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Chapter 21 - Seeing Three Worlds.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” Hobbs began to taunt his victim. “Looks like a stray cocksucker got out of its pen. We can’t have that, now, can we?” 

All of his followers snickered approvingly despite the less than brilliant repartee. 

“I’m a little busy right now, Hobbs. Can we please do this later?” Justin asked, his exasperation leaking through in his tone.

“I told you earlier that this wasn’t over, Taylor. I’m fed up with you parading your sickness all over our school. I think it’s time you learned your lesson . . .” Hobbs growled ominously.

Justin was about to offer a fitting rejoinder when all of a sudden he got a crystal clear vision of Brian, transmitted through their empathic connection. The vengeful father had reached the Kinney residence and was already sprinting up the front walk. Justin was now close enough to Brian, and Brian was so open - not to mention so angry that he wasn’t able to control his emotions - that Justin was once again actually seeing the scene through Brian’s eyes. In fact, the images Brian was transmitting felt more substantial than what he was seeing with his own eyes. Hobbs and his gang, who were all standing right in front of him, seemed hazy and unreal by comparison. He could barely hear Hobbs’ ongoing insults; instead he heard the resounding thuds as Brian’s fist pounded against the house’s grey-painted front door. He could feel his own heart racing along with Brian’s, a mixture of fury and fear pulsing through both their veins, as they waited, and knocked again, and then waited impatiently some more. 

“. . . Sick of faggots like you thinking you get a pass for all the shit you spew at decent people all the time . . .” Justin barely acknowledged Hobbs’ diatribe - even if he hadn’t been distracted, it was all so unoriginal it didn’t merit any response - especially not when the scene playing out in his head was so much more riveting. 

Brian hammered at the door again and again, pounding so hard that the window next to the door frame was rattling in its casing. When an older woman with disarranged grey hair finally answered the door, Brian didn’t even wait till the portal was all the way open before he barged in and started screaming at her. And there was nothing Justin could do to either help him or hold him back.

“Where the fuck is Claire and where’s my son!” Brian bellowed at the top of his lungs, the cry so loud that it drowned out the much closer, and infinitely nastier, laughter of Hobbs and his boys.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Brian,” the grey-haired woman responded, trying to manufacture outrage, but Justin could clearly taste her guilt.

“Don’t bullshit me, Mother. I know you and your precious little Claire are the ones who took my son and I’m not leaving here without him. So if you know what’s good for you, you’ll produce him RIGHT FUCKING NOW BEFORE I LOSE IT AND START IN ON MY BEST JACK KINNEY IMITATION!” Brian threatened with a tightly clenched fist waving in his mother’s face. 

“Fuck . . .” Justin muttered, so distracted by what Brian was going through that he wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to what Hobbs was saying. 

Unfortunately, Hobbs was getting seriously annoyed by the fact that his bullying was being ignored. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Retard?” he yelled with a shove to Justin’s shoulder to punctuate his words. 

Justin was momentarily pulled back to his present reality and couldn’t control his natural snark. “I’M the ‘retard’? Shit, talk about projection . . . I’m not the one who’s failing out of remedial algebra, Hobbs. So what’s your excuse, huh? Did you eat paint chips as a kid or something . . .” Justin taunted right back.

“Shut your fucking mouth, cocksucker!” Hobbs demanded, his face turning purple with pent up, angry, embarrassment.

“It’s not my fault you’re as dumb as a post, Chris.” Justin couldn’t stop himself. It was too easy to use Hobbs as an outlet for all his other accumulated frustrations and fears. “Do your little friends know about how I used to tutor you all through Middle School and that, if it wasn’t for your daddy’s money, you would have gotten held back a SECOND time so you could repeat eighth grade?”

“I SAID TO SHUT YOUR DAMNED MOUTH, TAYLOR!” Hobbs was screeching, standing so close to Justin that he was towering over the shorter boy, spittal flying into Justin’s face.

With Brian still screaming at his mother in the back of Justin’s mind, and Hobbs spluttering in his face, Justin realized he’d finally had enough. He wasn’t going to wait around here anymore. He was going to go find Brian. So, with his mind made up, he turned and started to walk away, attempting to shoulder his way through Hobbs’ ring of thugs.

“I don’t have time for this,” Justin insisted as his retreat was blocked by the hulking presence of John Spencer moving to stand in his way. 

“Don’t turn your back on me, asswipe!” Hobbs snarled, grabbing Justin’s jacket and tugging him back with a jerk so hard that Justin was pulled off balance. 

With a little cry of surprise, Justin toppled over, landing on his ass on the sidewalk right at Hobbs’ feet and dropping the phone that he’d still been holding in his hand. 

“You’re not getting away with your bullshit this time, Taylor,” Hobbs growled menacingly. “You’re not going anywhere. Not before I’ve taught you that you can’t just run your mouth off all the time. I’ve had more than enough of your lies. Always talking crap about me and trying to make me out to be as big a fucking cocksucker as you are. It’s time for you to learn to SHUT your fucking mouth!”

Justin started to get up, muttering under his breath about how it wasn’t his fault Hobbs was a fucking closet case, but unfortunately that ‘Closet Case’ had really good hearing and wasn’t amused by the continued jab. With another growl, Hobbs let loose with a kick to Justin’s midsection, toppling him over once again and knocking the breath out of him. After that things started to get seriously nasty. With Hobbs’ buddies egging him on, the biggest bully of all began to kick the holy living shit out of the blond boy lying at his feet. Justin tried to crawl away, but the circle of sycophants joined in with a few kicks of their own in an effort to keep their victim corralled. Eventually Justin gave up on the idea of escape and merely curled up in a ball, trying his best to protect himself, as the kicking went on and on, accompanied by the laughter and continued insults from his tormentors. 

It was inevitable that Justin’s pain finally got Brian’s attention through the medium of their special link. Even at the height of his rage, Brian was distracted from screaming at Joan the moment the first kick was landed to Justin’s poor body. In his mind’s eye, Justin watched as Brian lifted his head, their eyes meeting despite the physical distance between them, and a worried expression finally making its way through the fury previously written thereon. 

“Justin? Shit!” Brian moaned, his response echoing Justin’s own groan as yet another blow landed to his lower spine.

Of course, that’s when things went from bad to worse. While Brian was temporarily distracted, a new face appeared in Justin’s vision - a middle-aged woman with mousy brown hair and a sour expression, who only bore a passing resemblance to the much more attractive Brian - emerging from the hallway behind Brian’s back. Even more concerning, though, was the fact that this new arrival was carrying a rather large gun which she had pointed directly at Brian.

“It’s too bad you figured it out,” Claire said with a mirthless laugh. Brian’s head spun around to face his sister, and his expression was one of stunned disbelief when he saw what the woman coming at him was holding. “If you had just left well enough alone, all you’d be out was a little money - which you have more than enough of, so it really wouldn’t have mattered - and you would have gotten your brat back as soon as I’d figured out a safe way to get rid of him. But, no, you had to fuck it all up. You always were too smart for your own good, little brother. Now we’re BOTH fucked. But I can’t have you reporting me to the police, so . . .” 

As she spoke, Claire had walked around Brian and was now standing in the middle of the room, facing her brother with a scowl further maring the already less than attractive countenance, and the gun held unsteadily in front of her, looking like she was about to pull the trigger any second. 

Justin was so caught up in the drama he was seeing in his head that he yelled out, “Brian! Shit! No!” 

Justin’s strange shout, calling out an unknown name, caused the bullies who’d been intent on kicking a hole through the boy’s middle to pause in their attack. They all looked around themselves, as if to discover who it was Justin was addressing. A couple of the guys commented that they probably shouldn’t be doing this out in public like they were, especially not right in front of the school. Hobbs, in turn, called them chicken. John Spencer replied that he wasn’t chicken, but he wasn’t an idiot either and, looking up at the array of blank windows towering over them in the school building next to where they were gathered, he pointed out that anybody could see them out here in the open. Since the others were actually standing up to him for once, Hobbs was forced to take their concerns into consideration. He too looked up at the school and must have agreed that they were a little over exposed. 

Delivering one last kick to Justin’s stomach, Hobbs ordered his crew to, “pick him up. We can take him back to the equipment shed and finish up his lessons there.” 

The football guys laughed obsequiously at that suggestion and a couple of them grabbed for Justin’s legs. But the boy wasn’t having it; there was no way he’d let them drag his ass off to some isolated location where they could torture him at their leisure. So, with a renewed sense of terror, Justin started frantically kicking back at the two guys trying to capture his flailing legs. More tussling ensued and Justin decided to let his lungs in on the endeavor, screaming for help as loud as he could considering his ribs hurt like hell from the abuse they’d already taken. It was probably futile, but he was hoping that Hobbs’ goons had been right and there was still somebody inside the school who might look out the windows to discover what all the yelling was about. Hobbs, however, was getting more and more annoyed in direct proportion to how long it was taking to subdue their intended victim. He kept ordering his henchmen to stop fucking around and to quit making a fucking scene. None of which helped to tame the wildcat they were trying to restrain. 

At the same time, Brian had been forced by a gun-wielding Claire to walk down the hall and take a seat on one of the ugly kitchen chairs. A small part of Justin’s mind - the part that wasn’t currently involved in a life and death struggle - watched as Claire ordered her mother to go get a rope from the garage. 

“Is that really necessary?” the older woman, presumably Joan Kinney, argued. “I don’t want to get involved in anything ‘illegal’, Claire.” 

“You don’t think kidnapping is illegal, mother?” Claire scoffed with a shake of her head. 

“Well, not really. I mean, it’s not like you did anything to hurt the child,” Joan demurred with a simpering shrug of her shoulders. “And it’s not like Brian can’t afford to part with a little of his money - he always was a tightwad and never showed any respect to me or his father - but this . . .” she gestured towards where Brian was perched on the chair under threat of being shot, “. . . And a gun . . . I just don’t know, Claire . . .”

Her mother’s cowardly judgment seemed to make Claire a little more crazy than she’d already been. “Oh, that’s rich, coming from you, Mother. You’re the one who’s been bitching at me for months, complaining that I wasn’t doing enough to help YOU out, and telling me I was a bad daughter. But now that I actually did something proactive, even my own mother won’t stand up for me? Well, you’re not going to get out of this scott-free any way you look at it, Mom. You were in on what I was planning all along. And I didn’t see you complaining when you thought that some of this money,” Claire pointed to the kitchen table where the briefcase was sitting with all the money spilling out of it, “would be used to pay off YOUR bills, now did you?”

“How dare you?” Joan bristled. “I never told you to do anything illegal. This was all your idea, Claire.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Claire replied scornfully. “But let me remind you, Mother Dearest, that no matter what you think, it’s too late to back out now that Brian knows you were involved, especially considering you let me use your house. As far as the law is concerned, you’re just as guilty as I am now.” Claire waved the gun around as if to point her mother towards a door that presumably led out to the garage. “You have no choice now, Mother. We can’t let him and his brat go or he’ll go straight to the police.”

Brian, of course, didn’t help matters by interrupting at that point and saying, “Fuck the police. I came over here to fucking kill you with my own hands.”

“You need to shut the fuck up, big brother,” Claire warned, coming closer with her gun. “You’re not in any position to threaten me. I’m the one in charge here.”

Back at St. James, while Justin’s attention was diverted by Brian’s travails, one of his own tormentors had finally managed to get a good hold on his left leg and had begun to drag him across the lawn towards the south corner of the school. Justin knew that once they got him all the way back to the secluded outbuildings surrounding the football field, it would be all over for him. He renewed his frantic struggles and took the thug by surprise, getting free again for a second or two. Hobbs, meanwhile, was not very happy at the slow pace, and ordered his boys to get a move on. But even with all of them grappling at Justin’s kicking feet and flying fists, they still weren’t able to move very far very fast on account of his incessant struggling. Finally, with a lucky twist of his hips, Justin managed to get one leg free and let loose with a really solid kick that landed on Spencer’s right knee with an audible crack. 

“Fuck!” Spencer went down with a cry of pain and all but two of Justin’s captors let go so as to tend to their fallen compatriot. 

Of course, Justin’s retaliatory kick only served to make Hobbs even angrier. With a feral snarl, the big bruiser turned away from his injured friend and started in on Justin again; Justin was too busy trying to free himself from the two guys still restraining him to pay much attention. Hobbs only stopped when, off in the distance, the sound of a wailing police siren finally grew louder than Justin’s shouting. That welcome sound, in turn, spooked the two goons still holding onto Justin’s arms. 

“Shit! It’s the cops,” Ross Adams hissed, dropping his hold on Justin and turning toward Hobbs. “What are we gonna do now?” 

“Get Taylor into the fucking equipment shed. Now!” Hobbs ordered, pointing imperiously towards the little building that was still at least two hundred meters away. 

Ross and Wilson took one look at the distance between them and that shed, then they looked at each other, and then they both shrugged, dropped their hold on Justin, and took off running in the opposite direction. The first of the police cars pulled onto the street a second later, and came zooming down the block, heading straight for the spot where Hobbs and his remaining goons were still circled around their prey. Not that Justin could have escaped if he wanted to by that point; he was barely standing on his own, so dizzy he kept listing to one side or the other, and was having trouble taking a full breath because of the constant pain in his side. As another police cruiser joined the first, both of them barreling down the street, the rest of Hobbs’ crew bolted with shouts of “fuck this shit” and “sorry, dude, but I’m outta here”. By the time the cops skidded to a stop in front of the school, only Hobbs and Spencer - who was still rolling on the ground and moaning while cradling his injured knee - were left. 

Hobbs, who by that point was so enraged at the prospect of not only getting caught but also at being abandoned by his amigos, did exactly what you’d expect; he turned and took out his temper on Justin with a violent backhand to the smaller man’s left cheek. The poor boy, who wasn’t that stable to start with, flew backwards, landing hard on the icy ground, the back of his head hitting on a frozen tussock of sod so violently that he was seeing stars. And, while he was down, Hobbs started in with the kicking again, only this time Justin was too dazed to even try and roll away from the repeated blows. 

Luckily, the cops were there in a matter of seconds, yelling, “Police! Stop!”, with their guns pointed towards the only remaining attacker. 

Justin lay there, trying to catch his breath, while he fought off the rolling waves of dizziness. He barely registered the cops approaching, four of them focused on subduing Hobbs while a few others swarmed over Spencer. His efforts to stay conscious weren’t helped much by the fact that he was still literally seeing double, as the scene playing out around his lover again usurped his attention. 

Brian, the dauntless but foolhardy champion, was still arguing with his sister and demanding that she bring Gus to him. But he was obviously too furious to react sensibly to the fact that somebody was holding a gun on him. Instead of trying to placate Claire, he seemed to be egging her on. Claire, though, appeared to have changed her mind about tying Brian up. 

“Fine. If you won’t fucking help me,” Claire snarled at her mother, who was now cowering in a corner of the kitchen, “then I guess I’ll just have to fucking shoot him right here!”

Joan, not unexpectedly, complained - not about her daughter shooting someone, mind you, but about the potential mess that would result from blood splatter in her kitchen. An exasperated Claire eventually compromised and agreed to take Brian down to the basement first, figuring he could stay down there till she figured out what to do with his body. So, with the gun waving menacingly in Brian’s face, the woman ordered him to get up and then shoved her brother towards the basement stairs.

Unfortunately, Brian had had more than enough. Justin groaned as he sensed Brian mentally digging in his heels. “Fuck this,” Brian announced, turning to face his sister, his 6’3’ frame towering over the dumpy little housefrau. “I told you, I’m not going anywhere without my son!”

“You don’t get to make demands here, Brian. I’m the one with the damned gun!” Claire screamed back at him, apparently not at all cowed by the much taller man with the muzzle of her gun digging firmly into his sternum. “Now move or I’ll fucking shoot you right fucking now!”

“I told you, ‘no’. I’m not moving. Not till I know Gus is alright. So I guess you’re going to have to fucking shoot me . . .” 

And to Justin’s horror, right as one of the police officers tackled Hobbs to the ground and began to cuff him - right as Justin had started to think that everything would be okay - Claire said, “Well, if you insist . . .” 

After that everything happened so fast that Justin couldn’t keep it all straight. 

For those next few seconds, Justin was seeing three worlds. 

He was so badly hurt that he was close to passing out, which caused everything in his immediate vicinity to feel out of focus and unreal to start with. He was seeing his own physical surroundings as if through a haze of smoke, watching disconnectedly as the police arrested Hobbs and started reading the young man his rights. His hearing also seemed wonky, to the point that he could barely understand the cop who came over to ask him how badly he was hurt. 

At the same time, he was also seeing through Brian’s eyes; feeling his lover’s outrage and experiencing the pain arising out of the fact that Brian’s mother and sister had not only hurt his child but were still trying to extort money from him. Justin was right there with Brian; he could relate to the overriding desire to see Gus and make sure that the baby was okay. Justin could also sense that Brian assumed Claire was too much of a milksop coward to actually fire the gun she was wielding. 

Finally, he was now also seeing the scene at the Kinney house from Claire’s point of view. He could feel the woman’s panic over Brian finding her and threatening to kill her or - in her mind, much more probably - turn her over to the police. She was deathly afraid of even the idea of ‘prison’. And, although Brian didn’t realize it, Claire was totally serious about shooting him. She was so totally freaked out by the mere prospect of jail, that she honestly felt it was the only way out. She was cornered. She was dangerous. 

But Justin’s head was throbbing so badly that he couldn’t focus on any one of these multiple perspectives. He couldn’t be sure he was communicating the seriousness of Claire’s threat to Brian. The pain in his body, not to mention the rage coming from his soul mate, were too distracting. He knew he needed to warn Brian, tell him to back off Claire, caution him against further antagonizing her, but he didn’t know if any of that was getting through the mixed up wiring of his foggy brain. 

And then, in the span of a heartbeat, it was too late.

Without warning, Brian’s bad temper flared up. He’d had enough. Justin sensed the moment Brian decided he wasn’t going to wait any longer for Claire to figure out what she was going to do. Brian lunged at her, grabbing the barrel of the gun and trying to wrench it out of her hands. 

Predictably, that was when the gun went off. 

It was also when Justin lost contact with both Claire and Brian.

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