"Love and Monsters Redux" - Part Five

Part Five

            Head in hands, Bryson sat outside in the hallway between Giles and Elisa’s apartments, lost in thought and overwhelmed with despair. His concentration was broken when he heard an uproar of laughter that made its way upstairs. The adults – Kara, Mireya, and Giles – had returned.

            “I can’t believe you two did that!” Giles howled. “I wish I was there to see the look on his face, stuffing that disgusting pie down his pants!”

            “Oh, Pop can show you – she’s totally nailed it,” Kara said. “Show ‘im, Pop.”

            Mireya commenced in reenacting the moment, mirroring the Pie Guy’s precise gestures and mortified expressions, to the amusement of Giles and Kara. As an added bonus, she included a reenactment of the Pie Guy getting kneed in the groin, committing to the performance by thudding to the floor, grasping her own groin. Giles and Kara were in stitches, leaning against the wall and holding their sides.

            Bryson didn’t know what was so funny, but it kind of annoyed him how much fun they were having, as opposed to what he and Craig had been subjected to, during their absence. “Where have ya’ll been?!” he bellowed, loud enough to be heard over the adults’ laughter, bringing their entertainment to an abrupt end.

            Looking at Bryson, they saw how upset he was.

            Mireya even noticed streaks of tears on his cheeks that had been dried for some time. “Honey, what’s the matter?” She rushed to him, crouching to cleanse his face with a silk grey handkerchief that she kept tucked in her corset, licking the end of it.

            The gesture grossed Bryson out. “Craig and I did what ya’ll said – we watched TV and we didn’t find any cartoons!”

            “That’s why you’re upset?” Kara scoffed.

            “No, it’s not!” Bryson retorted.

            Seeing how seriously he was taking this situation, Kara did so herself. “I’m sorry, sweetie. Just tell us what happened while we were away. Did you and Craig get in some kind of fight?”

            “No, that’s not it,” Bryson said. “We…We saw something on TV…something really bad…”

            “What was it?” Mireya asked.

            “People gettin’ hosed down – and not in a fun way – by police officers!” Bryson depicted. “And they were beatin’ on them, too, with their sticks!”

            “The Civil Rights protests,” Giles recognized the boy’s description, feeling ashamed and embarrassed. “They’ve been showing the news reports of it all, non-stop, for the past week.” He looked on Bryson and sympathetically said, “Oh, honey, I am so sorry you had to see that awfulness. I try my best to keep it on something decent, like Betty Grable.”

            “Who’s Betty Grable?” Bryson grimaced.

            Kara wanted to tell Giles that this was no fault of his own and merely a lapse in judgment, but she was too concerned for the well-being of the other Williams cousin and his whereabouts. “Bryson, where’s Craig right now?”

            “He ran into your spaceship as soon as we saw the beatings,” Bryson said. “He hasn’t come out since.”

            Kara sighed in heartbreak. “I’ll go talk to him,” she settled, heading into Elisa’s apartment and subsequently her TARDIS, where she discovered Craig, sitting alone in the console room near the console itself. He looked in the same state as Bryson – deep in his own thoughts with sad eyes. But Craig seemed to have handled it better than his cousin, managing to keep himself from crying, unlike Bryson. It showed just how much braver he was, possibly from all the time he spent traveling with Kara.

            “Oh, lil’ bro,” Kara again sighed, sitting beside Craig and taking him into her tender embrace. She rested her chin atop his head and asked, “You doin’ O.K.?”

            “I’m…not sure,” Craig answered honestly. “I feel confused and angry at the same time. Grandma told us how she was once involved in stuff like that ‘back in the day.’ But I didn’t think it was that…violent.”

            “It wasn’t…not in her experience, at least,” Kara said. “Protests like the one you and your cousin saw differ between worlds. Thankfully, those Grandma Jojo took part in were more peaceful.”

            “So…Grandma was never in any danger?” Craig assumed.

            “She always was, lil’ bro, but she stood for what was right regardless.”

            Craig was relieved to know this, yet he still felt conflicted. “I still don’t get why those police officers beat up on those people. They didn’t do anything wrong.”

            “That…I can’t explain…not in a way that justifies it.” A tear rolled down Kara’s left cheek; this was a topic that hurt both of her hearts. “Sometimes the ones that hate the most are those we think are on the right side.”

            “I’m glad you never hated me,” Craig said.

            Kara frowned at his statement. “What do you mean?”

            “When you left me behind on my world, after what happened with Al-Lee, I spent every day thinking that I did something wrong…something that made you hate me. Rania kept telling me that it wasn’t my fault, and you were just protecting me, but I didn’t really believe her. And, every time I went to the creek, I always thought that’d be the day you came back and tell me everything’s cool. And you did, the day that you showed up at our house, with the face you have now.”

            More tears streamed from Kara’s eyes, albeit the happier variety. She gingerly tightened her embrace on Craig and professed, “I can’t imagine ever being in a world where I hate my own lil’ bro. If there’s anyone I hate, it’s myself for making you feel that way for so long. I promise that I’ll make up for it.”

            “You already have,” Craig established.

            Correct as he was, Kara’s promise had a different implication, one that she figured Craig would just have to find out for himself – unless he already had and she was the one who needed to be put at ease. The complicated lives of a Time Lord and their companion.

            After giving him a kiss on his head, Kara let go of Craig and together they stood up. “So,” she moved on towards a new subject, “I’ve been meaning to ask about that Valentine of yours.”

            “Oh, no,” Craig groaned.

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            “So…this brunette…did she nail you before or after the blonde stuffed the pie down your trousers?”

            Strickland tried to keep a straight face as he questioned the Pie Guy, who sat at one of the booths with a large ice pack on his groin. The crotch of his white pants was stained green from the key lime pie. His fiancée, a waitress at Dixie Doug’s, sat beside him the entire time Strickland and Krasko conducted their investigation in the diner.

            The only reason the colonel and the government agent were involved in the first place was the nature of the police call, which described one of the assailants as a young blonde in a black hoodie, fitting the description of one of the two escapees from the base with the fish man.

            “I-It was after, sir,” the Pie Guy winced. “Those girls and that bald queer friend of theirs!”

            “And what did he do?” Krasko asked.

            “Other than make a pass at me? Nothing,” the Pie Guy said. “He did come by a few days ago with this mute girl.”

            The smirk on Strickland’s face dropped. “Mute girl? What mute girl? What did she look like?”

            The Pie Guy shrugged. “Short, dark hair…innocent eyes…scars on her neck.”

            Krasko glimpsed over at Strickland, whose face registered intense recognition, as if coming to an impossible conclusion.

            “What’s that smell?!” the Pie Guy’s fiancée gagged.

            Krasko had been smelling it as well – a rancid odor that he whiffed every time Strickland was in the room. He hadn’t been able to pinpoint it until he glanced at Strickland’s bandaged fingers, which had turned black, oozing yellow liquid. Krasko would’ve directed his partner’s attention to it had they not been so focused on the investigation.

            Withdrawing from any further questioning with the Pie Guy and his fiancée, Strickland and Krasko headed back to their car. “Where are we goin’?” the latter asked.

            “To see Samson’s betrayer,” Strickland scorned.