Justice League of Mississauga - Count Klymlove's Origin, Part 1 of 2
My recovery was slow, deep in the unknown bowels of Mississauga. I had folded over like a burnt match. Kinger worked hard on reviving my scorched flesh. I was kept alive with technology, and an ancient magick known only by Anx.
Ankur Rajput, now known as the Anx, travelled the world for many years after his business flourished. While our interests grew into spirituality, he developed an intense fascination with the dark materialization of the spirit: the occult. With his vast fortune, he searched the globe for wisdom and a secret darkness that called out to him. I do not know the full story, but after twelve years of journeying, studying, and training, the Anx returned to Mississauga with an infinite wisdom. Some might relate him to a sorcerer, but I can only see him as the great friend.
My body was unable to sleep at this point. However, with Anx’s magick I was propelled into a state of hallucination and memory. I was able to control what I saw, heard and experienced.
Most men in that position would think foul things. I too would have indulged in deep pleasures; however my physically damaged state prevented me from doing this. My entertainment would have to come from memories, where the emotions were already felt.
States of love and desire brought too many emotionally painful results, and if they didn’t, I surely would not kiss and tell, lad.
My memory went to the beginning.
Corn Mouth caught me in the temporal state. He caught me in my zone, my own existence where no one else could touch. This should not have been a complete surprise, for earlier tests with Captain Liberty had proven that my teleportation could be slightly altered, at least with sound, but the results were never conclusive. Corn Mouth went beyond this. Truly the devil exists.
This made me think about my powers, and eventually the story of how I specifically got them. As all great things are born, my powers emerged out of fear.
But not out of luck, I had been practicing the entire night before.
It was a night at Klym Manor, the very night that the Captain speaks of. Purple Rain, I still listen to that song! I let the two sleep at the mansion, as usual. Callahan took his place in the sub-basement, a dark place especially furnished for him. Ian slept soundly in the guest room of the northern wing. It was a peculiar time for Klym Manor, as the house was often completely left alone.
The Klymkiw family had drifted apart. Due to the special work I was doing for Hazel at the time, I requested, and actually literally begged for my family to die. At first, they were unsure about faking their own death, but after the promise of theatrics to my father, they agreed to leave the mansion. That was about four years prior. The worst part of the ordeal was getting a family member to believe they were dead. For that, I got my poor cousin Joshua to stay with them. After he came back to the house, seeing their charred skeletons sprawled out, smoking on the driveway, he certainly had his own adventures! Pretty good for a farm boy from Winnipeg.
After I settled the folks by the sea, the house belonged to my brother and me. Many additions, rooms, and entertaining robots populated the house. After the “Brute Incidents”, my brother left, leaving me alone in the mansion. Years in between were spent holding large parties for the wealthy, dining with the “elite”. That’s where I met her. I won’t tell you the story. I could never do it justice; no one could tell it like she could.
This is the actual thought process my mind was going through. It was like a Virginia Woolf novel, maybe I should tell it in that way. Ha, I think I won’t, in respect to the very few who listen.
So, in Klym Manor, the Sons of Liberty slept in their beds. I remember my dream. It was short, and very odd. I was dreaming about the movie Trainspotting. I was Ewan, and it was the part where he (or I) overdosed on heroin. The movie cleverly has him sink into the carpet where he shoots up. And through his point-of-view, you can see the two sides of the carpet above him, from the sunken point of view. The carpet remains as he’s driven to the hospital, and taken out of the state.
Well, I dreamt that it happened to me. And when I woke up, I was under the bed. There were burns on my back and front (very small), and I was covered in dust. I remember trying to actually get out, and not being able to fit under the frame. I ended up having to push the entire bed up to get out. Because of that, I ruled out sleepwalking.
I was the second to wake up. After angrily finding an empty container of Klymonade in the fridge (I still cannot forgive him for putting an empty container back in the fridge), I read Callahan’s note. I compared his dream to mine, and at the time, I honestly could not make the connection. Dream-connectivity was something we also tried to study later on, before my self-imposed exile. I wonder who took my place, and who finished the work?
It was already noon by then, and according to Callahan’s note, he would already be on location. I personally did not have far to go, and I knew my work did not start until later. Slowly, I got dressed, leaving the entire northern wing alone for Ian’s privacy. I then went to the lower basement, and studied the maps of the Mississauga ghettoes, as well as the address of Fozzie-Jay. As the Captain stated, he owed me a favour.
I spent a good amount of time training, practicing my fighting and shooting skills, specifically with the revolver (belonging to my grandfather, enhanced by Kinger for speed and accuracy). Then I ate pickles, which Callahan left untouched in the fridge. Callahan ate a pickle only once in his life, about a day later after the Sons of Liberty had all simultaneously discovered their powers.
The Mississauga ghettos are as enigmatic as they are beautiful. One of the first of its kind, the ghetto was built in secrecy, nestled in a crust of upper-middle class neighbourhoods, disguising itself as a rich and industrious area. There were about five of these areas in Mississauga at the time. The top layer of houses appears very normal, and quite innocent. One would not think these areas to be ghettoes, unless either they worked for the government, like I did, or they sat in surveillance, and watched people enter and exit the houses. If they watched closely, it would be evident that similar looking but different people enter and exit the houses, at very sparse and erratic times. When you actually caught a glimpse of these people, they were always in the faded brown pants and grey long-sleeved shirts. On closer examination, these clothes were actually jumpsuits, in two faded industrial colours.
These types of houses were usually casually decorated, with an automated light system built in to fool people. These house-clusters were usually located within crescents and courts, slightly hidden away from main roads, avoiding daily traffic. You’d never see any traffic on these streets, except for cars parked on driveways, motionless. Garbage trucks avoided these places, not out of fear, but lack of garbage.
The trick of these ghettoes were the houses. Anyone could go to the ghettoes, but nobody did except the people who had to, mainly because they were so secret.
I remember my trip to the ghetto that evening. I walked to Burgeous Crescent in black, form-fitting clothes. When I got to the end of the street, I put on the jumpsuit. No one was around to see this. I then walked down the road, deciding which house I was to enter. I decided to pick a nearby one, one that I had often seen used in my surveillance.
I walked up the driveway. The grey pickup truck was full of snow. The storm was beginning outside, and I would see none of it. I walked up the steps, and looked inside the house. It was quaint, and simply decorated with indistinguishable family pictures.
Then I simply opened the door.
A grey metallic hallway was before me. To my right, a burly police officer in dark red stared at me. His face was worn, with a strong square jaw, a large protruding nose, and thick black hair that curled over his olive skin. He somewhat snarled at me. These were the police men I were to destroy. The crooked cops of the ghetto.
I walked to the end of the hall, and rang for the lift. It came swiftly, and I entered. It was made completely of a steel mesh, and I could see myself descending into the hole, deep into the Mississauga ghettos, in their true form.
Ankur Rajput, now known as the Anx, travelled the world for many years after his business flourished. While our interests grew into spirituality, he developed an intense fascination with the dark materialization of the spirit: the occult. With his vast fortune, he searched the globe for wisdom and a secret darkness that called out to him. I do not know the full story, but after twelve years of journeying, studying, and training, the Anx returned to Mississauga with an infinite wisdom. Some might relate him to a sorcerer, but I can only see him as the great friend.
My body was unable to sleep at this point. However, with Anx’s magick I was propelled into a state of hallucination and memory. I was able to control what I saw, heard and experienced.
Most men in that position would think foul things. I too would have indulged in deep pleasures; however my physically damaged state prevented me from doing this. My entertainment would have to come from memories, where the emotions were already felt.
States of love and desire brought too many emotionally painful results, and if they didn’t, I surely would not kiss and tell, lad.
My memory went to the beginning.
Corn Mouth caught me in the temporal state. He caught me in my zone, my own existence where no one else could touch. This should not have been a complete surprise, for earlier tests with Captain Liberty had proven that my teleportation could be slightly altered, at least with sound, but the results were never conclusive. Corn Mouth went beyond this. Truly the devil exists.
This made me think about my powers, and eventually the story of how I specifically got them. As all great things are born, my powers emerged out of fear.
But not out of luck, I had been practicing the entire night before.
It was a night at Klym Manor, the very night that the Captain speaks of. Purple Rain, I still listen to that song! I let the two sleep at the mansion, as usual. Callahan took his place in the sub-basement, a dark place especially furnished for him. Ian slept soundly in the guest room of the northern wing. It was a peculiar time for Klym Manor, as the house was often completely left alone.
The Klymkiw family had drifted apart. Due to the special work I was doing for Hazel at the time, I requested, and actually literally begged for my family to die. At first, they were unsure about faking their own death, but after the promise of theatrics to my father, they agreed to leave the mansion. That was about four years prior. The worst part of the ordeal was getting a family member to believe they were dead. For that, I got my poor cousin Joshua to stay with them. After he came back to the house, seeing their charred skeletons sprawled out, smoking on the driveway, he certainly had his own adventures! Pretty good for a farm boy from Winnipeg.
After I settled the folks by the sea, the house belonged to my brother and me. Many additions, rooms, and entertaining robots populated the house. After the “Brute Incidents”, my brother left, leaving me alone in the mansion. Years in between were spent holding large parties for the wealthy, dining with the “elite”. That’s where I met her. I won’t tell you the story. I could never do it justice; no one could tell it like she could.
This is the actual thought process my mind was going through. It was like a Virginia Woolf novel, maybe I should tell it in that way. Ha, I think I won’t, in respect to the very few who listen.
So, in Klym Manor, the Sons of Liberty slept in their beds. I remember my dream. It was short, and very odd. I was dreaming about the movie Trainspotting. I was Ewan, and it was the part where he (or I) overdosed on heroin. The movie cleverly has him sink into the carpet where he shoots up. And through his point-of-view, you can see the two sides of the carpet above him, from the sunken point of view. The carpet remains as he’s driven to the hospital, and taken out of the state.
Well, I dreamt that it happened to me. And when I woke up, I was under the bed. There were burns on my back and front (very small), and I was covered in dust. I remember trying to actually get out, and not being able to fit under the frame. I ended up having to push the entire bed up to get out. Because of that, I ruled out sleepwalking.
I was the second to wake up. After angrily finding an empty container of Klymonade in the fridge (I still cannot forgive him for putting an empty container back in the fridge), I read Callahan’s note. I compared his dream to mine, and at the time, I honestly could not make the connection. Dream-connectivity was something we also tried to study later on, before my self-imposed exile. I wonder who took my place, and who finished the work?
It was already noon by then, and according to Callahan’s note, he would already be on location. I personally did not have far to go, and I knew my work did not start until later. Slowly, I got dressed, leaving the entire northern wing alone for Ian’s privacy. I then went to the lower basement, and studied the maps of the Mississauga ghettoes, as well as the address of Fozzie-Jay. As the Captain stated, he owed me a favour.
I spent a good amount of time training, practicing my fighting and shooting skills, specifically with the revolver (belonging to my grandfather, enhanced by Kinger for speed and accuracy). Then I ate pickles, which Callahan left untouched in the fridge. Callahan ate a pickle only once in his life, about a day later after the Sons of Liberty had all simultaneously discovered their powers.
The Mississauga ghettos are as enigmatic as they are beautiful. One of the first of its kind, the ghetto was built in secrecy, nestled in a crust of upper-middle class neighbourhoods, disguising itself as a rich and industrious area. There were about five of these areas in Mississauga at the time. The top layer of houses appears very normal, and quite innocent. One would not think these areas to be ghettoes, unless either they worked for the government, like I did, or they sat in surveillance, and watched people enter and exit the houses. If they watched closely, it would be evident that similar looking but different people enter and exit the houses, at very sparse and erratic times. When you actually caught a glimpse of these people, they were always in the faded brown pants and grey long-sleeved shirts. On closer examination, these clothes were actually jumpsuits, in two faded industrial colours.
These types of houses were usually casually decorated, with an automated light system built in to fool people. These house-clusters were usually located within crescents and courts, slightly hidden away from main roads, avoiding daily traffic. You’d never see any traffic on these streets, except for cars parked on driveways, motionless. Garbage trucks avoided these places, not out of fear, but lack of garbage.
The trick of these ghettoes were the houses. Anyone could go to the ghettoes, but nobody did except the people who had to, mainly because they were so secret.
I remember my trip to the ghetto that evening. I walked to Burgeous Crescent in black, form-fitting clothes. When I got to the end of the street, I put on the jumpsuit. No one was around to see this. I then walked down the road, deciding which house I was to enter. I decided to pick a nearby one, one that I had often seen used in my surveillance.
I walked up the driveway. The grey pickup truck was full of snow. The storm was beginning outside, and I would see none of it. I walked up the steps, and looked inside the house. It was quaint, and simply decorated with indistinguishable family pictures.
Then I simply opened the door.
A grey metallic hallway was before me. To my right, a burly police officer in dark red stared at me. His face was worn, with a strong square jaw, a large protruding nose, and thick black hair that curled over his olive skin. He somewhat snarled at me. These were the police men I were to destroy. The crooked cops of the ghetto.
I walked to the end of the hall, and rang for the lift. It came swiftly, and I entered. It was made completely of a steel mesh, and I could see myself descending into the hole, deep into the Mississauga ghettos, in their true form.