Chapter 6: Wendi

Bets arrived back home from taking her excited son to school, with a reminder to keep the visit from Dregg to himself.

"I don't want to have to get you out of a damn straight jacket, and that's exactly where they'll put you if you mention a word about this to anyone. Got me?" she asked.

She gave him the 'Mom-eye' look known throughout the world. It made grown men cry, and check their underwear. No one seems to know how the 'Mom-eye' thing got started, but the best male minds concluded that Eve first used it on Adam, to make him take a bite of that damn apple! Since then, even the strongest men had fallen under the 'Eye', and none had been able to find a good counter-measure except to run like hell!

"Yes, Mom, I hear you loud and clear. Shoot I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't been there," Tommy answered.

He made sure he didn't look directly into his Mom's eyes. He did not want to get the full 'Mom-eye' effect, since he wanted to keep his new boys down below from shriveling up into tiny green peas.

'I wish I could do that look. It would get a couple of teachers off my back for sure, ' he thought to himself.

He imagined his math teacher curled up in a fetal position after 'the look'. This made him smile softly as he imagined walking through his school's corridors sending out the devastating Mom Beam of Death and Despair.

'Ha! I keep forgetting that soon it will be a thing of my past anyway, well a thing of my future past, or something like that, ' he thought as he got a little confused of the nuances of the exact phrasing. 'Hell, who cares, anyway? Soon I'll be free of the damn Nazi's, and their single dimensional thought processes, ' he absently thought, grinning as he got out of the car.

"See ya later, Mom. I love you," he said, using his best Momma's boy look while still avoiding making full contact with the 'Mom-eye' she was throwing his way.

Bets smiled as her son got out of the car.

'Yep, I've still got it, ' she thought as she let her mind move forward in preparation for her next stop.

Now to get ready for the next major battle, she thought, as she ran through different scenarios of how Tom and she would explain to their daughter why they would be leaving her life for good.

Her face took on a grim but determined look, as she knew it was the only and best way for the life of her daughter. Wendi had never been the outdoors type. Hell she even hated to go on a damn Sunday afternoon picnic!

'If we work this right, then Wendi and her new little family will never have to worry about money, again, ' she thought as she pulled up to the little apartment complex.

Honking the horn with a single tap she waited as the door in front of her opened and a very pregnant daughter came waddling out smiling. Bets smiled, and waved for her daughter to get in and buckle up.

"Hi, sweetie, how do you feel this morning?" Bets asked.

Wendi gasped as she worked to get the seatbelt around her expanded tummy. "I'm fine, Mom. I wish they made these dang belts with us preggers in mind though," she answered as she finally managed to hear the click of the buckle locking into place. "You know those newer cars have the automatic seatbelts? I'll bet a pregnant woman designed them, too," she said, laughing.

"Sorry, baby, but we haven't had the money to get a new car for a while. And your dad really hates the idea of anything having control like that anyway. He thinks that it might fail in a wreck and you'd be trapped inside," Bets said, laughing. She knew that every car had safeguards against just such an occurrence but you would never convince her husband of that.

"So what's so important that it requires a formal family meeting this morning? And by the way while we're at it, did you get a face-lift or some kind of new skin toner?" Wendi asked as she peered at her mother's face closely, as close as she could from the other side of the car that is.

Bets smiled as she dodged a damn idiot who suddenly cut right in front of her from a side street. "Well it's not a face-lift per say but it's definitely a new procedure honey," she said, snickering softly.

"Uh huh, well it took a lot of years off your looks Mom. Hell you could be my older sister now," Wendi declared. Something about her Mom just didn't feel right. The thought of what it was kept slipping away the harder she tried to grab it.

"Have you eaten yet this morning baby?" Bets asked Wendi.

"Not yet Mom, I thought we could stop somewhere and I'll grab a breakfast meal or something," Wendi said still trying to work out what was going on with the woman that had raised her for the last 25 years.

"How about there?" Bets asked, pointing at a twenty-four hour Whataburger, on the corner that they were approaching.

"That's fine Mom. I do love their breakfast burritos, and they make the best biscuits and gravy I've ever tasted, besides yours, that is," Wendi answered as her boy grumbled in her tummy. "I think Joey agrees with me, too," she said, giggling as she rubbed her swollen stomach.

"Well a double order ought to take care of that little guy, and you too," Bets said, laughing.

She put on her turn signal and damned if a woman in the other lane didn't jump into Bets' lane at the last moment. Bets almost ran off the bloody road, trying to keep from hitting the stupid bitch, but she never said a word, just pulled back onto the road and made the turn into Whataburger behind the arrogant woman that had cut her off.

"I'll kick her stupid ass!" Wendi yelled in astonishment and anger. She actually started to undo her seatbelt and get out of the car when her Mom put a hand on her very angry daughter's arm.

"Let it go baby, it's not worth the time and trouble to try and teach a moron how to drive. Besides that, you don't want to get little Joey all upset right before his big breakfast, do you?" Bets asked softly, her face still holding a hint of a smile. 'I'll be damned if I left a stupid bitch ruin this day for me. Life's too damn short for that, at least life on this world, ' she thought, as she cleared the anger from her mind that was threatening to kill her good mood.

Wendi looked at her mother, exasperatedly. It was like she was a different person!

"Ok, who the hell are you, and what did you do with my Mom? Are you a Pod-person or is this Candid Camera, and the joke's on me?" she demanded, her eyes narrowing at her Mom's unnatural reaction to the goofy bitch in the car ahead of them.

Bets cracked up laughing at her daughter's reaction to her self-control. Wendi was right about her restraint, with the idiot lady in front of them. A couple of days ago Bets would have been out of the car and giving the bitch a piece of her mind, but her new perspective on life had changed some, since then.

"I'm sorry baby. It's just that I've come to realize how small we really are in the great scheme of this world. I refuse to get upset at every person who acts like a moron. Life is too damn short to walk around angry and frustrated, all of the time," she answered softly.

Bets was trying to instill in her daughter one of the last lessons she would be able to offer her little girl, before she left for another world. She hoped to inspire her daughter to see the world in a different light. Life was indeed too short to not live it to its fullest, everyday ... to hell with the assholes of the world!

Wendi sat in the car silently as her mother got the order at the window. The soft statements by her mother ran through the young mother's mind. Something was definitely wrong with her mother. Her words held a kinder view of the world, in general, then she had ever heard before.

Pulling up to the house where she had grown up, Wendi watched as her dad came out waving.

"Hi, sweetheart, how's my boy doing?" he asked her as he carefully gave her a hug.

"We're both fine daddy, now what's going on around here" Wendi asked, looking up into her dad's eyes.

Her heart skipped a beat when she saw his face. The years of laugh lines and crow's feet around his eyes were gone! His skin was smooth with youth and vitality. No make-up Wendi knew of could hide all that.

Wendi bit her lip to keep from saying something as she followed her parents into the house.

'Someone had better give me a hell of an explanation to this sudden fountain of youth thing, ' she thought as she sat down at the kitchen table.

Bets brought Wendi a glass of cold milk and sat down at the table beside Tom. "Honey, you're right about something changing the both of us," she said, looking at Tom, who nodded for her to take the lead on this one.

"So, da, two of ya got some work done, right?" Wendi asked through a mouthful of biscuits and gravy.

"Well, not exactly, dear. You see it started with your dad in the woodshed the other night. He met a new friend that offered us the chance to go to another world, and start our life over again," Bets informed her daughter softly as she watched Wendi's reaction to the news.

Wendi did an admiral job as she managed not to choke on the mouthful of food.

'Ok, some damn flimflam artist has hypnotized my parents. I can't believe that Dad, of all people, would let some yahoo get into his head. I mean the guy is supposed to be trained against all types of torture and mind control, right?' she thought to herself angrily.

Seeing her parents were waiting for a reaction to her Mom's statement, Wendi finally sighed, saying, "So this friend has given you the secrets to the fountain of youth, huh?"

Tom laughed at her obvious inclination that her parents had gone off the deep end of a very shallow pond. For the next hour Tom told his daughter what had transpired over the last day, and what the final decision was about her own involvement.

Needless to say, Wendi was torn between her family leaving and staying with her own new family that she was starting. It wasn't until Dregg finally popped in, literally, behind her Dad that Wendi knew for certain they weren't pulling her leg.

Once her heart quit thumping so loud in her head, Wendi asked if she might see Dregg's ship.

Dregg smiled at the now calm young lady. "It would be my honor to show you around, young woman," he answered, taking her arm as she stood up from the table.

An hour later a very stunned and silent young pregnant woman walked back into the kitchen. Her parents were busy on the laptop looking up different objects to order for the upcoming change in their life.