Used to Be: The Kid Rapscallion Story (22 page)

“The court is going to find you guilty,” King Iula says, motioning for what looks like a turkey leg. “You’re going to be fed to the lava ocean. Your death will be painful and long.”

“So … I should probably try to escape, is what you’re saying?”

Iula chuckles and bits of meat juice dribble down his chin. “The Coupling Mushrooms are one of our oldest traditions. Do you know,” he asks, life momentarily coming to his clouded eyes, “how Jula has spent the last ten years for shaming me with her thievery and mockery of our marriage customs?”

“It’s a castle and you’re a king, so I’m guessing there’s a tower or a dungeon involved.”

The drumstick, still mostly whole, falls from Iula’s hand as he licks the skin around his lips. Two servants run up the small steps to his throne to dab juice away from his rolling neck but Iula shoves them away.

“There is a tower, yes,” he says, pulling his chain mail off his stomach to scratch his belly button. “It is kept a thousand kilometers from here, in a deep valley of rock. Nothing grows there. No one has ever wanted to go there, which is why we built our prison in that canyon. Jula is there, in a prison cell with a small bed. She is not kept with the general population, of course, because no one knows she is alive. If they did … well, I would not be king anymore. The forces that conspire against me would use her whore behavior to turn the tide against me, and I cannot have that! I cannot have that!”

King Iula’s rant dissolves into a fit of coughing as saliva runs out of the corners of his mouth.

“While you have lived your life, my daughter sits in jail,” he continues when his coughing fit has stilled. “Her life is lived in complete solitude. There are no windows for her to look out, no visitors for her to converse with. Even her meals are delivered when she sleeps. There is only one thing to break up her monotony.”

“What?” Jason asks. “Bridge club on Fridays?”

“We do not kill lightly, human, but for those who have broken our most honored laws, death is an option we keep. Since Jula has been imprisoned, we have put 159 men and women to death for various crimes against
Faunakyat
. Before they are killed, they are given a last meal, a last visit from a loved one, and,” his eyes narrow, “an hour with my daughter to do whatever they want. I have read your book, human, and take it to your core when I tell you that for all the depravity you describe, there are none so deprived as those with two hours to live and one hour to do whatever they want with the beautiful daughter of the man about to execute them.”

12

Jason’s hands ball into fists and he forgets, for the moment, that he is no longer what he was. He forgets that six months ago he could do no more than hold his own with a jealous husband in Hicksville. All he can see is the girl he knew and the pure evilness of a father who would punish his daughter in such a manner.

“I am going to fucking kill you,” Jason promises.

The handcuffs on his wrists and ankles send waves of electricity through his body, dropping him on the spot.

“Why would you want to kill me?” King Iula asks, licking meat juice off of his fat fingers. “I plan to make you heir to my throne.”

2013

continued

20

“If you want details on what Jula was like when I opened her cell door,” Jason says, his eyes raging at Belle, “you can go drown yourself in Viking Boy’s piss.”

Belle is taken aback at the story, but determines she will hold her ground. A large part of her thinks Jason is lying, even with the obvious pain recounting this portion of the story causes him.

“She seems to have recovered,” Belle says. “The tabloids have been full of stories about the two of you over the past few years. If you’re not breaking up, you’re making up. Plenty of expensive vacations, too. Not to mention the affairs, the partying, the visits to see Fred at the reserve.”

Jason slumps back, defeated. “Lies. All lies,” he says. “All those vacations were photoshopped and all the stories were made up. I haven’t seen Fred since I gave him to that animal preserve. The story that King Iula fed the press was that we had spent the last decade traveling in space and had now come home. No one smart believed it, of course, even if they didn’t know Iula had been whoring her out to Faunakyat’s worst criminals, but the public did love their prodigal daughter. We were given a room in the castle and we made a few public appearances and the like, but it was all at the king’s bidding. Mostly, we just sat in the room and grew to like being quiet with one another.”

“I …” Belle lets her voice trail off before taking a deep breath. “I swear to God, Jason, if you’re lying about this …”

Tears start coming to his face and he finds he can’t stop them, that he doesn’t want to stop them. All the pain that he’s been through, both the pain he's experienced and the pain he’s caused, seems to rise up in that moment and he understands what a failure his life has been. “When Iula died … his court … they killed her. They fucking killed her.”

“Jason,” Viking Vot says calmly, “she’s not dead. She was on the news earlier.”

He shakes his head. “Body double. Fucking clone, actually. They killed the king, killed her and would have killed me, but that’s when Zen and the
Temperance
arrived and saved me. Lucky me,” he says, but it sounds like he believes anything but that. “I wish I’d died there,” he admits, sobbing. “Jula was … she was damaged, of course, but over time …” he shrugs and wails in pain before controlling himself.

“Two damaged people, her and I,” he says. “At least for awhile, there, we had each other.”

21

“What are we going to do with him?” Bubblegunner asks.

“I don’t know,” Belle admits.

“It’s your call,” Gunner tells her. “Vot and I will back it, whatever it is, but as much as you don’t want him around, Belle, we can use him. We can take down the
Temperance
and we can get all that cocaine he stole. We are cops, after all. The Eunofalagians can feed their entire popu—”

“I know what they can do with it!” Belle snaps. She takes a few breaths and looks over to Jason, who’s busy blowing his nose and composing himself from his story. “I know what they can do with it,” she repeats in a calmer voice, “and I know what we are.”

“Then what’s the problem, Belle?” Vot asks.

Her eyes have never left Jason, and now his eyes are looking up at hers. Belle doesn’t know what to think because she’s thinking everything, reliving every moment, every feeling, every memory of the person Jason was and what he’d been through. He could be charming and funny, but he could also drop away to dark places. She knows why that happened after seeing what the Amulet of Anamnesis had taken from him, but he broke up with her because he didn’t respect her enough to …

“What’s the problem, Vot?” Belle asks. “Honestly, I don’t know if I can trust him to not screw this up.”

22

“If you screw us on this, Jason,” Belle says, handing him a bottle of Schlitz, and letting the thought go unfinished.

“You’ll what? Not talk to me for another decade?” he says, taking a swig and looking at the other 23 bottles in the case. “Do you really expect me to drink all that?”

“I expect you to drink as much as you can until you pass out or Zen’s crew gets here first,” Belle says. “It will explain where you’ve been since you disappeared from Tribold’s sight. Our tech people say they’ve been scanning any and all electronic bands for you. Gunner payed cash for the beer, but we’ve ordered you a hooker under your own name. I’d suggest you sleep with her. To keep your cover, and all. It shouldn’t be hard, unless sex isn’t the most important thing in your life anymore.”

Jason shakes his head and looks up at her. “I’m sorry for what I wanted from you back then, Belle. I am.” He rises to his feet, knocks back his head, and downs the rest of the bottle. “But I wonder if you’re more angry at me for being an asshole, or at yourself for loving an asshole like me. Because if you didn’t ever love me, you wouldn’t be such a bitch to me now.”

Jason tosses the bottle towards the bathroom, where the bottle shatters against the hard floor, but doesn’t take his eyes off of Belle. He wants her to apologize or back down or do so little as to give him the twitch of an eye to show that his words had an effect, but she is stone cold blank.

There is a knock at the door.

“Your whore is here,” Belle says. “I ordered her for you myself. Picked out her wardrobe, too.”

23

Jason opens the door and the hooker smiles at him.

“Hi, love,” she says. “Are you, Jason?”

She looks exactly like twenty-year old Belle, right down to the costume she’s wearing.

24

“So I walk in,” Lavinia laughs, “and Jason here is balls deep in some hooker, a bottle of Schlitz in each hand, screaming like a wild child. ‘Take it, Belle!’ he’s yelling. And the hooker, oh gods, the hooker is like, ‘My name isn’t Belle,’ and Jason is like, ‘You’re a hooker! Your name is what I say it is! Hooker!’ Gods, funniest thing I’ve seen in months.”

A drunk Jason shrugs and laughs and plops himself down into the co-pilot’s seat in the
Temperance’s
cockpit. He puts his hands on the controls and acts like he’s trying to fly the plane.

“How’re ya felling there, Kid?” Zen asks.

“I really want to bury my face a mountain of cocaine,” he says, smiling and licking his lips.

“Oh, yeah?” Livinia says, standing behind his chair and giving him a massage. “You wouldn’t know where we could find some, do you? You know, to help us not go there?”

“Back on Earth,” he says, giggling, “I stole $35 million worth of coke from this stupid vampire mobster. Jimmy Vamps or something. We should definitely not go to Earth so I can access it through a hidden door into the
Blood Zone
.” He turns to look at Zen and his face turns serious. “I want 10 percent of the coke,” he says, “and you can have the rest. I’m going to use it to blow my fucking brains out. Time to go home, yeah?”

25

“Greetings,” Vot says, as Belle opens the door. “You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she sighs, back in her red singing dress and looking tired. “Do you think he’ll go for it?” she asks. “Do you think he saw through all that hardness? If he does, he might not —”

“You wouldn’t win a … a Grammy for that performance, but I think it convinced him,” Vot says. “Are you okay with using him as bait to capture Zen?”

Belle nods. “Seeing him is just a reminder of who I used to be and what I used to want.”

“You’re a good cop, Belle,” Vot says. “Whatever it is you used to want to be back in your Earth days, the universe is a better place for having you in it in ORION.”

“Thanks,” she says, offering up a smile. “And it’s an Oscar for acting. Grammys are for singing.”

“Verily,” Vot grins, “you won’t be winning one for singing, either.”

“Ha,” Belle rolls her eyes. “You’re a comedian now. Tell the techs to keep an eye on the
Temperance
. Zen won’t make a run for the coke today, but if he starts wandering in the direction of Earth, I think we can say this nut will bear a tree.”

2015

1

I’m fucked and I know it.

“A hotel manager, an ex-hero, and a monster team up to save a missing girl,” Mr. Monster says as we ride the elevator to the bottom. “Maybe we can sell this to Hollywood.”

“If we don’t die first,” Nancy grumbles.

“I don’t want you there,” I say to Nancy. “Look, I’m not going to pretend I’m a nice guy, but I don’t want you there when we meet with Domina and Vamps tomorrow morning.”

“I have to be there,” Nancy sighs, hugging herself. “Joey and Domina are using the Grand’s boardroom and … look,” she says, shaking her head, “I really don’t want to, but Domina said I have to. She said it’s the only way to guarantee you’ll give up the coke.”

“Nancy,” I say, “there isn’t any cocaine.”

“Jason …”

“No, it’s gone,” I tell her. “ORION came and grabbed it last year. Don’t you remember that shootout over at the old scrapyards? Well, that was me trying not to get killed as ORION and some space pirates shot up each other for Joey Vamps’ cocaine. Good guys won. Yay.”

“I don’t …”

“Sure you do,” Mr. Monster says. “Right around Thanksgiving.”

Nancy rubs her hands over her face and then through her hair. “Yeah, sure, I guess I remember that. Ro’meo’s family had come down for the holidays, so it was a pretty crazy time. You ain’t ever had a mother in law like a Black Martian mother in law.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s racist,” Mr. Monster says.

The elevator dings as it hits the ground floor and all three of us step out.

“Good night,” Nancy sighs. “See you in,” she checks her watch, “five hours.” She waves at them absently as she heads away from the elevator bank and across the garage floor. We watch her go, saying nothing.

I think about the early days with her and the fun we had and think about who each of us are now and realize the people we became do not match the potential of who we were.

2

“You’re not waiting until morning, are you?” Mr. Monster asks once Nancy has left.

“No,” I answer honestly. “Look, Monster, we’ve had our differences and all, but I think I can trust you on this — you’ve got to go to Nancy’s house and make sure she’s safe because my guess is Joey has a man on her.”

“I can do that,” he says.

“Before you go, I need a security card to my old suite.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s where the doorway to the
Blood Zone
is located.”

Mr. Monster nods. “I thought you were lying about the coke,” he says, reaching into a pocket inside his jacket to hand me a purple card. “I just didn’t imagine it was in the Grand.”

“Yeah. That’s why I needed the room. And I’m going to try to make that deal go down right now, and save Colbie,” I say.

“How?” he asks. “I am the security chief here,” Monster reminds me. “I’m not keen on seeing the casino shot up.”

“Look, God’s honest truth, I came back to Earth just to get the cocaine. I’ve been running with some space pirates and we’re here to make a score.”

“Who?”

“Zenaforn Guez,” I answer.

“Purple guy?” Mr. Monster asks, scratching his head. “Smart dude, but dangerous. What are you into?”

“That’s him,” I nod. “A little over a year ago, he busted me out of jail on
Faunakyat
, and I ended up getting snatched up by an ORION patrol, who proceeded to tell me who Zen was.”

“You didn’t know?”

“Nope.”

“You always were shit as research,” Monster smiles. “Wanna know what Becca is up to these days?”

“I’ve got enough on my plate without dealing with her,” I say, shaking my head, wondering if all superheroes have one of these “This is Your Life” final acts at some point in their career. “I made a deal with ORION to help them catch Zen and his crew, so they’re hanging around, too. Probably. I hope.”

“You don’t know?”

“Like I said, it was over a year ago. But given that one of those ORION cops is Belle …”

“Belle Flower?” Monster says, openly laughing. “Dude … your life sucks.”

“I know, you fucking Munster reject, I know,” I nod, “but we need to make sure my suckage doesn’t get all over Nancy and her family. Which is why I need you there. If we’re lucky, the good guys will win and I won’t end up dead.”

“And if the bad guys win?”

“Then it’s up to you to save Colbie, too.”

3

“You’re really buying into this me being a good guy thing?” Mr. Monster asks with a smile. “Just out of the goodness of my heart? You know superheroes were basically run out of business, right? The Vigilante Act was even worse on bad guys, making us turn state’s evidence against anyone and everyone just to scorch the earth of capes, good and bad. I might not be a changed man, Jason, is what I’m saying,” he admits, his eyes narrowing. “I might just be doing what I need to do to survive.”

I look up into the powerful, but weathered face. “Get to Nancy’s house,” I tell him, feeling tired. “Get her in the kitchen — in the kitchen, Monster, the kitchen — and ask her to tell you my full name.”

“Why?”

“Because when she answers that, you’ll have all the motivation you need to keep her safe.”

4

“I just have one question,” I ask. “One thing I can’t figure out.”

“What?”

“Who was Nancy supposed to be fucking in that room we found her in? She didn’t go there expecting Domina, did she?”

Mr. Monster hesitates for a second, but then gives me the answer. “Nobody,” he says.

He pulls out his cell phone and shows me a video of Joey Vamps standing next to Nancy in the elevator. Her eyes are blank and his words are low and controlling.

“Mind control,” I note. “Fucking vampires.”

5

Mr. Monster gives me his All Access card, wishes me well, and leaves the Grand Vegas. Whatever happens now is going to be messy. It’s not just Joey Vamps and an apparently returned Domina Tricks that wants my cocaine, there’s the matter of Zen, Tribold, and Livinia wanting it, and Belle, Vot, and Bubblegunner wanting to catch the pirates. This is why I came to the Grand Vegas today, my first day back on Earth since I was grabbed outside the Waffle House back in 2009.

My plan is to go to my suite and get the coke, which will bring Zen to me, which will hopefully then bring Belle to stop Zen, and then I’ll try to convince Belle to save Colbie. Which she’ll do because she’s Belle and she can’t resist a lost cause.

It’s not much of a plan but as my entire career has proven to me, I’m not much of a hero. All those victories over people no one can remember and here at the end, I’m relying on the one major villain I ever faced by himself to keep Nancy and her family safe.

6

I enter my old suite for the second time in the past 12 hours, fingering the card from Fat Jumpsuit Elvis. Like an idiot, I had thought she slipped me the card back in Diner 1950 because she wanted to sleep with me, but after Nancy told us about Joey Vamps, I knew this wasn’t a hook-up and her looking a bit like DG was because she really was a DG duplicate. The clock on the wall reads 2:38 AM, and that’s as good a time as any for all of this to go down. There’s going to be violence, so there’s no better place to have it than in a suite at the top of a building where no one else but the violent people will be.

I hear the cocking of a gun behind my head and I wonder which of the three camps has gotten here first.

“Where’s my cocaine?” Joey Vamps asks.

I raise his hands above my head and slowly turn around to see an eternally middle-aged mobster in a sharp, dark suit with a handgun pointed at him. Next to him is a woman in a dominatrix outfit, but it’s only someone dressed to look like Domina Tricks, and not the actual person.

“Which one are you?” I ask the costumed Duplication Girl.

“The last one,” DG smiles. “Number 40. The one you created by pushing the original too far. The one that murdered the original,” she says, pointing to the bedroom door in the back, left corner of the suite, “in that very room. But is it actually murder,” she asks, “or suicide?”

“Where’s Colbie?” I ask, feeling sick. I know I’m responsible for what happened to Deege, and I hate myself for it.

“Where’s the coke?”

I shake my head. “Come on, Joey, you know I’m not giving you the cocaine until I see Colbie. And let’s save the timeworn haggle where you tell me you have a gun and can kill me, yeah? Give me Colbie and I’ll give you the cocaine. She’s worth more to me than all the money in the world.”

“You’ll give me all $35 million worth of the coke?”

“I snorted my way through 5 mil worth, give or take,” I admit, “but what’s left is worth way more on the street today than it was originally.”

This answer works well enough for him, so Joey looks to the bedroom. “Bring her out!”

I turn to see the door open, and Fat Jumpsuit Elvis Duplication Girl leads a still teenaged Colbie Cross, dressed in her purple and white Indigo Impster, into the room. My heart soars and jumps and falls back to Earth. She looks exactly the same as when she left, except that her eyes have gone lifeless. She shuffles forward, drool coming out of the corner of her mouth.

It’s like looking at a physical ghost.

“Joey,” I say, trying to control my anger, “be glad I’m not the hero I could have been or I would fucking kill you right now.”

Joey slaps me upside the head. “You think I did that to her? Fuck you, Kid. I found her like that. Long after you and the Revolutionaries gave up looking for her, I found her.”

“Where?” I ask. “Who took her?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if —”

I punch him in the mouth. The Domina-clad DG jumps on my back and shoves me to the carpet, stunning me by dropping an elbow on the back of my neck.

“Easy,” Joey says, patting the duplicate on her back. “I’d be pissed, too, if I found out an alternate universe version of me was an interdimensional criminal stealing every version of Colbie Cross he could find.”

“What?” I ask as DG pulls me up by using the back of my shirt. “No, forget it. I don’t care. I’m just glad she’s back,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck. “I’m happy to trade the coke for her.” I look to her and she doesn’t look back with anymore more than a dull recognition. There’s only six or seven feet between us, but there’s a decade collapsed into that space, and whatever she's been through has been hard and draining.

“The coke, Jason,” Joey Vamps says. “It’s time.”

I nod to him and move to Colbie. “Hey, kid,” I say, taking her hand to lead her to a large chair on the far right side of the room.

“There’s two of them,” she says, pointing to the duplicates, “but 692 of me. I win. I win,” she repeats and starts to sob.

“It’s going to be okay,” I tell her, patting her head and kissing her forehead. I hope it’s not a lie.

7

“Ever seen a
Blood Zone
lock?” I ask Joey Vamps and the two duplicates?

“Can’t say I have,” Joey says.

8

“Do we really have to wait for the entire pool to drain?” Joey asks. We’re all standing on the deck of the infinity pool that extends out beyond the edge of the hotel. The city extends around us, as people mill around in the dead of night, looking for various kinds of scores. The water is draining out the bottom, but it’s not going fast enough for any of us.

I look back to make sure Colbie is okay, and she is okay in the sense that she is still where I put her. I have no idea what I’m going to do with her, but I understand, on some level, that it is up to me to take care of her.

Provided I make it out of this.

9

“No one ever wants to hear about these moments where we’re just standing around, huh?” I ask Joey, who’s halfway through a cigarette.

He gives a knowing half-laugh. “Eagle ’62 was escorting me to a court appearance once,” he says as the duplicates move back inside to get Colbie. “This was in the ‘70s. Early ‘70s, maybe ’73 or ‘4. I’d been arrested by the Gentleman Beaneater on the Boston docks. Boston was a fun city in those days. There was so much racial tension that you could set the blacks and whites on each other with nothing more than a whisper. While they fought, I cleaned up.”

“Until you got caught.”

“Yeah,” he frowns. “Anyway, Eagle ’62 is escorting me to the court appearance and the elevator malfunctions. We’re stuck there, the two of us, two Mass state cops, and the court reporter, like a couple of dumb fucks standing on a corner somewhere. Everyone’s drinking coffee but me.” He smiles. “About 90 minutes into our ordeal, all that coffee needs to come out but no one can tell us when we’re getting out. Finally, I shit you not, Mr. Big Shot Eagle ‘62 and these two state cops are taking turns pissing back into their cups. You should have seen the look on that court reporter’s face when she realized she wasn’t going to make it out without relieving herself, either.”