Broke and Famous

by Elizabeth Gannon

  It was decades old but the Westgates hadn’t bothered to put up a newer picture, so Thraex didn’t either.

  He stuck with what worked.

  They were a colorful bunch, the whole lot of them. Brilliant, wealthy, and endlessly enthusiastic about their work. But half of them looked downright demented in the photo. To say nothing of the fact that one of them was holding hands with a damned yellow octopus wearing a space helmet.

  His eyes lingered on the image of a young Sasha Westgate in the group, and he used his thumb to clean a smudge of dust from off of the glass over her face.

  Sometimes someone entered your life and it’s impossible to wash away the fingerprints after they leave. They’re there with you going forward, all the time, whether you want them to be or not. Your entire life is spent in the shadow of who you were when they were around, chased by the footprints of who you could have been together had they never left.

  Some women… leave a mark on you.

  And it’s a mark which doesn’t fade with time.

  He continued staring at the picture, lost in the girl’s eyes…

  “Ah, there you are, boy.” His mother, Zhanna, appeared at the top of the stairs to his right.

  His mother always got off on the second floor because the elevators to and from the lobby only operated for Westgates. Always full of childish zeal for every horrible idea, old man Beardsly Westgate had created an odd entry system for accessing the elevators. His “invisible beam,” had never worked right in Thraex’s opinion though. He could sometimes fix Westgate inventions, but he didn’t always understand them. He’d spent damn near half his teen years trying to fix that “invisible eye” which opened the elevator doors for Westgate family alone. Honestly, he still didn’t understand why they couldn’t just use a regular damn elevator.

  The Westgates were geniuses, but that didn’t mean they were practical.

  He’d had it on his list of things to fix for years, but he’d thus far been unable to circumvent the old man’s tinkerings. In the meantime, Thraex and his mother always took the stairs until they got to the third floor and the second bank of elevators, despite the fact that they owned the building now and she had been married to Beardsly Westgate’s son.

  That was the way things were in this community, sometimes. They were deeply rooted in the old traditional ways of doing things.

  In Reichelt Park, if people didn’t know where you were from, they’d sure tell you where you could go.

  Thraex and his mother were seen as just temporary visitors to a crumbling science dynasty. Just foreign interdimensional trash the Westgates had left around too long and now stunk up the place. They weren’t really worth the trouble of re-programming the elevator for.

  But Thraex didn’t hold a grudge about that.

  “That Jaxx Brixton man called twice this morning.” His mother informed him. “He’s upped the offer by 10%.”

  “I hope you told him that my answer is still a polite and gentlemanly ‘fuck off.’” Thraex snapped, sick of having this conversation.

  “Don’t you use that kind of language with me, boy!” His mother scolded angrily. “You ain’t with your hooligan friends, you talk respectful and not like some uncouth train-yard drifter, hear!” She put her hands on her hips. “It’s a good deal.” His mother pressed after a moment, forgetting her lecture about his language. “You know I hate this building anyway. He’s offering twice its value and that’d set us up somewheres mighty fine.”

  “It ain’t for sale.” Thraex reminded her flatly. “Is this ridiculousness why you missed breakfast, Mama? Because this is the fifth time in two weeks.” He tore his eyes away from the photo of Sasha Westgate, then made a note on his clipboard to once again look over the vintage elevator. “That is unacceptable.”

  “No one tells me when and where I’m gonna be eatin’ breakfast in my own home!” The woman cried, feeling the perpetual victimhood which characterized her life in the building and in this dimension. “If I wanna eat breakfast alone on the veranda, then that’s what I’m gonna be doin’!”

  The Westgate Foundation building had nothing which even resembled a “veranda,” so the point was moot.

  There was no actual proof that Zhanna was his birth mother. She was simply a concubine from Xerzinax’s harem, but when the Westgates had pulled Thraex out of his dark hole in the ground, Zhanna had been only too happy to claim him as her own.

  She had been missing a son and he was obviously missing a mother, so neither of them questioned things too much.

  As far as Thraex was concerned, the woman was absolutely his mother and she always would be. That was not even up for debate. Like most things in his life though, just because he loved her didn’t mean he didn’t find her frustrating half of the time.

  Thraex took on a calm tone, hoping to avoid an argument. “It just seems unnecessarily rude, Mama, since Miss Sasha only just returned and…”

  “’That Woman does not own this building!” Zhanna cried indignantly, always harping on that point. “I do!”

  Technically, controlling interest in the building was left to Thraex, but that was beside the point.

  “And That Woman wasn’t the one who had to clean up her father’s mess when he soiled his drawers every night, after he took too much of his blasted ‘atomic brain elixir,’ I did!” His mother’s eyes narrowed. “He thought he was soooo much smarter than us, thought he could create himself a shortcut to being the smartest man in the world and win back respect, but where did that get him? It rotted him away from the inside out, while you and I got to watch. Had to deal with the stench of him!”

  She paused for a long moment, looking suddenly sad about her deceased husband and the slow and terrible way he’d left this world.

  “May he know peace and be welcomed home.” She said softly in genuine feeling, making the holy sign of their people, despite the fact that the action was designed to praise Xerzinax, Thraex’s birth father, who was an interdimensional mad demon god. The insanity of asking a murderous psychopath to bless the memory of the departed, was lost on the woman.

  Thraex didn’t blame Professor Westgate for what had happened. The man had thought his elixir was safe and effective and would help unlock the full of human potential, he hadn’t foreseen what it would do to him instead. With every vial of the stuff, he’d gotten closer and closer to the grave. And by the end… they had all welcomed it. The Professor most of all.

  Again, the Westgates were always looking for ways to get their fool selves killed, so it didn’t really surprise Thraex when they came up with particularly crazy ways to do it.

  Marrying Thraex’s mother had ruined Richard Westgate’s status in the community and put the final nail in his already stumbling career. The good people of Reichelt Park had been unable to accept his choice, arguing that “She’s not even human!” and reminding him that he had left Susan Westgate and his children to marry this foreign woman who wasn’t a scientist.

  Richard Westgate hadn’t left Zhanna though, no matter how many reasons the community gave him or how loud their objections, which was a choice that Thraex gave him a lot of credit for. Instead, Professor Westgate’s solution to his being ostracized was to start experimenting with his damn brain elixir.

  Thraex’s relationship with his step-father had been… strained. But he had loved that odd old man, in his way.

  Even if he had broken Thraex’s Westgate Foundation mug.

  Not that Thraex was holding a grudge about that.

  Because that would be silly.

  “We are going to be nice to Sasha Westgate.” Thraex reminded his mother. It wasn’t a suggestion.

  She made a show of ignoring him.

  “You promised me you would, when I said I was goin’ to fetch her.” He continued. “’Member?”

  His mother opened her mouth to deny that, but Thraex turned to stare at her, daring her to lie about it to his face.

  The woman looked away, pretending to be bored by the topic. “I reca
ll nothing of the sort. I remember tellin’ you that I’d try to get ‘long with That Woman, provided that she knew her place. But how much am I supposed to endure?” Zhanna’s face took on a sneer of distaste. “She struts around here every day, like queen of the house, lookin’ at me, judgin’, eyes all full of spiders!”

  Thraex and his mother’s accents were both influenced by the Westgate’s housekeeper, Edmee “Mamere” Thibodeaux. The old woman had ruled the servants and workers at the Westgate Foundation with an iron fist, and Thraex had spent a lot of time with her. Probably because she was pretty convinced he was the devil incarnate and objected to the fact that he was always following the Westgates around like a puppy. He was “not fit” for their areas of the building and the old woman believed that he should stay in the back with the servants, where he belonged. She’d spent hours each day trying to keep him in his place… and away from Sasha.

  It had been a noble but ultimately pointless effort on her part.

  Some of Thraex’s earliest memories in this dimension were of the old Cajun woman swearing a blue streak about this or that, and making fresh beignets every morning for the Westgates.

  Professor Westgate fired her years back, while Thraex was away working for the Freedom Squad, and she’d died not long after. The man had had his reasons for letting the old woman go, but it still hurt Thraex on some level. His opinion of a person wasn’t at all tied to what that person thought of him in return, and he’d always respected Edmee a great deal.

  In any case, her peculiar way of speaking had worked its way into Thraex and Zhanna’s conversation, just because she had been such a dominant force in their early lives here and they’d heard her speaking more than most any other human. Whether any of them liked it or not, they’d spent years together and now they both sometimes sounded like “Mamere.”

  He didn’t have a grandmother… but Edmee fit that role in his mind, even if such a thing would have been a malicious insult if he’d ever told that to the old woman herself.

  She hadn’t liked him. But Thraex had liked her, quite a bit, and that’s all that mattered.

  He chose to ignore his mother’s latest insanity. “In the meantime,” he continued as though she hadn’t spoken, “I am called out of the building on business with the Westgates today, so I would appreciate it if you could avoid gettin’ into any trouble.”

  “I’m not a child, p'tit boug.” Zhanna’s eyes narrowed. “And you don’t tell me what to do!” She paused for a moment. “And you shouldn’t go out with those people again.” His mother advised, her voice stern but softer now. “You know they’re just tryin’ to be ridda you. Especially That Woman. So they can get ridda me!” Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, yes. That’s what they’d like. To drive me out! But that’s…”

  He tried to keep from rolling his eyes at his mother’s characteristic histrionics. “Mama, can we please just skip this conversation today?” He interrupted. “I have a headache.”

  His mother always referred to Sasha Westgate as “that woman” for some reason, blaming her for everything that had ever gone wrong in her life, whether or not Sasha had even been in the same dimension at the time.

  “Don’t you take that tone with me!”

  “I don’t have a tone!” He defended. “I’m just…”

  “Do you know what I had to endure to get you where you are today, boy?”

  “Yes, Mama, I know exactly what…”

  “Horrors. That’s what I had to endure.” She swept her arms around dramatically. “Horrors you can’t even imagine! And I didn’t go through all of that to be held prisoner in some foreign dimension…”

  “You’re hardly a prisoner here, Mama, you own your own skyscraper…”

  “…where every second of every day, these humans watch me like vipers! Vipers!” She spat the word out again. “Tryin’ to turn my own son against me! Waiting to knock me off so that they can reclaim my home!”

  “I assure you that they aren’t…”

  “And my own son defends them!” She pointed at him in condemnation, like she was accusing him in a court of law, to the shock and horror of the astonished jury. “He won’t lift a finger when they try to murder me in my sleep!”

  “No one is trying to murder you, Mama.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, wishing that the Westgate Foundation building’s gift shop sold aspirin. His headache was so bad that he’d take a fistful of them right now, even if they were at least 30 years old and wouldn’t work on his non-human physiology anyway. “You can’t expect them to rejoice in our presence though. Their father divorced their mother, married you, then he cut them off and left us everything. They’re…”

  “You should kick them out on the street before they ruin us!” She talked right over him. “Startin’ with That Woman! They’re still all so snooty, while you’re the only one keeping them afloat, because they’re useless! And constantly plotting!” She snorted in dismissal of the entire Westgate lineage. “Kick them out and be done with them, I say. They will be the end of us, I say! But my screams will fall on deaf ears, I can see that already.” She flipped a contemptuous hand at him. “So fine. You go off and waste time with your human whore and her damn fool family, while they scheme. See if I care. But my death will be on your head, Thraex!” She pointed at him accusingly again, foretelling her own doom and placing the blame for her cruel fate on him. “Make no mistake about that!”

  This is what his life was.

  Sometimes he missed being a slave. At least perpetual confinement in a dark room without windows offered moments for quiet reflection.

  “They don’t like us, Mama, they never will. It does no good to obsess about the past, best to just accept it and start making the best of the life we’ve got. It’s not perfect, but…”

  His mother wasn’t about to let the issue drop though, no matter how reasonable his advice. She was on her favorite subject and there was nothing on this earth which would prevent her from venting. “My body will probably be left for the vermin on one of the empty floors of this dreadful building, without my own son even noticing my absence for months, ‘cause he’s off cavortin’ around town with That Woman.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “She’s never been no good, you know that. I warned you about her the first day we arrived, I said: ‘That human female is trouble, mark my words, she’s on the prowl for no good!’”

  That wasn’t a lie; she had told him that very thing. But Thraex hadn’t listened, because he’d already seen that Sasha Westgate was a goddess which couldn’t be worshipped from afar. She was too appealing for that.

  By the time the warning came, it was already too late. Thraex was trapped in her.

  “…but you didn’t listen to me then either.” His mother finished, as if reading his mind. “Always thinkin’ that I’m just a crazy old woman you can ignore.” She tilted her head to the side, obviously preparing to make what she thought was a brutal point. “But how did that turn out for you, Thraex? Did your human ‘goddess’ live up to the pedestal you always put her on? Or did she let you down somethin’ terrible and tear a hole in you, just like I always said she would?”

  Thraex looked down at the floor for a long moment.

  His mother took that as his answer, her still beautiful face contorting into a smug smirk of victory. “Exactly.”

  He swallowed, then met her eyes. “I’m just tryin’ ta pay our bills.” He told her simply. “We run a business dedicated to science, and since neither of us are scientists, the Westgates are the natural choice. That is the reason why they’re here.”

  “You’re a dreadful liar, boy.” She retorted. “You always had a soft spot for your step-sister.”

  “Sasha Westgate is no kin to me.” Thraex stated flatly and definitively. “You’re the one who married her daddy, not me.”

  “What she’s done to you is sick.” Zhanna made a face at him. “Working her human magics on you, wasn’t she? Made you think all kinds of wicked things that no boy should be feelin’ for no older woma
n that’s family...”

  “I was a grown man when you married Professor Westgate.”

  “You were seventeen!”

  “Yes,” he nodded, “I was seventeen. And I was damn well old enough to know what I was feeling and what I wanted.” He set his jaw. The people of his dimension reached sexual maturity faster than the men here did on account of having a much longer “year,” and seventeen was already plenty old to make that kind of decision in their home dimension. No one there would have blinked an eye at it. Hell, he could have made the choice five years sooner and his people wouldn’t have seen it as at all objectionable. His mother was just being overdramatic. Again. “I weren’t no ‘boy,’ and Sasha Westgate sure ain’t never been my ‘family.’ And whatever it is you think I felt for her, it was nobody’s damn business but mine. Not yours, not her daddy’s or her mama’s, and certainly not those peckerheads from the Horizons Academy.”

  His mother refused to acknowledge that, continuing on with her rant. “…Her always tryin’ to get her claws in and turn you to her family’s side, ‘gainst me. Calling you their ‘ward’ like I don’t even exist. Like you’re just some lost pup without a family, they can pick up and train to bite me.” She pointed at the large Westgate emblem on the wall. “They’re your weakness. And you’ve always let your step-sis… That Woman… get away with murder! Literally!” She started back up the stairs. “I’ve never understood what you see in that family.”

  “Well, you’re the one that married into it, Mama,” he shot back sarcastically, “I just cleaned up after them.”

  The woman glared at him like death itself and he could see that he’d overstepped. He held out his arms helplessly, abandoning the argument and trying to deescalate before she hit him on the backside of his head. Thraex could handle himself in a fight, but like all full-grown sons, he had a healthy amount of respect for his mother’s anger. “I will do everything I need to do to keep us safe and in this building, Mama, I swear it.” He tried calmly. “There is no need to worry, I know exactly what I’m doin’.”