Outsiders Pt. 04

Ben shot up in his bed and inhaled his own spit, making himself choke and cough. The girls were in his home town, driving around, looking for his house. He struggled to catch his breath and contain his panic. A million scenarios ran through his mind, each more grim than the last. He paced his bedroom nervously, still unsure if he was awake or having a really bad dream, until he focused on his links with the three girls.

Just as he finished waking up and engaging all his mental faculties, he realized, listening to the man's incessant speech through the link, that the girls must have picked up none other than Buddy Pierson. He sent Raven the order to not say another word to the man. He then sent that order to Lisa and Krista, too.

He sent Krista the order to pull over and get Buddy to leave the car. She did and Ben spied on her futile attempts to get the man to leave the car. He sent the order to get Buddy out of their car to Raven and then Lisa. Even after they opened the door and started pushing him out, Buddy wouldn't take a hint and kept commenting on their actions.

Krista finally pulled a candy bar out of her purse and gave it to Lisa who was standing by the car and trying to pull Buddy out. When Lisa held the candy bar in her hand, away from the car, and offered it to Buddy, he finally got out of the car to take it. Lisa let him take it while she slammed the door shut behind him. Raven locked it and Lisa ran around the car to get in the front seat.

The girls drove away and Ben saw through Krista's eyes in the rearview mirror that Buddy got on the sidewalk and walked after them, talking and unwrapping his candy bar at the same time.

Ben sent Raven the order to tell him exactly who the man in the car had been. He heard her say, "Buddy Pierson," through all their ears and winced. He had earnestly hoped it had been someone, anyone else. He sent Raven the order to say out loud everything the three of them had told Buddy. He listened to her say that they told him their names and that they were his friends who were looking for his house to come and pay him a visit. After that, Buddy took over the talking and they only managed to say that they all lived in the same city where Ben was attending college.

Ben sighed in relief. Anything anyone told Buddy and everything he overheard was quickly repeated by him in front of everyone he came across for the next few days. If the girls had told him that any one of them had so much as hugged him, his mother would learn of it before the weekend was over.

He sent Raven the order to say aloud what the three of them were doing there. He overheard her say that they were on their way to his house to surprise him, meet his parents and see where he grew up. He huffed in frustration. The last thing he needed was for his three slave girls to show up on his parents' doorstep.

He wanted to send them the order to turn around and go back, but realized that he couldn't. They had already told Buddy that they were here to visit him. He had no doubt that his mom was going to hear about that, most likely before the day was over. If the girls didn't show up, she'd call the sheriff's department to look for them. If she didn't get to meet them, she'd pester him about hiding them from her until the day he died.

He growled low and clenched his fists. The girls turned onto Cedar Avenue and he sent Raven the order to say, "Ben said to tell you that all three of us are in great, big trouble. We will all be punished for this." He felt the girls dismiss those words and punched a fist against his palm in anger. Lisa spotted his house number and pointed it out to Krista, who drove up to his house and parked right in front of it.

Ben put on a T-shirt and sweatpants and rushed out of his room to intercept them at the front door.

"Where's the fire," his dad said when he whizzed by him in the hallway.

"Nowhere," Ben said. "Where's Mom?"

"Went out earlier to buy you those rolls from Weston's that you like so much. She's gonna be here at any moment with them. Fresh from the oven. Mm-hm-mm!"

Ben turned towards the front door and his hopes were dashed when he felt that the girls were intercepted by a woman carrying big, paper bags right in front of his house. He swallowed against the dryness in his throat and walked down the stairs like a convict on death row. He winced when he felt the girls realize that him mom was unimpressed by their cover story. She had identified their car as a rental from the airport where her friend worked in the TSA and asked them why they would fly there, rent a car and then drive here for more than two hours if their destination was someplace else. She asked them why they wouldn't simply fly to their destination in the first place.

He felt the girls flounder as they tried to come up with a way to uphold his order to pretend they were just passing through. He sent Krista the order to disregard that order and tell his mom a story that would deflect all of her suspicions. While he was sending first Raven and then Lisa the order to go along with Krista's new story, he overheard her spin a yarn to his mother about how they came here on purpose to get his help on a very important work project. She then started to appologize profusely for intruding on their family time and he was floored when he felt them hear his mom say that she was ok with it.

"I'll brew some tea, Son," his dad said, startling him as he passed behing him on his way to the kitchen.

"Yeah," Ben mumbled, "thanks, Dad."

He heard his mother invite the girls in with his own ears and sudenly felt like he was five years old again, caught climbing on top of the kitchen cabinets to get to the cookie jar. His mom unlocked the door and stepped inside. "Speak of the devil," she said. "We were just talking about you!"

"Who's we, Mom," Ben said, feigning ignorance.

"Oh, I believe you know these young ladies, Ben," she said and threw the door wide open to invite his girls in.

"Hello, Lisa, Raven, Krista," he said while glaring daggers at each girl in turn.

"Who's Raven," his mom asked.

"What," Ben asked.

"I am, Mrs. Kidder," Raven said. "Raven is just a nickname the folks at work gave me."

"Oh, I see," Ben's mom said. She sounded unconvinced as she gave Raven's golden hair and creamy skin a critical eye. "Please, come on in! Don't be shy!" She waved them in. "Ben will get you settled in, won't you dear? How long will you be staying here?"

"Just today and tomorrow," Krista said, before Ben could answer the question. He pressed his lips together and promised himself to make her suffer for the insolence.

Ben's mother bade the girls to sit down and relax and started asking them questions.

He observed her interrogation procedure through his link with Krista's mind and it told him a lot. He felt Krista recognize and admire patterns in his mom's questioning. She would alternate between asking individual girls a question and posing a question to them all to avoid any one of them feeling singled out or probed. The nature of her questions varied, as well. One question would be a polite inquiry as to what she could offer them, befitting an attentive hostess relaxing her guests, then she'd bring them their beverage, ask a personal question to throw them off balance, and follow it up with a seemingly innocuous question about Ben's habits, inspiring the girls to gladly give up the info.

When he felt Krista's certainty that his mom's circumspect questions were intended to paint a clear picture of his behavior in the big city and anything he might be hiding, he sent Krista the order to intervene and put an end to the interrogation.

"Thank you so much for your hospitality, Mrs. Kidder," she said, consulting her wristwatch, "but I'm afraid that we must steal Ben away from you at this time for a consultation. We must submit a rough project draft before noon."

"Oh, alright," his mom said. "I wouldn't want to keep you from anything important." The girls got up to follow Ben. "Where are you all going?"

"To my room," Ben said. "To work on the project."

"The four of you squeezing into that tiny room upstairs," his mom asked. "Nonsense! You'll stay right here and use the table for your work! I'll be in the kitchen and Ben's dad won't trouble you at all. Now, you just sit down and I'll get you some more refreshments!"

Reluctantly, Ben sat back down and the girls followed his lead. "Now what," Krista whispered.

Ben shrugged and whispered, "I have no idea. I guess we pretend to do some work." He snapped his fingers and made a face as if he had had a sudden brainwave. "Or you could tell me how the search for the cultists is going. You know, since it's the thing I told you to be doing in my absence."

They all sat up straight and smiled as his mom brought a tray with glasses and a pitcher of orange juice. Ben sent each girl in turn the order to whip out a prop to make it look like they were doing some work. Krista pulled out his laptop and turned it on. Lisa produced his sketch pad and a pencil. Raven looked to be on the verge of panic. She began rummaging through her bag, looking for anything that might help her. Ben rolled his eyes and sent her the order to join him in looking over Krista's shoulder.

As soon as his mom went back into the kitchen, he whispered to Krista, "What did you tell my mom to make her ok with you taking up our precious time together?"

"I just played on her maternal pride," she whispered. "Mothers will buy any BS, so long as it makes them feel like their sons are important and needed. Trust me, the cash I've conned out of dozens of women whose sons had been shipped off to the Middle East would make a..." She trailed off when she noticed the angry look in Ben's eyes.

"We'll talk about those poor women later," he whispered. "First, I want to know where do the three of you get off barging in here, intruding on my family time and risking my mom finding out that her little boy is keeping sex slaves."

"We didn't mean to intrude," Raven whispered. "We just wanted to find out more about you."

"And how did you get here," he whispered.

Raven and Lisa shot Krista a look. She shrugged and smiled, self-consciously. Ben closed his eyes in frustration and whispered, "How much did the redeye tickets and rent-a-car set me back?" He growled at the price and said, "I'm teleporting you back."

"Did you say something, dear," his mom said from the kitchen door.

"Nothing, Mom," he said.

"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Kidder," Krista said, "but the matters we're discussing are business secrets and if any of this got out, we'd all be fired, including Ben. We should really retire to a more private setting. You mentioned you had a room," she asked Ben.

Ben gestured upstairs, but his mom beat him to the punch saying, "I'm afraid that I can't allow three strange women cloistering themselves up in my son's bedroom with him. I'm sure you can understand that. I must ask you to remain here to do your work and refrain from implying in the future that I, or Ben's father, might be engaging in corporate espionage to our own son's detriment, thank you very much!"

She glared at them with teary eyes for almost a full, uncomfortable minute more. When it became painfully clear that no one was going to contradict her demand, she turned around and went back into the kitchen.

"So, she can be quite determined," Lisa said.

"Why is she so dead set against us being alone with you," Raven asked. "Does she think we'll hold an orgy upstairs?"

"Look," Ben heatedly whispered. The doorbell rang before he could continue his sentence. There was continuous knocking on the door and the bell kept on ringing. Ben grimaced. Buddy must have ran all the way over.

Ben's mom came out of the kitchen with a despondent look on her face. "Buddy followed the girls here," Ben said.

"Oh, dear," his mom said and wilted. "Well, there's nothing for it, then. I'll call his mother and keep him here until she comes for him. You'll just have to take your colleagues someplace else where you can do your work project. Do you have your phone with you?" Ben nodded. "I'll call you when the coast is clear." Ben and the girls started packing. "Get dressed, Ben! You can't go out in public like that!"

"It'll be fine, Mom," he said. "I'm not going to the opera."

"Where will you be," his mother asked.

"In the park," Ben said.

"You most certainly will not," his mother sternly said, making him stop dead in his tracks. "You will take these young ladies to the diner and work on your project there." She gave the girls a determined look. "No one will spy on you." She shooed them away with a wave of her hand as Ben's dad was heard talking to Buddy outside the front door. "Go now!"

Ben nodded and led the girls out the back door. They followed him as he jogged away from the house and through the back yards of the fenceless neighborhood. He led them to a long plank, laid down over a creek, and ordered each one to follow him across, one at a time. After feeling their disgust with the creek's water and the idea of falling into it, he pulled out of his links to their minds. Once on the other bank, they walked through an empty soccer field.

"What's going on," Krista finally asked.

"We are going to the diner to sit there and wait for my mom to call us back home," he said.

"Yes, I gathered that much already," Krista said, "but why?"

"Because Buddy Pierson is," Ben said and paused, searching for the right words.

"Crazy," Raven offered.

"Different," Ben corrected her. "And annoying. He has a very low IQ and absolutely no filter between his head and his big mouth. Everything that he sees, hears, or thinks, he speaks out loud."

"Yeah, we noticed," Krista said.

"It's not his fault," Ben said. "He was born that way."

"But why are we running away," Lisa asked. "Isn't his mother coming to get him?"

"Whenever Buddy sees someone new, he fixates on them," Ben said. "We'd never be able to get him to stop following you around. So long as he has a clue where you are, he will keep finding you until he tells you his entire life story and then some. As for his mother... The poor woman is exhausted from taking care of him. She will drag her feet coming to get him. That is, if she doesn't blow my mom off completely and go run errands, or something." They crossed the field and walked down the street. "The diner is this way. Just a block away."

"Why do you hate him," Krista asked.

"I don't hate him," Ben said. When Krista kept looking at him expectantly, he drew a big breath and slowly let it out. "There was a girl in my class that got pregnant and had an abortion in her senior year. No one knew about it, of course. She was eighteen and took care of things on her own. One day, she confided to her friend, who was Buddy's cousin. Somehow, Buddy overheard this and the entire town knew in less than a day."

"She was ostracized and shamed by the whole town, wasn't she," Lisa said.

Ben nodded and quietly said, "But not for long."

"What happened," Raven asked. She smiled and gave him a shoulder bump. "Did you stand up for her and make the whole town back down?"

"No," Ben said. "She had herself a nice, little suicide the day after her parents threw her out." The girls gave small gasps at hearing that. "Anyway, it wasn't Buddy's fault. He was the only one blameless in the whole mess." Ben opened the diner's door for the girls to file in. "Cause he was born the way he is."

The girls went into the diner, which was decorated in the style of the fifties, and picked a booth by the front window. Ben walked to a corner booth in the back, behind the counter. He sent each girl the order to follow him and they did.

When they sat down, Raven said, "Aw, but I wanted to look out at your town."

"Well, tough," Ben said. The waitress, a fresh-looking teen that couldn't be out of high school yet, slowly walked over to their booth. She stood there and loudly smacked her lips as she slowly chewed her gum. Ben and the girls gave her their orders and she turned around without even verbally acknowledging them once.

"Someone's not gonna get a tip," Krista said.

"So, how's about we get back to the heart of this matter," Ben said. "What are you doing here and why aren't you looking for the next cultist attack?"

"How would we even know if it was a cultist attack," Raven asked.

"Yeah," Krista said. "I mean, it's not like we've got anything to go on, really. Either Lisa spots strange, shadowy symbols somewhere on the news, or we're completely in the dark about things. Seriously, Ben, we have no way of telling whether it's cultists, someone who has gone postal, or even if terrorists are involved. We were just wasting our time watching the news. And, frankly, that shit is so fucking depressing that we could do with some therapy, right about now."

"Oh," Ben said, with an exaggerated nod of his head. "I get it now! You girls wanted to be the kinds of slaves that only play at being slave girls when it suited them and blew off all of the master's orders that they didn't like. I'm glad we cleared that up now."

"That's not what's going on here," Krista said.

"Really," Ben asked. "Then what is? I mean, you practically begged me to keep you as slaves and the first time I give you orders, you blow them off."

"We have no way of fulfilling your orders," Krista said.

"Well you certainly don't if you quit trying the moment I take my eye off you," he said.

They stopped talking while the waitress brought them their drinks. She transferred them from her tray to the middle of the table and left. Ben and the girls took their drinks and sipped them until she was out of earshot.

"Look, Ben," Krista said, "we want to help you with this quest of yours, but we have to acknowledge the fact that you don't actually have a quest. You don't have a single clue as to who is behind the attack on the base or if, when and where they would strike next. You don't even know what their motives are. We're stumbling around in the dark, here."

The waitress screamed out an ecstatic, "Ritchie," and ran into the arms of the gargantuan, young man that just entered the diner.

They all looked that way for a moment and Ben said, "Oh, no," in exasperated annoyance. He slid down in his seat and held his hand to his face to hide it from the front of the diner.

"What," Raven asked. "What is it?"

"That's Ritchie Falco," Ben said. "He's a local tough guy and petty criminal."

"So what," Krista said. "If you don't slump down like that in your seat, he won't notice you. Sit up straight!"

"No, you don't understand," Ben said. "He's the last guy I ever fought with and I'm the last guy to ever have the courage to fight him. He's had a hard-on for picking on me ever since that day."

"You fought that," Lisa asked, with utter disbelief. Ritchie at the front of the diner picked up the waitress and effortlessly spun her around with such speed that she was level with the floor as she squealed and hung on to him for dear life.

"We were about the same size back in the seventh grade," Ben said. "And he still wound up beating the living crud out of me."

"Why," Lisa asked.

Ben's eyebrows rose and he said, "Well, mainly 'cause he's utterly relentless once the actual fighting starts and I wasn't really all that good at throwing a punch and-"

"No," Lisa said, interrupting him, "I meant why did you fight him?"

Ben shrugged. "We had a school dance and he was very rudely forcing himself on this girl that looked like she would rather kiss a Wookie."

"Was the girl grateful to you afterwards," Raven asked. "Did she tend to your wounds? Kiss them better?"

"No," Ben said. "She spat in my hair and called me a freak right in front of everyone else."

The girls looked at him in disbelief. "You tell us where she is," Krista said, "and we'll casually pass by her home, or work, hanging on your arms like the tastiest of eye candy and show her what a huge mistake she made that day!"