"Dale Against the Universe" - Part Two
Part Two
To
say I was upset to see my wife with another man would be the understatement of
the millennium. No, I was positively furious. But I kept my cool for
Kristin’s sake. After all, she didn’t recognize me or Neas, not particularly
after Neas introduced us and Craig as the new neighbors – a married couple and
their son. Neas used his “Thomas” alias, while Craig and I kept our usual
names. Of course, we couldn’t use “Curtsinger” as surnames, so we went with Craig’s
family name (“Williams”).
We
must’ve put on a reasonable first impression, since we were invited in for
dinner. I was in a foul mood through most of it. Kristin whipped us up some
fried chicken with mashed potatoes, green peas, and her delectable gravy. It
was good to know she still had a strong southern palate, even all this way out
west.
Dale
was an interesting man, to say the least.
The
topic that took up most of our dinner conversation was him being a veteran
actor in film and television, hence how he could afford the mansion that he and
Kristin lived in together. His most famous role was that of the title character
of the children’s show from the mid-2010s, Captain Knutz.
“I
thought I recognized you!” Neas beamed upon learning this factoid. “I used to
watch you as Captain Knutz when I was a kid!”
Dale’s
brow crinkled. “You must be a lot younger than you look.”
Thankfully,
Craig took everyone’s minds off of the awkwardness Neas’s remark spurred when
he asked, “What’s Captain Knutz?”
“One
of the absolute best pirate shows, lil’ br—I mean, son,” Neas said (with
a very subtle recovery). “Captain Knutz is the main character – a witty,
scruffy pirate with a talking parrot sidekick named ‘Krackers’ and a crew of
misfits that sail off on adventures, visiting islands with unique characters.
One episode, they’re on an island made of chocolate; the next episode, they’re
in a place haunted by ghosts!”
Seeing
little Craig’s eyes light up from Neas’s description of the children’s program
warmed both of my hearts. It momentarily took my mind off of why I sat there at
that table, feeling so angry.
My
parental instincts flared as I saw his face covered with bits of mashed
potatoes. I grabbed at the napkin that he neglected to use and started wiping
his face, as if I was his real mother, when I heard Kristin suddenly ask
me, “Are you feeling alright, darling?” I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant
until she pointed to my plate, which I hardly touched. “You haven’t eaten
anything.”
All
attention shifted on me in that moment. “I’m fine,” I dismissed, sounding
firmer than I intended. I decided quickly to change the subject. “So,
Kristin…how did you and Dale meet?”
This
oughta be good.
Dale
was the first to speak up, gingerly taking Kristin’s hand at their corner of
the table as he reminisced, “It was the weirdest time. Kristin just moved to
Cali, starting a new life after her previous husband passed on.” My left eye
twitched a bit. The rest of Dale’s story sounded muffled to my ears, having
burnt from hearing the words “passed on.”
Neas
later filled me in on the details that I missed.
Apparently,
Dale and Kristin met at the grocery store one day, accidentally bumping carts
and several times again after that. After the sixth bump, Dale gathered the
courage to ask Kristin out. From there, the rest is history.
“Sounds
romantic,” Neas complimented, whisked away by the story.
Me, on the other hand…I was sickened to my stomach, but I
wisely chose not to say a word.
--------------------------
I wasn’t any better later that
night in Neas’s TARDIS, which we kept parked right outside Dale’s mansion,
albeit cloaked by a high-density perception filter. I checked on the status of
that filter, while Neas and Craig sat with their butts sunk deep into yellow
and blue beanbags, watching an episode of Captain Knutz on the console
room wall screen…and enjoying every second it while eating large tubs of
popcorn.
“Who’s
she?” I heard Craig ask him, pointing to the screen. I tried not to pay any
mind to the program, having seen more than enough of Dale’s regular face
instead of his “Knutz” character. But, curious of Craig’s inquiry, I glanced
for a fleeting moment to see one pirate character – a Scandinavian blonde.
“She’s
Knutz’s nemesis, Captain Kelly,” Neas explained. “She’s such a cool villainess!
I used to dress up as her every Halloween when I was your age.”
I
thought I’d recognized that “Captain Kelly” character. Neas, of course, being
born a girl in his original incarnation had the same privileges as most 21st
century girls on Earth. Sometimes, I would forget that, having journeyed with
this male incarnation of them for so long.
“Ain’t nuttin’ but a peanut for Captain Knutz!” That was
the catchphrase uttered by Dale’s character before he’d go off and do something
heroic on the show. Neas and Craig were like two boys at a sleepover, cheering
and hollering whenever Dale/Knutz was onscreen. It made me more than a little
jealous – enough to switch off the viewscreen to the shared groans of Neas and
Craig.
“I do believe one of you should be in bed right now,” I
specifically singled Craig out with that same stern look I used to give Candace
every Friday night. Back then, my eyes were outlined by bushy eyebrows and
crow’s feet, adding to the sternness. With Rania’s kind and tender young eyes,
it probably wasn’t nearly as effective.
Nonetheless, Craig knew better than to test my patience.
“I was getting a little sleepy,” he admitted, whether he
was being truthful or just to appease me, I couldn’t really tell. He got up
from the beanbag, setting his popcorn tub down next to it. “Thanks for the
show, Neas! I wanna watch more of it some other time.”
“I’ve loaded up all six seasons to the TARDIS computer,”
Neas said. “We’ll be marathoning it for weeks!”
On that thrilling guarantee, Craig happily headed off to
bed, but not before I could leave him with a goodnight kiss to his forehead
(much as it annoyed him). As soon as Neas and I had the console room to
ourselves, he approached me and said, “So, you wanna talk about what happened
at dinner earlier?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
And I really didn’t. I wasn’t being cagy in any way.
“What I’m talking about is what Ma told Dale about you
having ‘passed on’,” Neas clarified. My eye twitched again, and Neas definitely
noticed it. “We should tell her the truth, Pop.”
“No!” I objected.
“Why not?”
“Because by morning, it won’t even
matter! We’ll be back in Craig’s world and all of this will be behind us! And
that’ll be the end of it! Understood?” My harsh tone must’ve gotten through to
him. He didn’t say another word about it for the rest of the night.
--------------------------
While we were all sleeping in
our separate rooms that night, I was awakened by a loud crash in the room
nearest mine – which was the lab. I was so exhausted that I slept in my
sweater, leggings, and boots, so I didn’t have to waste any time getting
dressed to check on the noise.
When I got there, I was met with an unsettling sight: the
stasis pod where Al-Lee’s body was kept had been busted open…and Al-Lee’s body
was gone. There was a trail of bloody footprints from where the glass shards
were scattered, leading out of the lab. I tracked them all the way back to the
console room and discovered that they led straight out through the exiting
doors.
“What happened?” I was relieved to have heard Neas’s
voice when he and Craig showed up in the room, both safe and unharmed. Just
like me, they were already dressed.
“Al-Lee’s escaped,” I alerted.
“Al-Lee? The Terminator girl?” Craig inquired. We briefed
him on the situation with her before we visited Kristin and Dale. “She’s gotten
out of the TARDIS?! That cannot be good!”
“It’s certainly not, lil’ bro,” Neas concurred with a
burdensome sigh.
As we deliberated on Al-Lee’s whereabouts, Neas suddenly
received a call on his smartphone. He briefly glanced at the caller I.D. and
then shot me a guilty look. After some hesitation, he addressed the caller,
“Hello, Mrs. Sydney.”
Mrs. Sydney being Kristin – the surname she adopted from
her marriage to Dale.
I wanted to scold Neas right there and then for giving
out his phone number – exclusive only to people in our circle (such as
U.N.I.T., the Doctor, Torchwood America, the Protectorate, or any of our close
friends, like Craig) – to his mother of all people. I figured he must have
provided it to her, sometime between dinner and when we left, or whenever I
wasn’t paying attention.
The only thing that kept a restraint over my frustration
was my concern for my former wife. “What did she say?” I asked after the call
ended.
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