"Love and Monsters Redux" - Part One
Part One
How do I always end up in these messes?!?!
That was the question that ran through Hellboy’s mind, as he himself ran through the halls of what he initially presumed to be the headquarters of the B.P.R.D. (“Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense”). Obviously, judging from the MPs and lab coats hunting him down, he was not in the B.P.R.D. headquarters.
For a while, he believed that he was.
In one of the areas of the complex, there was a room – a laboratory – reserved for a large swimming pool. At first, Hellboy figured the B.P.R.D. upgraded a new domain for Abe Sapien, his fellow agent and frequent partner. There was a creature in the pool that resembled Abe, which led Hellboy to greet him as such, but the creature didn’t respond. It was incapable of speech, unlike Abe.
That should’ve been Hellboy’s first clue that he was not in his reality. Regrettably, as soon as the base’s personnel discovered him, it was too late.
At his request, Si dropped him off, following the Cthulhu incident, to recruit some B.P.R.D. agents for the situation they were dealing with in Hawkins, Indiana. They needed heavily skilled and talented field agents like Abe, Liz Sherman, and Johann Kraus. Unfortunately, where Hellboy ended up, he wasn’t going to find any of them.
Cornered at a dead end, his only way out was a device Si had given him, prior to the drop-off. It was like a miniature model of her TARDIS – sleek, black, and rectangular in shape. On one side of it was a big red button that glowed as soon as he pressed it. He smashed it afterwards, not wanting the lab coats to get their mitts on it.
They eventually caught up to him with the MPs, who took aim with their rifles.
Hellboy could only raise his hands in the air, surrendering to his captors.
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Speeding faster than he probably should have under Maryland state law, Darnell Aloysius Williams made his way into the quaint town of Herkleton. The only passenger he had with him in the family car was his son, Bryson, who gripped the edges of his seat throughout his father’s mad dash. Their destination was the house of Darnell’s brother (and Bryson’s uncle), Duane Williams.
Earlier that day, Duane called Darnell, requesting that the latter brother come over to help with an emergency. Bryson didn’t know what that emergency was, only that he had to go with Darnell, since Kim (Darnell’s wife) was at work and Jasmine (Darnell’s daughter and only other child) was attending college out-of-state.
Bryson couldn’t have been happier to tag along. It gave him reason to hang with his favorite cousin, Craig. The last time they hung out was during Duane’s birthday party, when Bryson discovered that Craig made friends with an alien that he had been traveling to other dimensions with. It sounded like something out of a video game or an anime, but Bryson found out how real it was when he traveled to Saturn to save Craig from a ghoul by the name of “Beetlejuice.”
Darnell’s car screeched to a halt at the driveway to his brother’s house.
He and Bryson piled out right away, rushing up to the front door and ringing the doorbell. Duane answered almost immediately, his face amassed in panic.
“I came as fast as I could, big bruh,” Darnell said. “As soon as you said ‘V-Day,’ I knew I had to get here faster than that video game ferret the boys love so much. So, whatchu need? Flowers? Candy? A card?”
“I need way more than that!” Duane panicked. “Nicole’s expecting something big – and I only got 24 hours and 50 dollars to get it for her!”
Darnell shook his head in pity of his brother. “Man, you are in a mess of trouble. C’mon. We’ll put our heads together and come up with something.” He momentarily looked to Bryson and instructed, “Go check on your cousin, while I help your uncle avoid the next Valentine’s Day Massacre!”
Bryson’s feet were already moving before Darnell said anything.
He rushed right upstairs to Craig’s room where Craig was seated at his desk, engaged in another one of his drawings. “Yo, cuz! The Dream Team is back in action!”
“Bryson!” Craig looked up from his work, smiling as he greeted his cousin with their special “Dream Team” handshake. “I didn’t expect you to visit today. As a matter of fact, I’m glad you’re here. You can help me.”
“Sure thing, cuz,” Bryson agreed. “Whatchu need?”
Craig picked up the item that he had been doodling on before Bryson walked in. It was a folded sheet of paper with a big red heart drawn on the front. “I’m making a Valentine’s Day card for someone I like but not in the way you’d think.”
“Ugh! Not you, too!” Bryson griped. “What is it with everybody and Valentine’s Day? It’s the whole reason my dad came here today – to help your dad do something ‘special’ for your mom.”
“So…you’re not going to help me?” Craig gathered from his cousin’s little rant.
“Sorry, cuz. Video games, I’m an expert at. Mushy stuff? Not so much.”
Craig looked down at his half-finished Valentine’s Day card. An idea struck him while gazing upon the cover with the heart he drew, noticing how the colors he used overlapped unintentionally and made it look as if two hearts were drawn instead of one. “Two hearts,” he whispered observantly, before he concluded, “I know the best person who can help me with this!”
“Who?” Bryson asked.
“Follow me,” Craig invited him. They both headed out of Craig’s room and downstairs, passing by their fathers, who did their brainstorming in the living room. The cousins left the house and went next door to the one registered under the name of “Curtsinger,” despite being devoid of furniture…except for one tall, black rectangular solid that stood in the basement.
That solid was none other than a TARDIS (“Time And Relative Dimension In Space”), owned and operated by Craig’s alien friend, Kara – an incarnation of a Time Lord named Neas. Craig knew her when she was Neas, or a male incarnation who went by their Gallifreyan name (at least when he didn’t use his Earth alias, Thomas).
Kara and Thomas were two distinctly different incarnations of Neas, other than being of opposite races and genders. Whereas Thomas acted more like a big brother to Craig (bigger than his biological brother, Bernard) and very much a believable one (Thomas, like Craig, was African American), Kara acted more like a mother. She was much older in appearance, presumably 40 to 50 years of age. Even though she still referred to Craig as her “lil’ bro,” her treatment of him in their journeys or any other time they hung out felt similar to his actual mother.
Activating Kara’s TARDIS required a bio-scan, which was usually a palm print from the ship’s operator and inventor respectively. However, Craig’s DNA signature had been programmed to permit him inside, whenever he placed his palm against the sleek, black marbled exterior. A light emitted between the two, which was when Craig knew to remove his hand, watching as the luminescent imprint of his palm dissolved into the marble and a door manifested, opening inward.
“Man! That is so cool!” Bryson squealed with excitement. Craig forgot how this was only his second time seeing Kara’s TARDIS open that way. For him, it was the hundredth time – give or take.
The cousins walked into the first room of the bigger-on-the-inside interior: the console room. A bright, blue circular space – the walls decorated with roundels and a large viewscreen linked to the hexagonal control console at the center of the room. The console was situated on a risen platform with railings and seats bordering it. Craig only sat in those seats during turbulent trips through the infinite dimensional corridor (or the “Infinite DC”), a dimensional plane that networked all the worlds within the multiverse.
At the moment of Craig and Bryson’s arrival, the console room was empty.
“Where is everybody?” Bryson asked.
Craig was prepared for this. Kara taught him a useful trick where all he had to do was ask the TARDIS computer to locate her, if she was somewhere else inside the ship. According to the computer, Kara was in the Zero Room, an area of the ship that had long since been converted into a private gym. With her there was Mireya,
Much like when Kara was Thomas, Craig knew Mireya when she was “Rania,” her preceding regeneration. But, unlike Kara and Thomas, there wasn’t much of a difference between Mireya and Rania – both possessed impeccable fashion senses and were loving yet deeply overprotective maternal figures to Craig. If anything, Mireya was more flirtatious than Rania, often to the ire of Kara. She blamed that aspect of her personality on having regenerated as a young Latina woman.
Craig and Bryson found them both barefoot, doing yoga exercises that neither Bryson nor Craig understood. “Uhhh, hey?” Craig greeted them, turning his head sideways in curiosity.
Her hands on the floor, Kara was down in a dog position, lifting one of her legs up and holding it there. In hearing Craig’s voice, she looked to her left to see him standing by the doorway. Her long blond locks hung over one side of her face, obscuring Bryson from her field of vision. “Oh! Hey, lil’ bro!”
“Hey, sweetie!” Mireya said whilst in the middle of a perfect split on the floor, facing away from Bryson and Craig.
“You guys look like you’re in a lot of pain,” Craig indicated.
“Not at all,” Kara reassured. After one last stretch, she stood upright and straightened her hair, finally seeing Bryson with Craig. “Bryson?! Where did you come from?”
“I’ve been standin’ here the whole time. You didn’t see me?”
“Hair was in my face.” Kara blew at one strand that still dangled. “Sorry, honey.” She noticed Craig coming forward with a red card held in his hands. “Is that a little Valentine’s card you made?”
“Did someone say Valentine’s?!” Mireya beamed, breaking from her split and standing alongside Kara, gushing over Craig’s card. “Ohhhh! How cuuuuute! Who’s the lucky girl?”
“First off, it’s not that special,” Craig tried to dismiss. “But her name is…”
The revelation of Craig’s Valentine was interrupted by the cloister bell sounding throughout the ship. Kara, Mireya, and the two Williams cousins headed back to the console room where they detected a beeping sound from the control console. “That’s a distress signal,” Kara registered it. Looking on the console monitor, she was able to pinpoint the source. “It’s coming from one of the Baltimore, Maryland realms, circa 1962.”
“1962? Ugh!” Mireya groaned in disgust. “Not a good year for humanity.”
“Why not?” Bryson curiously asked.
“Racism, sexism, the Cold War…,” Mireya itemized. “And those are just a few of the examples.”
“We still have to respond, Pop,” Kara said. “That signal is coming from a device that I only give to friends who’ve traveled with me before – used only in case of emergencies. This could be any of them. Snake, Mordecai and Rigby, Gumball and Darwin, Yvette Dwonch, Al Squires and Norah Navarro…perhaps even the Doctor!”
“I never got one,” Craig noted, feeling left out.
“You will soon,” Kara promised him, sealing it with a wink and a smile.
“Can Craig and I come with you guys to 1962?” Bryson requested.
The thought concerned Kara. “I’m not gonna lie, boys. 1962 is a pretty rough time period, no matter what dimension you’re in. It’ll be quite a challenge for you to fit into the racially segregated climate.”
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VWORP! VWORP! VWORP!
Kara worked better at the TARDIS controls when she wasn’t wearing her hoodie. It was a trait she shared with her past eleventh incarnation (its original owner), although he could manage at times. As soon as she brought the ship out of the infinite dimensional corridor, she slipped the hoodie back on, ready to step out with Craig and Bryson.
Mireya walked back into the console room just in time, fully dressed for the journey. She wore a yellow lapel-collared, plaid-print overcoat that Kara hadn’t seen on her before. It must’ve been one of those articles of clothing that Kara often overlooked in the wardrobe room. Mireya, on the other hand, matched it with a black form-fitting top, blue jeans that cut off just above her shins, and beige slippers.
In spite of the comfortable attire, Mireya felt uncomfortable the second she stepped foot out of the TARDIS. “I can already smell the discrimination,” she derided.
Craig whiffed the air and felt a little nauseated. “It does kinda smell in here.”
Kara noticed that the Type-Z dematerialized at the end of a long empty corridor. It wasn’t exactly an ideal spot, being in plain sight of anyone who passed by it. She could only hope for a short trip through this unknown facility they had arrived in. It resembled an underground bunker of sorts – military in color and design.
“Let’s split up,” Kara suggested.
“Wait. What?!” Craig reacted apprehensively. “Why should we split up?”
“We’ll attract less attention that way,” Kara figured. “Pop will go with Bryson, while you and I will go together.”
“How will we know what we’re looking for?” Bryson asked.
Kara hadn’t exactly figured that part out. The best advice she could give was, “Search for places that look out-of-the-ordinary, maybe even a little suspicious.”
“No more suspicious than we look?” Mireya patronized.
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Bryson was glad to have been paired with Mireya; it gave him an opportunity to ask the Tinkerer and father of Neas a few questions that had been burning in his noggin since the Beetlejuice adventure. The biggest one was, “Shouldn’t you be Kara’s mother and not her father, since you’re a girl?”
Mireya enjoyed his questions; they helped take her mind off of being in the 1962 atmosphere. “That’s just it, baby,” she responded. “I don’t really see this version of me as a mother. Kara calls me ‘Pop’ because she still remembers the version of me that was her father – and still is, up here.” She tapped at the right side of her head.
Her answer, although confusing, still excited Bryson. “Cool!”
He had more to ask her; however, he would have to shelve them for later, as they came upon a large steel door with a peephole that slid from the outside and a safe handle to keep it shut. “Does this count as ‘out-of-the-ordinary’ or ‘suspicious’?” Bryson queried, remembering Kara’s hints.
Mireya shrugged. “One way to find out,” she said, peeping through the hole to look inside. At first, she saw nothing inside the small, bland room past the door.
Suddenly, a pair of intimidating yellow eyes – framed by red skin and bushy black eyebrows – glared back at her. “LET ME OUT!” the thing inside roared with a fierce pound against the door that left the imprint of a large fist along the outer hull. Mireya recoiled in fear, as did Bryson, who was practically petrified.
Mireya’s dread subsided once she recognized the glaring yellow eyes.
“Wait a sec…Hellboy?!”
The eyes peered directly towards Mireya. “How do you know me?! Who the heck are you?!”
With more confidence this time, Mireya moved in close to the door again.
“It’s me – Skeeta – Si’s father,” she said. “You know, from the Cthulhu incident?”
Hellboy’s eyes squinted as he examined the young Latina. “You didn’t have hair the last time I saw you. That and you were a guy.”
Mireya moved her fingers through her raven locks. “Yeah, I’ve changed a lot since then. But I still remember everything you and I went through.”
“Yeah, that’s fantastic,” Hellboy denigrated. “Ya mind getting me out of here?!”
She figured Hellboy to be the one who sent the distress call to Kara’s TARDIS. On that certainty, her hands went for the safe handle and were about to turn it, until Bryson interjected, “Wait! What’re you doing?!”
“It’s O.K., hon,” Mireya reassured. “He’s one of the good guys, I promise.”
She freed Hellboy from his cell. Bryson got an eyeful of him when he stepped out. Hellboy was demonic being of substantial height, towering over both Mireya and Bryson. He was large, muscular, and red-skinned with a tail, an oversized right hand made of stone, and horns that were filed off, leaving behind circular stumps on his forehead that resembled goggles. Bryson wasn’t sure how this demon could be one of the “good guys,” as Mireya said.
“Is Si here with you?” she asked Hellboy.
“Si was the one who left me here,” Hellboy groaned. “But she didn’t do it on purpose. We thought this was the B.P.R.D. headquarters, someplace we could go to get help for the situation happenin’ over in Hawkins, Indiana. But it turns out that I’m someplace where I’m looked at as a monster more than in my actual dimension!”
“You poor fella,” Mireya sympathized.
“I’m also not the only monster holed up here,” Hellboy added. “They’re keepin’ a fish-man here. I thought it was my buddy, Abe Sapien, but he didn’t seem to recognize me…or talk, for that matter.”
“HEY!” They sharply turned towards the individual who shouted at them.
It was an MP guard who monitored the halls before running right into Mireya, Bryson, and Hellboy. Armed with a cattle prod, he jabbed it at Hellboy and demanded, “Get back in your cage! Go on! Get in there!” Using a walkie-talkie that he carried with him, he alerted, “Big Red’s out of his cell! Repeat! Big Red’s out of his cell! I also have two trespassers – a woman and a colored boy! Requesting backup!”
Bryson frowned. “Am I the ‘colored boy’? What does that even mean?”
Mireya rolled her eyes in disgust. “Don’t even get me started, baby.”
Again, the MP jabbed at Hellboy with the prod, shocking him in his side. “That’s it!” Hellboy thundered, snatching the prod from the MP and breaking it in half. He then hurled the MP into the nearest wall, knocking him out cold.
“C’mon! Let’s get back to the TARDIS!” Mireya instructed, fleeing the scene with Hellboy and Bryson before the MP’s backup arrived.
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Elsewhere in the facility, Kara and Craig entered a large laboratory where they discovered a tiled holding pool. To their surprise, there was a slender, sleek amphibian man swimming in the water. To Kara, it wasn’t that far removed from the Creature of the Black Lagoon. “Whoa!” Craig exclaimed. “Is it another alien?”
Kara shook her head, just as marveled by the creature. “I’m not sure.”
The Amphibian Man swam to the edge of the pool, floating as it looked on Kara and Craig with large black, scaly eyes. Varied markings outlined along its body glowed. Its gills expanded on the sides of its neck, which was clasped with an iron collar and manacles.
Noticing them, Craig observed, “They’re keeping him prisoner here.”
“Yeah,” Kara acknowledged as she picked a few bits of eggshells left on the edge of the pool. “But at least they’re feeding him.”
Suddenly, a loud clatter resonated behind them.
It spooked Craig and Kara, as well as the Amphibian Man, who hissed and retreated back into the water. Turning around, Craig and Kara spotted a young brunette coming out from the shadows, apparently hiding. She looked on them with curious, childlike eyes. Kara noticed her wearing a teal dress uniform; between it and the mop that she dropped to the hard floor, it was clear this woman was the cleaning lady – or one of many in the facility.
Her hands held up peacefully, Kara told her, “It’s alright. We’re not dangerous.”
The cleaning lady’s thin, beautiful mouth slightly opened as if to speak, but she said nothing. She lightly touched her neck, which Kara detected two keloid scars on both sides, diagonal and about three inches long. “She’s a mute,” Kara deduced.
“A what?” Craig didn’t follow.
“She can’t speak,” Kara elaborated.
“Ohhh,” Craig finally understood. “Well, how do you know that?”
“Because of the scars on her neck…and I’m communicating with her telepathically.” Kara tapped the side of her head for emphasis. “She has a very lovely voice in her conscious mind – especially for singing, which she dreams about quite often.”
“What’s her name?”
“It’s Elisa.”
Baffled, the cleaning lady (Elisa) addressed Kara in American sign language. Kara responded in kind, making gestures that Craig couldn’t keep up with. He had seen such gestures before from Jackie, one of the kids from the Creek who also happened to be deaf. “What’re you two talking about?” he asked Kara.
“She wants to know who we are and how we got into the base,” Kara translated. “She’s seen the Amphibian Man, too.”
Looking towards Elisa, Craig asked, “What does she think of him?”
Kara signed Craig’s question to Elisa, whose face turned a timid shade of red as she signed right back. A smile swept across Kara’s face as she translated to Craig, “She’s in love with him.”
Craig cringed. “Eww! Gross!”
“Hey! Be nice!” Kara scolded. “I think it’s kinda sweet.”
The civil conversation was interrupted as soon as the alarms went off all throughout the facility, including the laboratory. Neither Kara nor Craig (nor even Elisa) knew what they were for, but they could venture a guess that it might have had something to do with the tall, black rectangular solid (Kara’s TARDIS) standing in one of the corridors.
“We need to regroup with Pop and Bryson!” Kara urgently told Craig.
She signed a farewell to Elisa, who watched unnervingly as they fled the lab.
It took turning more than a few corners before Kara and Craig eventually caught up with Mireya and Bryson at an intersection. They were stricken by the tall, red demonic character that accompanied them. “Who the heck is this?!” a mortified Craig questioned.
“Long story that we’ll share, as soon as we’re all back in the TARDIS!” Mireya deferred. Unfortunately, before they could proceed any further, several MPs marched in from all corners and surrounded them, rifles and cattle prods aimed at each of them. The four snoopers and their demon accomplice had no other choice but to surrender.
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