Shockabuku Gathering

Not much has happened between this story and the one before it. Just keep in mind that Kitty developed claustrophobia after they went back to earth and she was practically buried alive.

Snow Day

A winter wonder land. Snow covering each inch of earth, like a cold white blanket. A very thick white blanket. Outside it was a spectacle to see. Inside…well that’s another spectacle.

“Just a couple of flurries huh,” Kitty sneered. Her voice echoed inside the chilled empty cabin.
“I just saw two. I swear.”
“Well they MULTIPLIED! I hate snow! I hate the cold! And I hate snow!”
“Just yesterday you were the one who wanted a white Christmas.”
“Well I didn’t mean A SNOW IN! We’re stuck here!”
“Kitty, look. I know you’re a little claustrophobic…”
“A LITTLE!”
“Ok, a lot claustrophobic, but you’re just going to have to get over it.”
“GET OVER IT!” Lucas put a hands over his ears.
“More yelling like that and you’ll cause an avalanche.” Sim intervened.
“Well sorry!.. sorry.”
“Besides shouldn’t we be worried about Hatch? He hasn’t come back yet.”
“With our luck he’s buried in the snow,” Kitty grumbled.
“No, with our luck he’ll be just a claustrophobic as you are,” Simariah quipped.
“Where is he?” Lucas mumbled. “He left an hour ago. Y’know. If you weren’t so anxious to get outta here he never would have had to leave.”
“Hey! Can I help it he was the only one who could fit through that window!” Kitty slammed.
“No. But you can make the situation better by mentioning it every FIVE SECONDS!” Lucas retaliated.
“Me mentioning it! You’re the one who’s worried about him!”
“Well I happen to care about our Grandson!”
“Great-Grandson! And don’t call him that again! It makes me feel elderly!”
“Makes you feel elderly? How do you think I feel? I’m 97 @!*%#*@ years old! I have no past! And probably no future! All because I fell in love with you!”
“Well! You didn’t have to freeze yourself with me!”
“It’s not as if I can live my @!*%#*@ life without you! What did you expect me to do!”
Sim all of the sudden burst out laughing. The flaming couple looked in her direction.
“Do you have any idea what you’re saying to each other?” she stifled between chuckles.
The night rolled on into the morning. Even now there was no sign of Hatch, and Kitty and Lucas were still fighting. Only now, out of lack of sleep, it was being done in a rather silly manner.
“Oh yeah! Well at least I don’t go inane every time I get a hangnail.”
“Insane!” she corrected. “You wanna see me go insane! “Cause I’ll do it! Just for you!” A tap came from the window, but it was ignored.
“How do I know you’re not just saying that?” Sim awoke to the taps and got up.
“Well how do I know if you don’t know?!”
“Well how do I know if you’re really my wife?!”
“Well how do I know we’re really having this conversation?!”
“Well how do I know…damn! I lost it!”
“Hey! Don’t swear in front of our younger readers!”
“What younger readers?! Have you been sneaking caffeine?!”
“No! I’ve never been so clear! We’re just words on a page, being controlled by some omnipotent being. Only to find out this omnipotent being has its own omnipotent beings! So it’s not really omnipotent after all!” she cackled.
“Damn, mom, that’s deep,” Hatch chattered. His face looked almost frost-bit. Sim was holding him up.
“Hatch! What happened?” Kitty rushed to him, and placed the back of her hand on his forehead.
“What’re you taking his temp for? Get him warm!”
“CAN IT LUCAS! Stop trying to make up for being a bad father!” That cut right to the core. What hurt him most though was that she didn’t even attempt to take it back.
Fin

Snow Day triggered a lot of hostility between Lucas and Kitty. Eventually Kit felt she needed to take leave and flew down to a nearby planet to recuperate.

Time Lapse of Judgment

“I’m not pregnant! I’m a doctor! I should know! I can’t be! I’m sterile! I haven’t even been having sex!” Kitty hyperventilated.
“I’m afraid so,” said the physician. “All tests prove positive. You are with child.”
“I don’t believe this!” she screeched. “What kind of whack hospital is this?!”
“One of our best, Ms. Berlow.” A man stepped in. How he knew her name she couldn’t make out. He had familiar blue eyes, and a face that screamed innocent. Kitty was wary.
“It can be explained. You’re not sterile, instead you merely have a fertilization delay.”
“You’re telling me that my body stored sperm for over a year and just now decided to fertilize it?” she quipped.
“Well, it was a little longer than a year, Ms. Berlow.”
“How many, then?”
“55.”
“55 years, you expect me to believe that?”
“No, ma’m I don’t.”
“What’s you’re name, sir?”
“Dr. Walenczak.”
“Walenczak? I know that name,” she growled. Kitty was still pissed as the last words Lucas said to her stormed back.
“You BITCH! How could you! I leave you alone for a month…”
“But Lucas…”
"You think I'm going to take you back?" he snapped. "And have a reminder wake me up every day for the rest of my life that you fucking cheated on me? You wouldn't be able to wait the whole day through without screwing somebody off the streets while I'd be at work! Go fuck yourself, you bitch!"
"Lucas! Damn it, calm down!" she cried.
"You want me to be fucking calm? The fuck with being calm! You whore! How could you?!" he yelled. "This is bull shit," Lucas muttered, "You lied to me! You broke every promise you ever fucking made to me!" She recognized he didn't care that people could hear him, she couldn't believe she was trying to calm him down either. He even told her his whole inspiration to keep alive was her during those torturous months without her. Children were crying at this point. The only word he could repeat was 'fuck'. He repeated it like a monster.
Kitty knew he had never said so many terrible things to one person at once in his whole life, and he probably never would again. It was a wonder he hadn't just reached up and snapped. What the hell would have ever possessed her to let him say something like that? What the hell was wrong with her? Everyone was convinced she was pregnant, and had forgiven her for it. Everyone except him. In addition to it all, if she knew Lucas, he was going to hold that grudge to the grave.
With those memories flooding back she realized that what the doctor was saying had to be true. Instead of being mad, she was now balling her eyes out.
“God, I need a drink,” she sobbed.

"Dad?" Hatch asked softly, "What are you thinking about?"
"Kitty," he said. Hatch shook his head. "You're not going to go off on her now, are you?"
"She had no right!" Lucas yelled.
"You need to calm down," Hatch replied. "How do you even know for certain she did?" Lucas shook his head. "Why don't you go up and tell her she lied then?" Hatch said, sarcastically.
"Hatch come on,-"
"No. You don't even know the real reason she did it!" Hatch barked, glaring.
"What's there to know? She cheated on me! She trashed everything we had together for a quick bang! I think it serves her right!"
"Well, why don't we all condemn her to wear a scarlet A on her clothes for the rest of her life and have society shun her, Lucas? We'll even rename her Hester Fucking Prynne. How's that?" Hatch blew apart. He hadn’t used language like that since she adopted him. "I think it's time you confronted her and let go of it. I'm not asking you to like what Kitty did, but for God's sake, let it go! It's eating up your whole life!"
"The hell you say," Lucas grumbled.
"Look at you. You haven’t eaten or slept in months! You think it's a coincidence? It all started when you accused her of cheating on you. You're not getting any younger, either, Dad. You think I'm stupid? That I don't notice? I'm your son, of course I notice these things-"
"We didn't even meet until after I came back."
"It doesn't matter. I know you, dad. You loved her so much, and she hurt you beyond anything any body else has ever done to you. Go and tell her, I swear it'll make all the difference. I know you better than you think."
"It's time to just go and get trashed," Lucas grumbled. "I don't care any more, I'm going to get my ass plastered and go on with my life-"
"Well, you won't get on with your life," Hatch said. "What the hell's it gonna do? To get hung over and know that you never confronted the problem after all these years of meditating on it? It's hollowing you out! Go ahead, ask her what happened. She'll have a surprising answer."
Lucas headed straight to the bar Hatch fallowed.
“Mom!” Hatch exclaimed with a smile. He was happy to see her. If anybody could straighten the Professor out better, it was her.
"Hello, Kitty," Lucas muttered. Saying it, not meaning it.
"Hello," she replied, just coldly.
"We were just discussing you," Hatch inserted.
"Why does that not surprise me," Kitty answered.
"Mom. Don't you have something to tell Dad?" Hatch asked. Kitty swirled the mountain dew in the shot glass in front of her, trying to occupy herself with it. "No."
"Yes… You do."
"No… I don't."
"So what the hell are you doing here? You gave up drinking seventy years ago," Lucas said.
"Fifty-six, Lucas," she said frigidly. "It hasn't been that long." She got up and walked past them to the exit.
"Don't go," Hatch warned. "Mom, you're going to tell Dad something you've been martyring yourself over for the past month."
"I said, I don't have anything to say to him," she snapped. "Now, drop it!" She got out the door.
“You heard the woman!” Lucas spat behind her. “She has nothing to say to me.”
“Mom, if you don’t tell him I will,” Hatch replied fallowing Kitty. Lucas fallowing him.
“You don’t know anything.”
“The doctor called your hotel room. I was in there. You shouldn’t even be drinking in you’re condition.”
“I don’t have a condition!”
“Ha! So it’s true!” Lucas accused again.
“Guys please!” Hatch beseeched. “I already lost one mom and dad to this. I will not let it happen again.” He almost got hostile. It had never occurred to Kitty how he felt about all this.
“Trust me, Hatchet. You’re not loosing a mother. You’re gaining a brother, AND AN UNCLE!” So much for calm. At this point all the people who had been awkwardly staring began do brush past with red faces.
“So you admit it!” Lucas seemed pleased.
“Yes!..No!..Maybe!”
“Now look who’s making a scene.”
“Look genius boy, I’m about this close to…” the rest of her words were drowned out by the truck oozing past, but you didn’t need sound to know what she was saying. Her eyes were red. When she stopped not only were both Hatch and Lucas scared out of their wit, they could have used a change of clothes. Kitty smiled sweetly and marched off in a blaze of short lived glory. The short lived part being when she wakes up, and isn’t temporarily out-of-service anymore.
Fin


Time Lapse of Judgment
Take two

Lucas sat a minute in the hotel room. He couldn’t figure out why Hatch had him come here. The food was terrible, the women were worse, and every time he tried to use the restroom some guy was in there picking his teeth (and some other areas) with the urinal flush handle. Then there was the Kitty encounter. He wasn’t mad anymore. The only time Kitty had episodes like that was when she was under immense emotional stress, which back in the sliding years was all the time. Hatch had gone back to the ship. He was left there, alone. God, he hated being alone. The issues he had of abandonment were as bad as Hatch’s. Only he had little reason for his. They were only with Kitty though. He always had this feeling inside him that she had left him many different times. In truth they have only separated once. This was it.
“I hate this,” he grumbled, and Lucas didn’t use the term hate lightly. A knock came at his door. He didn’t open it. It knocked again. He didn’t stir. “What if it’s Kitty?” he wondered. “What if she came back to apologize?” Then he laughed. “Yeah, and there’s such a thing as happily ever after.” He got depressed. It didn’t knock again, though he didn’t care. Suddenly, his will to live was…gone. Blown away in the frail night’s breeze…or was that just the draft?

Kitty sat against the wall by the doorway. Either he wasn’t there or he didn’t want to see her. Maybe both. It didn’t matter. She felt terrible enough as it was. She sat for a moment, slipping deeper and deeper into a gloominess. A misery that clouded all judgment, all respect for life. Especially her own. WHAT AM I DOING? She urgently shot up. That was close. A few more moments and she would have slipped into melancholy coma. She did know one thing. She had to apologize to Lucas, before it was too late.

Lucas lay there unmoving, his life slipped by his eyes. Then his lives before this one. In each he saw a face he recognized. It was Kitty. In each life she changed very little. In some she was protecting him, in some she was shunning him, either way she was there. That was why he felt as if she had left him too many times before. She was there in every one of his life times. Now he understood, though it was too late. He was already taking in possibly his last breath.
His eyes opened slightly, a blurred vision of Kitty over the oxygen mask on his face. He was in an ambulance. Tubes were connected to various areas of his body. He tried to speak but his energy was gone, being drained from him with each moment of life force. Kitty looked his way, her eyes widened, and she rushed to his side. She held his hand and was yelling something to the paramedics. Then she looking at him and began to talk. He couldn’t hear her over the blood roaring in his ears, but he knew what she was saying. He did his best to return her firm grasp, to tell her he understood her, he believed her, he still loved her. But he couldn’t. His vigor was gone, he couldn’t even mutter good-bye.

“NO!” Kitty yelled when his eyes closed again. “Lucas!” Two of the paramedics pulled her away as Lucas was quickly rolled into the hospital.
“Let me go! Let me go! Amitto! Ego nutus caedo sulum unus publicus! Kutabacchimae!”
“Mam, please, we can’t allow you inside.”
“What the hell not!”
“You’re family.”
“I’m not family! I hate the bastard! Let me go!”
“We can’t.” Kitty stopped struggling. When they let go she dashed into the hospital.

Lucas opened his eyes again. His vision was better this time. Kitty was there again. He smiled. She got the message after all.
“Hi,” he rasped.
“Hello.” It got awkward.
“I still love you.”
“That’s the yellow pill talking, Lucas. You can’t love me. I’m a terrible person.”
“No you’re not,” he would have said more but he couldn’t. He didn’t need to anyway. Kitty smiled as a tear ran down her cheek.
“I don’t deserve you. I didn’t realize that ‘til you were almost gone. Why did you do it? Why did you poison yourself like that? If I hadn’t been there you would have died. Why did you…” She looked into his direction. He was asleep again. For the first time Kitty understood why he would watch her while she slept.
Fin