again soon. They'll probably stay with us until we finish doing that.”

  “We have to move again?”

  “Yes.” My mother made a shhh-ing sound. “It'll be okay.”

  I exchanged a look with Lethe, who kept her voice low when she asked, “Was it like this for you growing up?”

  “Arguably worse,” I said. “She has to lock me at home all day, every day, while she goes to her job.”

  Lethe frowned. “How did that work? You don't seem like the type to just sit at home and wait.”

  I looked at the window behind me, the orange sky fading at the close of day. “Well...she set up a pretty compelling punishment system, so...it did more or less work.”

  Lethe shook her head. “Sounds terrible.”

  “I can't complain,” I said. “I mean look what we've dealt with in the last couple days. Two meta attacks and an unpowered couple of human agents trying to get me. Imagine trying to fight through that every day for the next ten years.”

  “I can't imagine it would be easy,” she said. “But neither can I imagine that living confined for a decade is going to be, either.”

  “Well, it made me who I am today,” I said, smiling wanly. “How can I complain about that? I had a training regimen, a school course load...it may have been tough, but it made me tough. And I certainly needed that after I got out.”

  “It just seems...so unfair that you should have to go through that during your upbringing.” She leaned forward, clasping her hands together in her lap. “There are alternatives, you know. Other places you could go where you might be welcome.”

  A little alarm bell rang in my head. “Except that's not how I was raised.”

  “Maybe this is your chance to choose differently,” she said. “To be different. Like Marty, teaching his father to slug Biff and waking up in a different world when he got back to the present. Maybe your life could be different – in a good way.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “or I could ruin everything. Akiyama seems to believe that time bends only so far and then it breaks. He gave me this whole lecture one time about river rocks and currents and – never mind. Look, the man once tried to change time for himself. Tried everything, near as I can tell. It didn't work for him, and it nearly destroyed the world, maybe even the universe.” I shook my head. “I don't want to mess with existence. It's way more important than my upbringing, which I survived, and which made the ass-kicking machine you see in front of you.”

  My grandmother's brow jumped an inch in amusement. “'Ass-kicking machine'?”

  I shrugged. “Everyone's gotta have a hobby.”

  My mother appeared at the door to the back hallway, looking way more tired than she had when she'd gone in. “She's ready. She wants 'Debra' first, then grandma.”

  “Oooookay,” I said, rising to my feet. “Guess I've been summoned by the big boss. I better not keep her waiting.”

  “Damned right,” Lethe said.

  My mother let out a laugh as she exhaled and collapsed onto the couch. “You're not far off. Five-year-olds, I swear.” She shook her head. “Bet she has a nightmare tonight.”

  “Oh?” Lethe asked as I headed for the hallway.

  “That Walmart thing...I think it's going to stick with her, what she saw there,” my mother said as I walked down the darkened hall. There was a night light outside an open door, shining into the room, which was also lighted by a bedside lamp.

  I'd been shown little me's room by the girl herself sometime during the day. She proudly gave me the tour, insisting that I saw her room. It was definitely worth seeing, especially since it had once been mine and I had no memory of it at all.

  I paused at the door. Her little shape was completely covered over in blankets, and I hesitated.

  She threw the blankets off in an eruption of cloth and was smiling at me underneath. “Hi,” she said, backlit by the faint twilight outside the curtained window behind her.

  “Hey,” I said, and crossed the threshold, like a vampire being invited in, except more uncomfortable. “I hear it's my turn to do tuck-in.” She nodded, plopping back onto her pillow, dark hair spilling out across the white cloth. “So... what does one do during tuck-in? You gotta help me, I've never really done this kind of thing for you before, I need some expectations so I don't f – errr, mess it up.”

  “Not teaching her any swear words would be a good start,” my mother growled, meta-low, from the living room. I cringed.

  “On it,” I said.

  “On what?” little me's brow puckered.

  “Never mind,” I said, sinking onto the edge of the bed. “What do we do at tuck-in time? I'm so lost. It's been a long time since I was little like you, and I don't remember tuck-in.”

  “Did your mommy not do tuck-in time with you?” Her little face was just amazed by that idea, it was so foreign to her.

  “My mommy was really busy with other stuff,” I said, trying to remember any tuck-ins. Nope, never happened that I could recall.

  “Oh,” she said. “My mommy's not busy.”

  I snorted. “That's because she's not doing radiology yet.”

  Little me's face quirked in curiosity, but she dropped that and moved on to talking about more important things, namely whatever was on her mind: “Can we play dolls again tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Absolutely.”

  “Good,” she said, then seemed to rise and flop on the bed again in a single motion. “Tell me a story?”

  “Oh, uh...sure,” I said, trying to think of something. “What...kind of story do you like?”

  “I don't know,” she said. “Tell me a story.”

  “Uh, okay,” I said, trying again, in vain, to come up with something. “Uhm...uh...”

  She watched me hem and haw for a
few seconds, then said, “You're not very good at telling stories, are you?”

  “Not for G-rated audiences, no,” I said. “Dirty jokes – got 'em by the ton. Even a few limericks of the ribald sort. But for a five-year-old audience, yeah, I'm a bit light on age-appropriate content. Give me a second.” And I concentrated. “Okay, I think I have something.”

  She clapped her hands together. “Yay!”

  “Once upon a time,” I started, because, dammit, that was the only way I knew how to start a story to a five-year-old, “there was a fierce, angry woman in charge of stopping bad guys-”

  “So she was a police woman?”

  “Basically, yeah,” I said. “And this, uh, police woman, was sent to Boulder, Colorado – do you know where that is?”

  “Where it snows?”

  “There's a lot of mountains there, and yeah, it sometimes snows. In contrast to Iowa, here, where it snows but you couldn't find a hill with a telescope and prayer. Anyway, I was in Boulder, Colorado-”

  “I thought this was about a police woman?”

  “Oh, right, this police woman was in Boulder, Colorado-”

  “What was her name?”

  I cleared my throat. “Oh, I don't know. What would you name her?”

  “Sienna.”

  I nearly choked. “Well, what a coincidence. Because that was actually her name. So Sienna went to Boulder, Colorado, the land of mountains and snow and no flat-butt cornfields, to catch a very, very bad man whose name was Gordy Fletcher. And Gordy was so bad that his mommy had called the police and said, 'My son is a total tool, and you should arrest him'-”

  Her little mouth dropped open. “What did he do to his mommy that was so bad?”

  “It was less about what he did to his mom and more about him robbing banks on the sly – though I guess he was partying until like three, four in the morning and still lived with her, which made her mad enough to search his room while he was out and boom – she found all the money from his bank robberies. So I guess you could say if Gordy hadn't been a jerk and gone to bed when his mommy told him to go to bed instead of smarting off, drinking beer, and generally flipping her the bird at bedtime-”

  “What's 'flipping the bird'-”

  My mother grunted in the other room.

  “It's being mean to, uhm, flick a bird,” I said, making a flicking motion with my fingers.

  Her mouth fell open again. “That is so mean. Why would he be so mean to a bird?”

  “You think that's bad, you should see what he did to the bank tellers that ticked him off. Anyway, I get out to Boulder on this anonymous tip about Gordy, and – errr, ooops, I mean Sienna does that – and as soon as she gets there, she finds Gordy behind his favorite bar, passed out from, uhmmmm...too much chocolate milk and skipping his nap. Yeah. That's it. You ever get tired when you don't get your nap?”

  She nodded. “And sometimes I sit in here without taking my nap and just talk and play, and sometimes-”

  “Okay, let's get back on track. So, anyhoo, Sienna finds him sacked out in the alley behind the bar, which, is again, an instructive lesson on why you shouldn't skip your nap or talk back to your parents. Or rob banks, but y'know, that one's sort of implied as a good rule of everyday life. So Gordy's out, face down on an alley floor, and I'm thinking – err, Sienna's thinking, this is bound to be the easiest collar ever-”

  I paused. Outside the window, a shadow passed behind the curtains. It was only there for a second, highlighted against the fading sky, but it was there – then gone.

  I frowned. Had something just walked by out there? I stopped a second, listened-

  Nothing. Must have been nothing. Maybe a car passing on the road? But I hadn't heard anything...

  “Debra?”

  I frowned. “Sorry. Where was I?”

  “I don't know,” little me said, frowning in concentration. “Bank robber? Nap?”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “He was asleep in the alley when I – she – got there. And so she starts walking toward him, tiptoeing gently-”

  I paused again. Had I heard the crunch of someone walking on grass outside? There was yelling in the distance, someone shouting to the heavens in glee about a football game or something, but closer-

  I listened. Nothing.

  I shook it off again and launched back into my story. “Well, anyway, long story short, Gordy might have been asleep, but he was not going to just let me, uh, her, slap the cuffs on him and take him to jail without a fight-”

  The shadow moved across the window again, big and grand, taller than the glass pane, casting darkness through the curtain as it blotted out the last light bleeding through the cloth. The crunch of a large foot on grass, too, told me that it was close-

  “Someone's coming,” I whispered, meta-low, and heard an explosion of motion in the living room.

  I scooped up little Sienna around the waist, her pastel nightgown flapping as I yanked her free of the covers before she could even squawk. She let out a little noise as I reached the door with her, shoving her out behind me, putting myself between her and the window as it exploded inward in a shower of glass-

  Putting my arm up, I caught a shard in the wrist, and it stung. Warm blood trickled down my wrist as something huge landed on the bed. The frame took the weight and shattered as the hulking specimen rode it to the ground.

  I took a sharp breath.

  It. Was. Huge.

  And... oh so familiar.

  Long, mangy hair was strung around his shoulders, a dirty white t-shirt covering his massive chest. Old jeans stained with blood and bile covered his legs, like tree trunks they were so huge. His muscular arms ended in fingernails filed to points, and in the darkness I could see canine teeth shining behind a cruel smile-

  It had been years since I'd seen him in the flesh.

  And nine months since he'd left my mind.

  Six months since he'd died, trapped in the brain of another.

  I took another breath, barely, and my skin went cold, as though someone had run chilly water from the crown of my head down the back of my neck, over my flesh all the way to the soles of my feet, and every inch broke out in goosebumps as the name popped from my lips, unbidden-

  His name.

  “Wolfe.”

  25.

  “You know the name of the Wolfe,” he breathed, throaty, coiled on the collapsed ruin of the bed like he was ready to vault off of it. “Ahhh...so flattered. But the Wolfe doesn't know you...little doll.”

  “I bet you call all the girls that,” I said, pushing little Sienna behind me, into the arms of our mother, who'd just made it to the door. Without looking back, I felt her get scooped out of my hands.

  “No, little doll,” Wolfe said, still grinning, “you're special. Just like every other little doll, meant to be played with. Aching to be.”

  “I already played dolls once today,” I said, flexing my hands one at a time, cracking my knuckles. For show, entirely. His skin was practically impervious to traditional attacks. “But for you, I suppose, I could play again. You like to be Ken, right?” I pointed at his kneeling posture. “Because he reminds you of yourself? You know...down there?”

  Wolfe's smile disappeared. I guess like most men, he wasn't impervious to cracks about the size of his manhood. “Do you want to see, little doll? See how wrong you are?”

  I put my fingers to my lips and puffed my cheeks out. “Ooh – oop – sorry. Just threw up in my mouth a little. Probably unrelated. Go on, you were saying something about how you have to compensate for your small penis by driving a Volkswagen?”

  Wolfe's eyes flared. “The little doll greets the Wolfe with insults.”

  “Well, I wasn't going to greet you with a big, sloppy kiss. I mean, look at those teeth. Do you even brush them, or do you just go straight for the milk bones?” I tapped the door frame. “Back up,” I whispered. I was sure Wolfe caught it, but I didn't care. I needed to make sure mom was clear before he lunged at me, which was probably coming any second.
Wolfe was not one to get caught up in distractions for long. Not when there was the prospect of meat and play at hand.

  He growled, a sound long perfected as an intimidation tactic. One advantage of having had him in my head for years was that knowing this took most of the dread out of it.

  Most of it. But not all.

  “Listen to you – you're just a big puppy, aren't you?” My strategy was to take the piss out of him until he lunged at me. Admittedly not exactly genius-level brainstorming, there, but when you were faced with an unstoppable, near-invincible force like Wolfe...well, you had to do what you had to do. “Don't expect me to pet you, though. God only knows where you've been. I mean, really, the gutter would be such an improvement over where you probably end up most nights-”

  That did it. He lunged, finally, springing off the remains of the bed and launching it into the wall behind him with the force of his jump. It shattered against the dresser, but I barely noticed because there was a giant Wolfe flying at me, his mouth open.

  How do you stop a runaway train?

  Punching it wouldn't help. I mean, it might, if you could theoretically punch hard enough to knock it off its track, but the strength and momentum behind it were far, far stronger than a human – even metahuman hand – so even if you delivered a perfect blow, and knocked it aside, you'd still probably break every bone up to your wrist.

  Pushing it definitely wouldn't work. That'd be a fast way to see yourself dragged underneath, if not shredded and splattered completely.

  Running certainly wouldn't do it. Turning was a time-consuming process, and the train would be on you – and over you, splat splat, before you even managed to spring back.

  No, the only way to stop a runaway train was to not stop it at all.

  I dropped backward, like I was falling in a trust exercise, kicking my legs up off the ground at the same time. Wolfe sailed toward me, claws extended, his grungy t-shirt right there as I dropped. He swung his hands for me, comically, trying to readjust to my insane and possibly desperate move of letting him roll over me-

  I brought my feet up and put them in his belly as he swung his hands down to strike at my legs. I hit the ground back-first, in a slight backwards roll, my legs chambered, my knees almost against my chest.