Chapter 26

One day before the fight.

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-Part 1-

Not more than three seconds after Molly shut the door to Higher for Hire did she hear the anger and strife on the other side of it clash. She winced at the sound of it, her mother's voice echoing well beyond the business's property lines. Molly leaned her back against the outside of Higher for Hire and slid down the wall into a squat, her mind flashing reruns of Kit being slapped to the ground over and over again from the last time Kit and her mother clashed in front of her. The endless projection of the heartbreaking loop broken only when Wildcat came along and asked what she was doing.

"Mom and Kit are fighting again." She said.

"Really?" said Wildcat, clueless as ever. "What about? Did Kit break something?" Wildcat then brought his hand to his mouth and whispered jokingly with his normal bright-eyed smirk, "I can fix things ya know; like they were never even broken!"

"I dunno." Molly said thoughtfully, "But this never used to happen when Baloo was here."

Wildcat seemed to get scared, like he saw a ghost. "Wha'd'ya mean when Baloo was here? Where'd he go? Is he commin' back? How long's he been gone?"

Molly turned her head in confusion, "Wildcat, he's in the hospital."

"Oh" Wildcat said relaxing a little, "When's he getting out? Ya know, I was in a hospital once. One in a green tent!"

Molly rolled her eyes, this had to be the twelfth time at least that Wildcat had been told about Baloo's coma. Just then both Molly and Wildcat jumped at the sound of a loud 'WAM' that came from inside Higher for Hire mixed in with all the yelling. "Mom must really be letting him have it." Molly said.

"Have what?" answered Wildcat inquisitively, removing his hat and scratching his head, seemingly unable to piece together the commotion inside with his conversation with Molly.

Molly just looked at Wildcat and then decided to move along. In the beginning she had not been able to grasp the implications of Wildcat's disability, but as the months passed by, she had begun to understand it at least in part. She let her squat give way and she sat flat upon her bottom, her legs out in front of her but spread, her arms resting upon her upper legs, her hands dangling in front of her inner thighs. "Kit never does anything wrong but he's always in trouble." Wildcat listened as Molly continued, "Does she hate him?"

Wildcat thought for a while before answering. "'Hate' is a strong word" he said, his words laced with the venom of memory. "I've seen what hate does to people, armies, nations. Rebecca doesn't hate Kit."

Molly sat listening to Wildcat. Every now and then the funny and innocent tinkering joker and lover of dinosaurs would become a highly intelligent and eloquent man, even if only for a few seconds, but when it happened, it was like getting a glimpse of who he used to be. At least, according to who Baloo said he used to be before the injury in the war changed him.

"Your Mom loves Kit, I love Kit! But Kit has been up to no good." Wildcat stated with certainty.

"Like what?" Molly requested inquisitively.

And just like that, Wildcat reverted back to his present self. He looked at her like a really smart pet, not having any idea what was really going on but just happy to be there for the experience. "What about what?"

It was quiet now. There were no more sounds of turmoil issuing forth from the business, no sign of conflict. Molly's face fell when she realized that she would never get an answer to her question. She turned away from Wildcat with sigh. She just wanted to play with her friend.

-END Part 1-

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-Part 2-

Kit placed his hand on the backside of the door and pushed it shut with a single finger, listening to the snap and bolt latch in place. Step by step he approached his bed, falling into it once he was close enough. "This is it" he thought to himself as he nuzzled his pillow, savoring its comforting rejuvenating touch for what may be his last if not second to last time. "This is all there is. Tomorrow is the last day. I'll go through it just like normal. And then, come Saturday, I'll pull the trigger and tell Clement I am ready to go full time. It's not like I'll be missed by anyone here; not by anyone but Molly at least. But she'll get over it. She'll be better off not having a dirty pirate in her life anyways."

Kit reached his hand under his pillow and pulled out a shiny new silver 1925 Peace Dollar. It was the only silver dollar he left out that could easily be found and the first silver dollar he had ever made with 'The Exchange'. It was the only one he had seen not from 1934 or 1935, the fact that it was his birth year he saw as a sign of good luck and of his destiny. He flipped it in the air a few times before flipping it over and around his fingers, dropping it every few rounds due to the coin being a bit too large for his tween fingers to flip all the way around to complete the circuit to finish the trick only to pick it up again and keep going until the cycle repeated itself.

He did wonder why he was only paid in silver dollars as opposed to paper money, or why all the coins but this one were from a span of only two years, He also wondered how all the coins he received looked as though he was the first person to ever touch them. But ultimately, he did not care, as long as he kept getting paid.

"Money is all that matters now." He thought to himself, reaffirming the choice he had made a week ago to go full time with 'The Exchange', considering the life-change that lay just ahead of him, lamenting the loss of Molly to his soon-to-be past. "Don Karnage was right about one thing at least, so, why deny what I am?" Kit couldn't help but be surprised at that thought. Here he lay in his room, considering his future, once more calling himself a pirate. He continued to play with his coin when he eyed his toy airplane that Baloo had bought him as a gift sitting on his dresser, it was beginning to gather dust. There was a time not so long ago when he cherished it and all the imaginary adventures it took him on, enamored with a certain type of mournful gratitude for the person who gifted it to him, but somehow, he no longer had any interest in the thing. In sooth, any associated affection attached to it had since wilted into nothing. The only thing he desired now was to take another "silver shower", but this time with more coins. He considered setting them all out on the ground, laying on top of them, and waving his arms and legs back and forth to make a "silver angel" out of them but decided against it. His secret was out about his working, but Ms. Cunningham didn't know WHO he was working for or how much he had stored up in his room for that matter. Better to salvage some of the secret for now than offer all the information up front, not that it would matter much in thirty-six to forty-eight hours anyways.

"On the road to the top, sacrifices must be made." Clement had told him a few days after their conversation. "If you really want the world and everything in it, you will be living fast, you will have to be willing to do whatever it takes. Damn the consequences, and damn the mistakes. In this line of work, for those who want to make it to the top, they can't be careless and they have to make their own fate."

Kit had considered that to be his second lesson from Clement. He had said it to him on Monday and he had reflected on that for the past three days and was thinking about it still as he laid in his bed for Ms. Cunningham to call him down for dinner and what all it would encompass.

He heard Ms. Cunningham answer the phone downstairs, her voice stealing his thoughts and filling the otherwise silent building. She had told him that he wasn't alone, that she would be with him every step of the way, that no matter what happened that there would be someone there who loved him. Yet, six weeks was a long time for a kid and it had become like she had never said it, or that she had forgotten; Kit certainly wished he could forget.

He looked over to Baloo's bed and saw the memory of the Peter Pan Bedtime Storytime playout in his mind. He saw himself cuddled next to her, his head upon her left shoulder as she read to him, her left arm holding him close in a loving embrace, Molly having long since turned over and passed out. He smiled as he lamented this memory of a happier time. But then he saw an imaginary projection of Clement walk in through the bedroom door to interrupt the scene and stop just in front of it and announce the echo of his most recent lesson, "…sacrifices must be made." Suddenly, he saw his past-self dressed only in his scant pajamas which consisted of a white sleeveless shirt and a pair of underwear briefs angrily push away from Ms. Cunningham, sending the book out of her hands, stand, and walk toward Clement. With each step his past-self took he grew taller, his muscles enlarged, and his shoulders grew broader; Kit sat on his bed watching the transformation in awe. Suddenly his now older-self was wearing new and durable black pants, shiny black wolf skin boots that laced up to his mid-shin, a blood red shirt tucked in with an unbuttoned black leather coat adorned with pockets that stretched down to just above his knees, a large brown bag of jingling coins attached to his black alligator belt. And when the wind blew in through the open window, he could clearly see a sheathed dagger so long it might as well have been a short-sword and a brightly polished semiautomatic pistol with a spare magazine by his side. Slightly to his left he saw that his mother was now sitting and weeping at the foot of his bed, her back to him, her left arm covering her face while her right arm securely held an also weeping Molly who had her face buried in her mother's chest. He called out, but neither of them would look at him. Out of the corner of his eye to his right there he noticed his toy airplane, red sweater, his bat, and among other items Baloo had been happy to purchase for him, there he also saw his red and blue brimmed navigator cap that he wore everyday which Baloo had given him the day they had met. All of them were sitting on Baloo's bed when they suddenly ignited in a flashfire and within seconds, all of them were no more. There was no sound, yet he could somehow hear everything. He tried to look upon the face of his future self, but all he could see was the long straight brown hair he had grown out in his adulthood, and the face of a satisfied Clement standing and facing him at the door to his bedroom, tapping a watch on his wrist. Kit tried calling out his name to his older-self, but was ignored, or he was unable to make any sound, he was not sure; his older-self kept closing the distance to Clement. And so, he stood up from his bed and ran as fast as he could to stand in front of his older-self and force him to look at him, but it was like he was in slow motion, each step taking longer than the one before it. He pushed himself to run faster, exerting himself to his maximum when finally, he made it, he turned to look and beheld an infinity; heartless, ruthless, and cold. And when it spoke, he heard the reflection of Clement's words come from nowhere, and everywhere, and all around him all at once. The voice filled his mind, but it was not one he recognized even though he saw who or what spoke them. "…make your own fate…" his older-self said, and with otherworldly speed Kit suddenly was looking down the barrel of his older-self's formally holstered pistol. Kit tried to speak, to yell, to scream, to say anything but the silence remained unbroken except for the clicks of a thumb cocking back the hammer of a gun. "Whatever it takes!" his older-self boomed into his mind, and then, once more with equally unfathomable speed, he pulled his pistol from between Kit's eyes, spun around, aimed toward the bed where Molly and Ms. Cunningham sat defenseless, and pulled the trigger.

"NOOOOOOOOOOO!" Kit screamed as he fell out of bed in a heap, tangled in his sheets, falling to the floor with a thud.

"Kiiiiiit, Diiiinneeeeeeeer!" Ms. Cunningham called up from the kitchen. Kit had fallen asleep and didn't even know it. He looked all about his room, still waking up and gaining his bearings. His door was closed, Clement was not there. His toy airplane remained unharmed upon his dresser, covered in a thin layer of dust. Baloo's bed showed no signs of pyrolysis or flame impingement. Kit jumped out of bed and raced to his closet where he found the red sweater hanging above a nearly full basket of dirty clothes and exhaled a sigh of relief as he collapsed to the ground and sat Indian style for a moment before allowing himself to lean back upon the floor to stare up at the ceiling. "It was just a dream. Nothing but a dream." He said to himself, trying to shake the memory of the infinite face he had seen only moments earlier.

"Kiiiiiit! If you don't get down here, Molly's going to eat it all!" Ms. Cunningham yelled again but louder this time.

"Coming!" he answered at the top of his lungs. "Why is she being so nice after we just had another fight?" he rubbed the side of his face where she had punched him. It didn't hurt, not in the normal way, but he could still feel it, like she had hit him more than just physically. "Might as well face the music" he said to himself. Kit stood, opened the door, and made his way downstairs. He wasn't even hungry.

-END CHAPTER 26-