Twists Of Time

It was actually two days before Casey really felt any better physically. Even then, he still had mild stomach cramps. That was all the time Mitch would allow him to take off from his training, however. Soon enough, Mitch had him learning spells to cast with his staff, and Kim was teaching him to use that same staff to defend himself from physical attack. Within a week, he had improved at both a great deal; however, he and Mitch continued their barbs at one another. Finally one morning when Casey walked out into the corridor, he gasped at his tutor’s appearance.

"What are you staring at?" Mitch snapped.

"What is that thing on your face?" Casey asked.

"It’s called a pimple, if you must know," Mitch sighed theatrically. "For me, it means I’m back into puberty; for you, it means that you two need to speed things up a bit."

"Is everybody this bitchy when they get to be teenagers, or are you just abusing the privilege?" Kim asked Mitch as she walked up.

"This is the second time I’ve had to go through this stage," Mitch defended. "The growing pains or this time around shrinking pains, general moodiness...."

"Well, the moodiness is nothing new," Casey snorted.

"You haven’t been any picnic yourself, firebug," Mitch sneered.

"You didn’t warn me about that stuff," Casey snapped. "You just let me go in there and turn myself into a human flamethrower. I’d like to see how polite you are when your guts are on fire."

"Awww, did de poor widdle baby have heartburn?" Mitch goaded. "Maybe we should have fixed him a widdle bottle."

"Will you two just go pee in a corner somewhere and get it over with?" Kim half yelled at them. A disembodied low rumbling vibrated throughout the tower. Kim looked around for a second and corrected herself, "Fine, go have the peeing contest outside. I don’t care where you go or what you do, but get this crap out of your systems. You’re driving me crazy."

"But it’s such a short ride," both guys said with a grin.

"Just what I need," Kim said as she threw her hands up in the air. "They finally get together, but only to pick on me." She glared at the two guys, who seemed surprised that they had agreed on something as well. "Can we get on with the training now?"

"Why would we need to pee in the corner?" Casey asked her.

"You two are fighting over who gets to be the big dog around here," she explained in a huff. "Real dogs do that by peeing on everything to mark their territory."

"I don’t need to mark anything," Mitch snapped. "I am the big dog, as you so eloquently put it. You both have to do as I say."

"Why?" Casey demanded. "Just once why can’t you try telling me why something has to be done, or at least how to do it before you expect me to have it done?"

"Because I’m the boss," Mitch yelled back. "I gave you all the explanations you needed when I brought you here. I told you that you were here to rescue your true love."

"Wait, I thought we were rescuing my brother," Kim interrupted.

"You are," Mitch confirmed. "Your brother, his lover," he added with a sigh of frustration. "Do either of you ever listen?"

"My brother’s gay?" Kim blurted. "I mean he’s kind of obvious," she added, pointing at Casey. "But my brother couldn’t be gay."

"What do you mean I’m obvious?" Casey asked her.

"Well, you are," she shrugged. "It’s not a bad thing, I don’t guess. You’re still an ok kind of guy."

"How am I obvious?" Casey demanded. "I’m not even gay. I’m not gay at all."

"Yeah, and I’m not butcher than you will ever be," Kim retorted sarcastically. "Whatever, little princess in the fancy dress, you’re sooo straight."

"I am," Casey continued to defend.

"So who are Russell, Chad, and Robert, that you call out to every night in your dreams?" the girl countered. "You moan and groan and holler their names."

"They’re my best friends," Casey protested, but his growing blush undermined the strength of his statement.

"You mean boyfriends," Kim snorted.

"I don’t have a boyfriend," Casey practically shouted. "I don’t even know why I’m here. I never should have agreed to this. Tower, show me the way home!" A set of blinking arrows instantly appeared on the floor of the castle. Casey stormed off following them.

"Go after him and apologize," Mitch ordered Kim.

"Why should I?" she snapped. "He’s the one that should apologize. He’s the fag."

Kim rubbed her cheek from the sudden slap. She glared at the now teenage Mitch. She was about to say something, but she noticed electrical sparks shimmering around him. Suddenly, she decided that maybe she had gone too far.

"You’re freaking right you went too far," Mitch snarled. "You will not ever insult him in my presence again. God knows he’s made my life miserable enough, but he’s my…." His hasty words finally registered on his brain and he stopped short.

"He’s your what?" Kim asked. "Are you in love with him?"

"NO!" the disgust in his voice was more than evidence enough that she had guessed wrong.

"Then what is going on with you two?"

"I don’t have time to tell you now," Mitch responded. "Just stop him from going back home. He has to complete this mission. You both do. I won’t live if you fail."

"What does my brother and his boyfriend have to do with you?"

"I’d like to hear this too." Mitch and Kim turned to see Casey standing beside them again. There are some things that don’t add up around here and I want answers."

"I thought you were leaving," Kim observed.

"I told the castle to show me the way home," Casey began explaining. "For some reason, it showed me your room, Mitch. There are pictures of me in your room. Pictures of me as a kid, pictures that were just taken last week, and there are some pictures of someone that looks like me only older. Some of them are teenage shots, and some are grown up adult pictures. There’s one that really gets me though. This one," he said holding up a frame. It was a photo of three adults in a hospital room. The woman in the bed looked an awful lot like Kim, and the man on the right, holding a brand new baby, appeared to be Casey grown up. "What does this mean?"

Mitch swallowed hard and sat, or rather slumped to the floor in the hallway. He looked up into the faces of the two young teens in front of him and smiled. His words shocked them both more than anything they had ever heard him say before.

"Hi Dad, Hi Mom," he whispered before tears started rolling down his face.

"Wait a minute," Kim blurted first while Casey was still spluttering in surprise. "We all know he’s gay, so how can we be your parents?"

"Besides, we’re just kids ourselves, and had never met before you brought me here," Casey added.

"You’re my parents all right," Mitch confirmed. "Casey... Dad, you and your boyfriend made a deal with Kim... Mom. She donated the egg and carried me for you so that you could have me. It was as close as you could get to having a baby that was a mixture of the two of you, since your boyfriend is her brother."

"Are you nuts?" Kim blurted. "When are we supposed to have done this?"

"About ten years from your current time," Mitch answered flatly. "If you don’t rescue Pop from Unc... the man who kidnapped him and brought him here...."

"Back up," Casey ordered. "You’re telling the truth now, so why not tell us all of it?"

"Fine," Mitch agreed. "The man who has Pop here is very nasty. He’s a pedophile and has been abusing Pop in the regular world for a couple of years now. He’s your Uncle Clyde, Mom."

"That’s a lie!" Kim shouted. "Uncle Clyde would never do anything like that."

"He would and he has," Mitch told her. "In my time, he got his hands on the information that this place exists and is outside the effects of time as most people understand it. Basically, he can live forever here at the same age as long as nothing happens to end his reason for being here, which is his abuse of Pop."

"How did he get this information?" Casey asked pointedly. Mitch could tell he already suspected the answer, so he answered truthfully.

"I told him," he whispered softly. "I didn’t know he would use it to come here and then kidnap Pop as a kid. My mission here is to bring the two of you here and train you to rescue him. There are things about this place that are a lot like fairy tales, no offense Dad. One of them is that a prisoner here can only be rescued by his or her true love."

"This is all a bad dream, isn’t it?" Kim said with a tone of desperation in her voice. "My brother is not gay, my Uncle is not a monster. You’re lying, and this has to be a bad dream. Someone pinch me and wake me up. I don’t want to have this dream anymore." Casey reached out and pinched her hard. "OWWW!!! You little creep. You didn’t have to do it that hard."

"Are you awake, though?"

"Unfortunately," she whined. "That or I’ve gone looney and they’ve locked me away and this is some kind of drug reaction or something."

"It’s all real, I’m afraid," Mitch told her. "You have to help Dad, or I will never get to exist. If Uncle Clyde keeps Pop here forever as he plans, then Dad and Pop will never meet and you won’t get together to create me."

"You mean I have to… to… you know, with her?" Casey said as he shook with revulsion as he looked at Kim.

"Are you still claiming to be straight?" Kim teased him.

"Not if you’re the girl I have to have sex with," Casey snapped. "No wonder I went gay if I had to sleep with you. YUCK!"

"Watch it, Merlinboy," Kim growled. "Remember who the brawns of this outfit is."

"Well, with grammar like that, it’s clear that you aren’t the brains," Casey returned. Kim stuck her tongue out at him. "Very mature," he observed.

"I don’t have to be mature, I have to be strong and mean," Kim answered. "You sure aren’t going to be much use with your little stick."

"We’ll see about that," Casey quipped. "It feels a little drafty in here to me, does it to you?" he asked as he held his staff in her direction. Suddenly a force of wind hit Kim so hard that she was thrown quite a ways down the corridor. "I guess that puts your theory of how useful I will be to rest. That means you’re all wet, Kim." She yelled out angrily as a deluge of water appeared out of thin air and soaked her.

"She looks pretty upset with you," Mitch noticed. "We’d better delay your training together for another day."

"Not one minute," Casey barked. "She needs to learn that she’s not the only one that can do things around here. And besides, now that I know what’s going on, I won’t rest until her brother is away from that pervert. Whether he’s my boyfriend or not, nobody deserves to go through what he’s already had to deal with. The sooner it ends the better."

"My uncle is not a pervert," a dripping wet Kim sputtered as she rejoined the two boys. "I will prove it to you when we find my brother."

"One more thing before we get started training today," Casey said firmly. "You said I’m your father. Am I some kind of sicko too? I mean you treat me like you hate me."

"He doesn’t hate you," Kim said as she rubbed her face. Only then did Casey notice the still red handprint there. "He defends you pretty well when he wants to. I think the two of you are so much alike that you don’t get along very well. I’m betting that in regular time you forgot what it was like to be a kid and expected too much out of Mitch here. He interpreted that as you not loving him, so he tried harder and harder to please you, but he never could manage it. It alienated him from you, and you from him."

"Thank you, Dr. Kim," Mitch said sarcastically.

"Sarcasm; you must have been right, Kim," Casey observed. "Mitch, I don’t know what kind of guy I was to you as you were growing up, but I know that right now, I’d be pretty proud to have someone as talented and smart as you for a kid."

"Do you really mean that?" Mitch whispered. There were streaks of tears on his face as he looked at Casey hopefully. "That’s what I wanted to hear, Dad. I just wanted to know that I could do something right."

"You’ve done plenty of things right since I’ve been here," Casey told his son. It seemed really weird to call someone son when they look older than you, but deep inside him somewhere, it seemed right as well. "How much time do we have before you have to go back home, Mitch?"

"I’m not sure, Dad," Mitch told him. "I’m regressing pretty quickly here. The worst part of this is that I will be going through it one more time when I get back home."

"Yeah, well, maybe some things will be different when you get back home," Casey said with a smile. "I won’t forget what you’ve shown me about how I will have behaved. I won’t make those same mistakes if I know about them in advance."

"Am I a good mother?" Kim asked her son. She too thought it was strange, but right to think of Mitch that way now that she knew who he really was.

"Yeah, sure, you’re great, Mom," Mitch replied, but Casey could see the nervousness in his face.

"Kim, do you want to go put something dry on before we start practicing today?" Casey asked his partner in this mission. She looked down at herself as if just remembering that she was wet. She shrugged, but did walk away, which was just what Casey wanted to happen. He turned to face Mitch. "All right, spill it. What’s the deal with your mother in the future? Is she more of a pain then than she is now? I have to admit I don’t see how that’s possible, but…."

"My mother died in a motorcycle accident on her way to my second birthday party," Mitch answered. "I don’t remember her at all. My other job here is to make sure that she survives there. I just don’t know how in the world I’m supposed to do that."

"So I really don't need her help on this mission?" Casey started. Mitch’s lack of an answer told the boy what he needed to know. "Was I such a screw up as a dad that you couldn't tell me any of this when you showed up in my room?"

"Would you have believed me if I had told you everything?" Mitch countered.

"Probably not, but that's not what I asked," Casey pointed out. "Never mind answering. I can tell by the way you have treated me that I must have been terrible to you."

"Pop says you were a really great fun guy before Mom died," Mitch mumbled softly. "He said she was your best friend and that you were never the same to anyone after she died."

"Best friends with her?" Casey asked incredulously. "She's like the meanest, most irritating female I have ever known." He paused for a moment obviously thinking. "She always pushes me to do more than I thought I could, go that extra bit." He slowly eased to the floor and sat beside Mitch. "You said saving her is your other job here. What's my other job?"

"I don't know," Mitch replied. "I was only told one job too. Train you to rescue Pop. Trying to save her there, I had to figure out on my own."

"Well then, I think I have just figured out what my other job is supposed to be," Casey said firmly. "I have to keep myself from becoming a bad dad by not letting her get killed."

"This is supposed to be my task, though," Mitch finally responded aloud.

"Isn’t it possible that you might accomplish that task by getting some help?" Casey countered. "I mean rescuing her brother is supposed to be my job, but she is helping. Why can’t I help you with your job?"

"How did you get so smart, Dad?" Mitch asked.

"Probably from hanging around my kid," Casey said with a warm smile. He then leaned over and hugged Mitch tightly. "I am so sorry for the mess I must have made with you, but I promise I will find a way to make it better this time around."

"Me too, Dad," Mitch said as he and Casey stood up. "Maybe this time I won't set fire to my bed when I'm four."

"WHAT?" Casey gasped.

"Maybe we should go join Mom for some training time," Mitch said quickly and turned to run down the hall.

Casey started after him, but was suddenly stopped by the tower. A door had just appeared on the wall beside him. Somehow, Casey knew he had to go through that door, but when he tried to do that, he found that it was locked.

"Why are you staring at the wall like a dummy?" Kim asked. "Wait, don't answer that. I already know... because you are a dummy."

"I like you, too," Casey responded and stuck his tongue out at her. "You don't see a door here, do you?" he asked seriously.

"No, no door, just a boy in a black and silver dress," she responded.

"Ok just checking, and you're just jealous because I look better in my dress than you do in yours," Casey retorted.

"So you admit it's a dress now?"

"I do not," Casey whined. "It's a designer wizard's robe."

"Whatever," Kim said rolling her eyes. "Let's go see what our kid wants us to do today, Princess Daddy."

"That's Wizard Daddy to you, Biker Mom," Casey agreed. He quickly hid the frown on his face when he thought about what he had just said. It had been a stressful day for all of them already, but he knew who and what they were to him now, and he would not lose either of them now. He just wouldn't.