Past, Present and Future Ch. 3

"Cathy, what's wrong?" Mrs. Murphy asked worriedly.

"Th- that laugh-" Mrs. Logan stuttered out.

"It's alright, he does that all the time, it is a little creepy at first, but you kind of get use to it after a while." Mrs. Murphy told her.

"No, that- that's not what I meant. What was his name, when he was human." Mrs. Logan asked barely above a whisper, her voice shaking.

"Charles Hudson." Susan replied.

Mrs. Logan's legs suddenly seemed to give out and Susan shot out of her chair, just barely managing to keep her from hitting the ground as her eyes rolled back into her head, "Doc, I could use a hand, I'm not as strong as I used to be." Susan called.

Dr. Cockroach  set Mae down and ran over to help Susan get Mrs. Logan back into her chair, "What happened?" he asked.

"I- I'm not quite one hundred percent sure." Susan replied.

"Well a guess would be better than nothing, she looks like she's seen a ghost." Dr. Cockroach said checking her pulse.

"She may have." Susan replied as Mrs. Logan's eyes reopened and she just stared at Dr. Cockroach  for a second.

"Un- uncle C.?" Mrs. Logan finally asked her voice still shaking as tears began to fill her eyes.

Dr. Cockroach took a step back, his eyes widening with shock as he stared at her for a moment, "Katie?" he said barely above a whisper.

"Oh my gosh, it really is you." Mrs. Logan said suddenly jumping out of her chair with incredible speed for a woman her age, and threw her arms around his neck, "They said you were dead, they said something went wrong with on of your experiments and your whole lab burned down with you in it." she sobbed.

"Oh Katie, I've missed you so much." Dr. Cockroach  said returning the hug and holding her tightly as she cried, "I wasn't even sure you would remember me if I could find you, you were only seven the last time I saw you."

"You were the most insane, fun uncle on earth, my memories of you are probably the clearest and most treasured memories I have from when I was that young." Catherine told him.

"Grandma, why are you crying?" Mae asked walking up and tugging on Catherine's skirt.

Catherine finally let go of Dr. Cockroach  and knelt down in front of Mae, "Do you remember when I told you about my crazy uncle?" she asked her.

Mae grinned, "The one who built you your own carousel and made you a bike that looked like a big scary dragon and roared and breathed smoke to scare off the kids who made fun of you when you came home from school?" she asked.

Susan raised an eyebrow at Dr. Cockroach, "You built a dragon bike to scare kids with?" she asked.

"Her parents were going through some tough times when she started going to school and she had to ride to school on a kind of rusty old bike and she came to me crying and saying she didn't want to go back to school because the other kids made fun of her for having a piece of junk for a bike. I had to do something," he said then grinned, "You should have seen how fast those little brats took off running the first time they saw it." he said laughing maniacally and was joined by a similar laugh from Catherine.

"Oh that was the most fun I ever had going to school." Catherine said standing up.

Dr. Cockroach grinned, "You can still do the laugh." he said.

"Of course I can, we spent hours perfecting it just to annoy my mom and it came in quite handy when kids would stop to harass me in the halls in high school, I would just start laughing like that and they would slowly back away and then leave as quickly as possible. No one ever bothered to harass me for too long." Catherine told him.

"See, I told your mom it would be useful someday." Dr. Cockroach  replied.

"Grandma, what about your crazy uncle?" Mae asked tugging at her skirt again.

"Well, honey, he looks a lot different than he did in those pictures I showed you, but the bug man is my uncle." Catherine told her.

Mae looked back and forth between Dr. Cockroach  and Catherine for a long moment then asked, "He's really your crazy uncle?"

"Yes, he is." Catherine replied.

"Does that mean he's my uncle too?" Mae asked.

"Yes it does, he's your great, great uncle." Catherine told her.

Mae grinned, "Yep, he is really great, can we come over and play with him more often?" she asked.

"As long as he's not busy, I think we could arrange that." Catherine told her.

"You can come visit me as often as you want." Dr. Cockroach  said scooping Mae up into his arms, "But you have to learn the laugh." he told her.

"Grandma already taught me the laugh." Mae told him as she started to laugh maniacally and was joined by Catherine and Dr. Cockroach.

"Okay, this is getting a little creepy." Mrs. Murphy said quietly to Susan.

"I don't know, I think it's kind of cute." Susan replied smiling.

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The next day Catherine came back over and brought her Daughter Ella and Ella's son Samuel who was nine and her son's other children Richard who was twelve and Angela who was thirteen.

"Come on Doc, aren't you coming out?" Susan asked stepping into Dr. Cockroach's tent.

"Yes, I just- what if they don't like me? What if they're afraid of me?" Dr. Cockroach  asked, "I mean, Katie knew me before and Mae knew me from last Halloween. I've never met any of these other people before, they have no reason to accept me or want anything to do with me." he told her.

"They're your family, I'm sure they'll be willing to give you a chance. It seems you left quite an impression on Catherine and she passed those memories on to her children and grandchildren. That alone may make them more likely to accept you." Susan told him resting a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

"I certainly hope you're right." he replied before hesitantly heading out of the tent.

As Dr. Cockroach came out of the tent Catherine walked over and took his arm leading him over to where the others were waiting, "This is my uncle Charles; uncle C., this is my daughter, Ella, her son Samuel and my son's children Richard and Angela." she said indicating each one.

Mae ran forward to hug him, "And of course you already know Mae." Catherine said chuckling.

Ella had taken a couple steps back and was staring at Dr. Cockroach  with a combination of shock and fear, while Samuel stepped forward looking him over then said, "Man you've got a huge head and freaky big eyes."

"And a big brain and excellent vision." Dr. Cockroach replied.

"That makes sense." Samuel replied, "Nice to meet you uncle Charles." he said reaching out and shaking Dr. Cockroach's hand.

"You're really one of those monsters that saved the world from the aliens?" Richard asked.

"Yes." Dr. Cockroach replied.

"He personally took down the entire space ship's security system." Susan added.

"Wait until the kids at school hear this, let's see them try to make fun of us when we tell them our uncle helped take out the aliens, this is so totally awesome." Angela said.

"Yeah, this is pretty cool, kinda freaky, but cool." Richard agreed.

"Ella honey, say hello to your uncle, he doesn't bite." Catherine said.

"As far as she knows at least." Samuel whispered to the other two children, causing them to snicker.

"Of course I don't bite, I just string up naughty children by their toes and tickle them to death." Dr. Cockroach said staring at them and causing all three kids to instantly fall silent before returning his attention to Ella, "It's alright, I never expected all of my family to be able to accept me like this or to even be able to be around me without feeling uncomfortable or afraid. Maybe you'll be more comfortable around me in the future and if not that's fine, I understand." he told Ella.

"Thank you." Ella replied gratefully, "Mom I think I'm going to head home."

Catherine let out a sigh, "Alright dear."

"Do any of you kids want to come with me?" Ella asked the children.

"No way, this is so cool, grandma can bring me home later." Samuel replied.

"Yeah, this is awesome, I'm staying." Angela replied.

"Sure you probably just want to see if you've found a relative who can actually understand your geek talk." Richard said, "I'm staying too." he told Ella.

"Alright, I'll see you guys later." Ella said kneeling down  to hug Samuel, "You be careful." she whispered to him as she hugged him.

"I'll be fine mom." he replied.

Once Ella left, Catherine said, "I'm so sorry about her, she's always had this horrible fear of bugs, I had just hoped she'd be able to get over that to meet you."

"It's quite alright, I never expected everyone to be able to accept me anyways." he said wrapping an arm around her shoulders, "I've got you back in my life and the kids seem willing to accept me, I was expecting to come out and have them all be afraid of me or just plain run off screaming before even giving me a chance. At least Ella tried and who knows maybe someday she won't be so uncomfortable around me."

"I guess your right, it could have gone worse." Catherine admitted.

"Now what's this about geek talk?" he asked looking at Angela.

"It's nothing." Angela replied looking at the ground.

"She's like this super genius, she's already taking collage courses along with her high school work and she'll start talking about scientific stuff and it doesn't make any sense, sometimes I think she's just making words up to confuse us." Richard told him, "Even dad who is like really smart can't understand her sometimes, so she just hides out in her room with her books most of the time."

"There's nothing wrong with being smart." Dr. Cockroach said resting his hand on Angela's shoulder.

"Unless you just confuse everyone because no body has a clue what your talking about." Angela replied still looking at the ground.

"Well what are you interested in?" Dr. Cockroach asked.

"Well I've never run into any part of science that I didn't like, but I'm studying gene and cell altering to help prevent diseases right now." Angela replied.

Dr. Cockroach chuckled, "Just don't do any experimenting on yourself, it can be rather dangerous, genetic altering was my specialty and you can see how well my early experimenting turned out." he said.

"How did it happen? Grandma said it was an accident with an experiment that you were doing, but that's all she told us." Angel said.

Dr. Cockroach began explaining about his grandfather's death and then about his experimenting, within minutes he and Angela we animatedly discussing various scientific theories and facts that left everyone else feeling like they were watching a conversation in completely different language.

"I've got fresh cookies in the house if anyone is interested." Susan quietly told Catherine, Samuel, Richard and Mae.

"Good, because just listening to them is making my head hurt." Richard replied.

"It's been a long time since Dr. C. had someone to talk to about science that really understands what he's talking about and I have a feeling you're sister goes through the same thing." Susan replied as they headed into the house.