But, What Ends When the Symbols Shatter?

[MethodicalSlacker]

An empty searching beyond all recourse. A mindless patrol spanning multiple revolutions around the sun. The crushing feeling of realized self-deceit. Starvation of the soul. A numbing and dull thrumming in the machinery of the mind. When simply weathering the storm is insufficient, when the howling winds carry off all that is not driven into the ground with nails. The sickly smell of pickled winter melon arising from a blind-spot in sensation, the taste of Max's now rancid breath on his own tongue. His skin, clinging to his bones in sweaty sheets. A man-catcher made walking stick. Pestilence without a horse.

[Max Rudolph has been broken.]

Quietly, wind-tousled, Max walks a path carved in the grass. He sees in the distance a fallen tree stump, dislodged in the night's storm. In his mind, the distance feels simultaneously unfathomable and already closed. Each step calls into question the next, despite the inevitability of gravity bringing about a footfall. Even induction withers with time. Each second contains an eternity, eternities that have hollowed cavities into his teeth.

Some teeth later, Max takes his place on the tree trunk, setting down his bag and pole-arm.

He looks into the dirt and exhales deeply. It is an exhalation bordering on a sigh. But it would be inaccurate to credit its origin to Max Rudolph.

Behind his dry, crusted eyes, there are only tatters of a once great and illustrious tapestry.

And still behind those scraps lies a blood-stained concrete wall.

[MurderWeasel]

((Darlene Silva continued from DXXM))

It had been an awkward journey.

Darlene didn't mind silence. Not at all! She actually relished it, truly, preferred to sit with her mouth sealed tight while others carried the conversation. In a normal situation, or even a normally abnormal one, she would've been perfectly fine following along without a word uttered, and would've felt, if anything, safer with and closer to whoever her companion was.

The thing was, Max was a whole lot of things, many of which she hadn't sorted out entirely yet, but quiet was not among their number. It was extremely obvious that something was horribly, horribly wrong, but Darlene didn't understand what. Maybe she couldn't understand. Maybe that was the problem. Had she done something wrong? Was this her fault? If so, it was a different sort of fault than her last major failing. The Claw seemed impotent now, sapped of its vigor and menace ever since Kelly slipped from its maw. If Darlene had messed up, it was in the sort of way that prompted disappointment rather than anger.

As usual, that was so much worse.

She was left to wonder whether she had screwed up directly, taken some overtly incorrect action, or whether there was something more right she could've done but had failed to do. Would shooting Kelly have made a difference? Would it have been justified? A betrayal of her client? Darlene had become more and more sure as the proceedings developed that the girl was an actual murderer, though many pieces of the puzzle still did not make even a little bit of sense. Why had Kelly stayed in the house? Why had she lied? Why had she poisoned someone to begin with?

At least all of that was Lucas' problem now! Or, maybe it was nobody's problem, if he'd just turned around and immediately let Kelly go, which really Darlene wouldn't blame him for doing (it was probably what she would've done in his shoes, but then again maybe his lecherous ways would lead him down some other path, which was something Darlene failed to not mull at some length). Or did a hypothetical release of Kelly make her everyone's problem, actually? If they heard about her killing someone else, would it be their fault?

Darlene chose not to focus on that so much. Her attention, instead, was on the ground in front of her. Her shoes were starting to look a little worse for wear, with the ends of her laces frayed and tattered and a few pieces of the sole peeling on the sides, and her feet hurt actually quite a lot, but neither of those things were the core of her focus. She scoured the grass and dirt and scattered twigs for signs. It was like a mystery, and in other circumstances it would've been exciting, but here it was not. There was too much depending on it, too much potential for pain and suffering, even if the specifics made her smile just a little. Worse, it was slipping through her fingers like she was trying to grab water.

She'd seen the first few marshmallows in the grass soon after she'd caught up with Max. There had probably been some before, but she hadn't been paying good enough attention. She hadn't been paying any attention at all, had been running as hard as she could, and it had taken a few minutes after falling into step with Max, huffing and puffing and futilely attempting conversation only to be rebuffed, to widen her awareness. She'd seen a bird pecking at one, this little black bird with beady yellow eyes, and a bright fake-green shamrock. The bird hadn't ultimately taken it. Maybe animals didn't love the candy.

At first, she'd thought her discovery an amazing coincidence. A trail! The bag must've been leaking, so they could follow Jonah and Arizona after all. Then, half an hour or so later, it had struck her: she was being very stupid indeed. This was what Jonah had meant by the rainbow. This was what he'd told her, and he was leaving this trail on purpose. He wanted her to follow. He'd given her and Max the hint they needed, and now it was up to them to carry through.

Darlene hadn't seen any marshmallows on the ground in a few hours, now. She had done her best to steer them along in the proper direction, but Max was a man possessed, and at a certain point she'd had to decide. Would she split off and pursue the trail, leaving Max to his fate? Or would she follow him and do her best to bring him back?

She'd wanted to go. It wasn't that she didn't like or trust Max—Darlene had actually really come to appreciate him a lot more over the course of the time in the mansion—but she had to look out for herself, right? But Jonah cared about Max a lot. Darlene had made a lot of mistakes and let a lot of people get hurt and Max wasn't doing well, so she would stay and just try to get him where he needed to be. She would bring him back to Jonah, and make things right again! It would be like they'd never even met Kelly, or Lucas either she supposed.

Darlene hoped Jonah wouldn't be mad that they'd given Kelly to Lucas and run away.

She had spent a little bit of the long quiet stretches fiddling with her map and compass, and thought she'd maybe at least come up with a general trajectory for which way Jonah and Arizona had gone. The marshmallow trail had pointed due east from their starting point, towards where she thought the town was supposed to be. It would make sense, finding new shelter in case it started to rain again. She would suggest she and Max make for that place themselves, any time now.

It might help if she had any idea where they were, but she didn't. Her amateur orienteering went only so far. They'd been walking a very long time, and Darlene was tired and sticky and hadn't put her sweater back on even though it was dry now. She thought the dog even looked tired, but couldn't be sure. Maybe it was lonely. Maybe it missed its master.

Then again, perhaps Jonah and Arizona would appreciate a little bit of time and space to themselves in a relatively clean and dry and cozy location, especially with death bearing down and last regrets to avoid. That thought turned Darlene tomato red, and her mind was still spinning off down that track, cut through with her overbearing fatigue, so she almost stumbled past the stump Max was sitting upon. She pulled up short, blinked. He'd been in such constant motion, it felt wrong for him to stop. It made Darlene edgy.

She opened her mouth to ask him something, but couldn't think of any words to unleash.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Slowly, Max pointed himself towards Darlene. His eyes moved first, wide with fatigue and shot with blood. Then, his head followed, angling upwards just a few degrees, unshaven, unkempt. There was in his ears a faint rattling noise not unlike the sound of gunfire. He had been around guns before. Fired one, once. Max knew the sound. The sound was stuck in his ears.

Darlene looked like she had something to say, but couldn't force it out. Max knew the feeling. When he was a child, he got sick enough to vomit, but had trouble vacating his innards. Sometimes what you needed was someone to sit next to you and stroke your hair so the words could come out. He blinked, and felt briefly like he was going to fall out of his own skin. How long would Max need to churn before he turned into words?

"Sit," he beckoned, "there's plenty of room."

Max exhaled slowly through his nose.

"I'm tired."

Neck twitch. Pressure release. Crackling sound.

"Aren't you?"

Broken.

[MurderWeasel]

Darlene sat down on the stump next to Max. It was an awkward, fumbling motion, as she struggled to arrange herself and her belongings appropriately. The bags were so bulky, especially due to the presence of the husky, but it wasn't like she could leave it. It was her responsibility now, in her care, maybe forever or at the very least for as long as she was apart from Jonah. It made the bag bulge and swing with real force, and she wasn't very big herself so she got carried along a little, though she could've done with a little less weight stabilizing her, honestly, which was such a stupid thing to think especially here and now where she was about to be on an unwilling diet for the rest of her life.

The wood was rough and prickly under her butt, and she'd accidentally positioned herself so her leg was really really close to Max's which meant she had to pay a lot of attention and not relax after all. She didn't want to just stop focusing and let them touch, but she also didn't want to look like she was shying away from him, not when he hadn't spoken in who knows how long only to break it with something so surprisingly friendly. She stared straight at the patch of pale, bare leg between skirt and sock. Maybe she should've worn longer socks. Long socks were cute if you had the right look for them. Darlene's socks went up a few inches above her shoes. They were normal, boring, ugly white gym socks. Her legs were a bit hairier than she liked. Her thighs were chafing a little and she wished she had sweat pants hiding in one of her bags but she didn't, just a few different skirts and some flannel pajama bottoms.

"Yeah," she said. "I'm real tired."

As she stared at the edge of her skirt she saw a little loose thread sticking up from the brown fabric, and grabbed at it, pulled a bit. Nothing happened. Her mouth turned into a frown, and she pulled harder and still nothing happened, and she didn't want to pull too much because what if her skirt started unraveling?

Darlene wanted to say or do something to help, but that was what she had. She was tired. She was also pretty surprised that Max had admitted he was, given a second more to think about it. She didn't think he was the type to admit to much that made him look even a little weak.

Maybe she was wrong. She didn't really know him.

"Thanks," Darlene said, watching her hands pick at her skirt some more. Her right toe made circles in the dirt in the background. Her voice was small, mumbling, a little unclear.

"I'm sorry."

[MethodicalSlacker]

Max didn't notice Darlene playing with her skirt. He barely heard her talk. His focus was somewhere in the vague middle distance between the forest floor and the rubble in his head. The circles under his eyes, which had threatened throughout his life to turn to craters if he stayed up by his bedside desk reading too late into the night, had caved in, like someone had placed their fingers there and pushed in on his clay face. His wrists felt tight and locked up from carrying around the man-catcher for the last several days. His palms were sore. His back hurt. If there was one word to describe how he felt, it would be that he ached, abstractly. Max ached for many things, and in many ways.

But he heard her apologize. Her voice rose, briefly, above the rattling.

Chuckling came from his mouth. Max forgot that was a sound he could make. His head shook, side to side. This was absurd. Darlene was apologizing to him. They were sitting together on a tree stump, inches apart, and she was apologizing to him. He barely knew she existed, before this. Max turned his head and looked at her again. Despite the fact that they had spent the last four or five days together, Max felt like the events had taken a far greater toll on himself than on her.

Part of him wondered what Misty was doing right now. Max wanted to hate that part of himself. But he had no energy for him. No energy for it.

"Don't apologize," he said, "I don't even know what you're apologizing for."

[MurderWeasel]

The tugging became more and more insistent, but Darlene registered it only as a sort of vague sensation, a physical presence neither uncomfortable nor natural. The thread bit into her fingertips like floss between her gums. She had never flossed enough, ever. Every time she went to the dentist the woman who scraped at her teeth and polished them with the horribly gritty paste told her that she had to floss and she promised that she would and then she didn't do it. The first day back, she told herself that she didn't have to because her teeth had just been cleaned, and a week later she would start soon but she'd lost the free container of floss, and by a month after she was just waiting to start the habit after her next cleaning, for real. Maybe in twenty or thirty years that would've made her teeth fall out, but that had always been hard to imagine and now she was glad she hadn't spent very much energy worrying about it.

Darlene shifted back and forth, rearranging herself sort of, in theory trying to get more comfortable but really just trading off one set of uncomfortable factors for another. In this position, the rough bark prickled the soft backs of her knees. In this one, her shoulders were hunched up and tense. In this one, her posture was artificially straight, straining her spine.

None were as difficult as the inescapable social position she found herself in, of course.

Max was being kind again. He was being understanding and telling her something she'd been told before sometimes, that she didn't need to fall upon her sword. She wished it made her feel better, because he wasn't angry like she'd been afraid, but for a change Darlene was apologizing not in some instinctual effort to placate somebody or socially extricate herself from some disaster of her own making.

"...I don't either," she admitted, quietly, "but I mean it."

[MethodicalSlacker]

Max leaned forward and rested an elbow on his thigh, propping up his head with his hand. He went back to his previous position, roughly, resuming his staring contest with oblivion. A leaf was blown from a tree and fluttered down to the ground next to his foot. Back home, Max used to pride himself on keeping good posture. Sure, he might rock back on his chair, but he would seldom let his back hunch. Now, he paid no mind. Whatever was comfortable worked. Whatever was comfortable was best.

"I should really be the one apologizing," he said.

Time passed between this sentence and the next, so much so that he almost forgot he had more to say. More leaves fell from the tree above.

"I'm sorry I attacked you. I'm sorry I dragged you around for these past few days. I'm sorry I made you come with me, all this time, only to wind up here."

The winds picked up again. A leaf blew off course and landed on Max's head. He did not move a muscle. A couple more seconds passed, and the leaf blew away on its own.

"I don't understand why you haven't left me yet."

[MurderWeasel]

"I, um, no, you d—," Darlene said. She was fumbling. This was what it felt like on the other side of where she'd just been, except somehow even with their current situation Max was a thousand or at least a hundred times more eloquent and composed than her. If anything, he was a better speaker when he talked like everyone else. Darlene wasn't good at many things, but she read a lot and had a good vocabulary. She could mostly keep up with Max in terms of comprehension, more or less. She didn't just prefer how he was talking now because she was stupid or anything.

"No," she said again, "you don't have to be sorry either."

The thread snapped and came loose between her fingers. Instantly she started rolling it, over and over again between tip of thumb and index, into a tiny little ball of fiber.

"You just, you, I... I made a mistake," Darlene said. She wasn't looking at Max. She wasn't looking into the endless woods, either, wasn't looking at her hands or legs or feet or the sky. She was looking at the bottoms of the lenses of her glasses. They were all smudged up again, mostly she thought from the oil or grease or whatever that her skin produced. Whenever she rubbed at her eyes or nose, her knuckles or the backs of her fingers would scrape against her glasses and dirty them up.

"You gave me a second—you let me try again," she said. "You didn't hurt me. I appreciate that."

The ball of thread was tight now, a little speck of hard cotton. Without looking, Darlene pinched it between her thumbnail and the soft flesh of her index fingertip, strained nail against skin for a moment, and then flicked it off into the world around them. She didn't see it go. If she spent a hundred years combing this whole chunk of woods for it, she might well never find it again.

Her feet rubbed the sticks and dirt around some more.

"I don't mind it here," she said.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Max nodded.

"I appreciate that."

He leaned backwards. There was just enough tree stump behind him that he could lie flat on his back. His head drooped down, just a few inches off of the ground. This was a good stretch. It made him feel loose. He had tightened up considerably the last few days. It was good to let some stress go, objectively speaking, even though that wasn't at all what he was thinking about at this moment in time. Relaxation was as far from here as one could go without falling out of orbit.

There were probably a few minutes between this and the blood going to his head. He'd hang out for a bit and then sit back up and be himself again. That was it. It was that simple. He could forget this happened. He could put himself together again. Max was within Max's grasp. It was doable.

A deep sigh rolled out from deep in his chest.





















"I want to give up."

[MurderWeasel]

"You what?"

Darlene couldn't stifle the surprise and uncertainty in her voice. Someone better at hiding their emotions probably wouldn't have been able to either, though, she thought. "Abrupt" didn't even begin to describe it. Max had been strong, firm, driven. Jonah had been the heart of their group, but Max was undeniably the brains. He had the plan. And right until just this very moment, everything had been working towards his end.

Hadn't it?

Darlene's fingers found their way to the edge of her skirt again. Usually, when a piece of thread came off of something, it pulled out a few stitches and a new loose end popped up right away. This time, though, she could find nothing but smooth fabric and seam. With nothing else to worry, her hand started rolling and unrolling the fabric, just a very little bit, an inch up, an inch down.

Max hadn't said anything the whole walk from the big house. Darlene had been so focused on the idea that he was maybe mad, but had never considered that his steps might be anything less than purposeful. She didn't know him very well. She'd seen one side of him so strongly and for lack of any evidence to the contrary had assumed she was seeing more of that side, but there had been all sorts of evidence all around. She just hadn't realized its significance.

"I mean, um, I mean, um, I mean," Darlene said, "um..."

How could she say what she wanted to? There were so many little caveats and explanations and qualifiers that if she tried to spit them all out she'd be going and going and never even say what she really needed to get out.

Her fingers brushed right above her left knee, tickling and prickling her skin.

She'd never been very much good at keeping her emotions from her voice. She was easy to read, probably, and maybe that would be enough. It had to be here. How else could she convey that she meant no judgment, no disappointment, no need for it to be anything other than true? She was curious, and taken aback, because she didn't understand. Nothing more or less.

"How come?"

[MethodicalSlacker]

She reacted with more surprise than Max anticipated. Part of him thought that she would be more happy than anything. To be set free. To drift, these last few days, on the wind, like so many leaves. There was no disapproval in her astonishment, but there was, to be sure, astonishment indeed. Had he not given off the impression, as was true to his innermost feelings, that the path he had chosen had not only proven to be woefully inefficient and unrewarding, but also soul-crushingly impossible to reconcile with his true beliefs?

Perhaps she had. Max stopped himself short of giving her too little credit. Her question had revealed none of her true feelings, and that was intentionally so. She was probing into his psyche without passing judgement. There were two reasons why one would do this, both equally valid. The first was that she wished not to presume that the ideas she had were necessarily correct. The second was that she wanted her lack of knowledge to be represented accurately, but neutrally. Max could work with either. He would work with either. He was working. That was a change.

"How do you think," he began, still dangling, "the trial in the mansion went? What are your honest opinions on what happened, over there?"

Max knew his answer. It was terrible. What he didn't know was if Darlene would agree why. Darlene couldn't agree why. She didn't have the kind of data that he did.

Emotional data, to be precise.

[MurderWeasel]

"Not so good," Darlene admitted. Max had answered her question with a question of his own, but Darlene thought she knew where he was going with this, maybe. She read into it not evasion but rhetorical intent, an explanation he was hopefully going to walk her through rather than spell out. It would probably stick better that way.

"Pretty bad," she clarified, a moment later.

It was strange, laying this out so clearly, when she hadn't even given her own feelings on the matter this sort of space and reflection in her own head. There had been other, more important things to focus on than what had happened with their actual attempts at making a decision. She had been worried about Jonah and Arizona, a little worried about Lucas and even a tiny bit about Kelly. She'd had to decide what to do, and had been forced to reaffirm that decision in the face of some real temptation to bolt off along the trail she imagined she'd discovered. She had been caught up in how her feet hurt and her eyelids drooped. She'd been so tired she'd even given custody of the revolver over to the husky for a while. It was still keeping track of the gun for her now.

"It's, uh, I," Darlene said, not quite sure how much to say, a little worried still that too much candor here might make Max upset. They'd been pitted against each other by circumstance, and she'd done her best because that was her job, and she thought—hoped—he'd understood all of that.

"I don't think she had a good reason," Darlene mumbled to her lap. She watched the hem of her skirt reveal that little sliver of extra skin and then hide it once more, again and again. Something looked off to her somehow, and it took her a couple of moments to realize that it was actually how much of her arm was visible. Darlene was lucky and didn't have particularly hairy arms, but she also didn't shave her arms, ever. Shaving your arms was weird, she thought, even though she couldn't at all explain why it was weird to shave your arms but weird to not shave your legs. And armpits, of course! Darlene shaved her armpits. She wasn't French, or like those women who dyed their body hair all different colors as some political statement.

"But," Darlene continued, "I don't know what else we could've done. I don't know what would've been right."

[MethodicalSlacker]

Max nodded again. At this rate, his head would fall off of his shoulders. It was obvious that Kelly didn't have a good reason by the fact that she hadn't come right out with it. If she had realized what was happening and attempted to explain herself proactively without being restrained first, then everything would be a lot different right now.

But that was in the past.

"It wasn't what I had in mind, at the start," Max said, "of all this."

He sighed and sat back up. A little bit of energy had returned to him, but not enough. He was starting to feel like breaking his silence was useless. It felt good to talk, but feeling good wasn't always the point. In fact, a lot of the time, it was entirely counter productive.

"I just thought that other people felt like I did. That was a mistake. I didn't expect a full trial. I didn't want a full trial. That was never something that I had in mind. It's too much procedure. It wastes too much time. This is life and death. Morality shouldn't have to go through a godforsaken committee—"

And on his last word, Max's voice broke. Quickly he stood up and turned away from Darlene, taking just one step away from the tree stump. It was all coming apart at the seams—his ethos, his composure, his reality—everything was tumbling away from him. Darlene could not know. Darlene wasn't allowed to see.

But she was allowed to hear his words. His words. Max could still rely on his words. Whenever the rest of himself failed, he could always count on the words. Searching deep down, Max tried to find some eloquent way to sum up the feelings of rejection, of simply being humored instead of properly believed, of isolation and the realization that he was truly without supporters for his cause. In a way, the man-catcher was an ironic weapon choice. It was only now that he recognized that the one truly being lead along, prodded with spikes and kept captive by metal springs, was himself. But his words! His words could deliver him. Surely there was a cinder left burning inside him, buried deep down but still aflame. Surely!

"I..."

Surely.

"I..."

...surely.

Max's hands fell limp by his sides. He shook his head gently side to side as he turned around to face Darlene again. His gaze was downcast. Fingers splayed. His cheeks, reddened.

"I guess I should be used to the people I care about not really giving an honest fuck about what I have to say by now," he said, sniffling back tears.

[MurderWeasel]

Darlene examined her fingers very carefully.

They weren't moving anymore. She felt still, on some vast scale, frozen by the awkward immensity of the situation. She did not know how to respond to what Max had said. She did not even know whether a response of any sort was appropriate. Perhaps what this really called for was silent commiseration, or, or a hug! But Darlene wasn't so much of the hugging sort, or that is to say she didn't mind hugs but also didn't initiate them, and that was with people she was closer to than Max. She was not going to get up or reach for him. It was impossible.

The world around them was not held in suspension in the same way Darlene was. It was windy, and so the trees that made up the whole world's backdrop here rustled and shook. There were animals out there, watching them. Darlene could see some of the birds, perched on branches, in closer to the trunks of the trees for better shelter and stability from the elements. They shuffled, adjusting their footing. Most of them were brown or black, birds that were not the same as what they had back in Chattanooga but were not so incredibly different that they wouldn't fit right in eating crumbs in front of George Hunter High. One, however, was bright red. It looked like a parrot, she thought, though it was too far for her to say for certain. It would not have seemed out of place on a pirate's shoulder. Closer, there were bugs crawling through the dirt and grass again. A fat, shiny blackish-blue beetle tumbled over, waving its legs for a moment before righting itself. An ant was crawling over the toe of Darlene's shoe. The vegetation around here was mostly ferns. A long time ago Darlene had been reading about dinosaurs and somehow or other had heard that ferns were some of the oldest plant life left, a style relatively unchanged in thousands and thousands of years. She did not know if it was true or if she was remembering incorrectly.

She looked at Max too, some, not straight on exactly. Would he want to be seen like this? Would he care? What was left to worry about now? Even as that crossed her mind, of course, Darlene was being a tremendous hypocrite. She still felt uncomfortable showing so much of her arms.

"...I care what you have to say," she said.

She did. She wasn't just lying or trying to comfort Max. He'd treated her alright over the past few days. This was the most horrible thing that could've possibly happened to her, and she was going to die, but for that it wasn't really that bad yet, and Max was part of why. Okay, there were some especially terrible parts like the bodies and shooting Beryl, and some not great parts like cracker sandwiches every meal, but also there was Jonah and Max and the dog. It could've been much, much worse.

"I can listen if you want," Darlene said, but her voice got smaller as she did.

After all, she was listening already. She was a good listener. She could listen for Max, but she couldn't be what he wanted right now, what he needed.

He'd said it plain as day.

He needed somebody who he cared about too.

[MethodicalSlacker]

"The people I care about."

---

After putting their clothes back on, Max and Misty went downstairs to spend some time together in the living room. They both reasoned—correctly, Max assumed, given Misty's necessary affinity with her own parents, something Max felt in a moment of self-consciousness was odd that he did not take for granted with his own parental figures—that should the others residing in her home arrive, it would be marginally less suspect were they to be discovered in her living room rather than the bedchamber. Surely there would be other giveaways to the fact that they had done something inappropriate for discussion, such as the generally less put-together appearance of Max's clothes and Misty's, as he carefully observed, entire person, though he was not sure whether the difference in her appearance was physical or mental in nature. They spent some time reclining together on the couch in a relaxed posture. Max's back was against an armrest as he held Misty, her back on his chest, his arms folded across her chest as she brushed her finger gently across his own. A sort of upwards aimed spooning, if he so desired to name it as such.

But he did not. The two reclined, speaking softly of trivial things, in the quietude of the room. Occasionally a car would pass outside, and the two would lower their voices or cease discussion altogether. He was not altogether certain why. The conversation was kept light. Max made it a point tonight that no political or religious matters would be discussed, and especially not as a topic of pillow talk. He avoided any questions of performance as well—he was certain the last thing Misty wanted was any indication that things could have gone poorly, or that Max was not certain if they had, or that they had. Besides, he was personally anxious to distance himself from what they did.

Where this trepidation came from, he did not know. The night had been wonderful, splendid even, and he felt good before, during, and after they'd been up there. But as Misty spoke, first about how nice the night was (Max agreeing confidently), then about plans for the summer and how surreal the looming graduation was (offering to spend more time together, to which Max also agreed without missing a beat), and further still about idler topics, such as the music playing in the restaurant and then other music that Misty personally liked and music that Max thought he should like as far as being the person he was went, but did not listen to because he did not personally enjoy the experience of listening to music all too much, music which Misty seemed pleased he found enjoyable and even knew about, as he gave no outward impression of being a particularly musically inclined person, and rightfully so, and as this idle chit-chatter went on and on and on and the night grew deeper and deeper and the wind outside howled and then eventually disappeared, Max felt like there was something wrong with his intrusion.

Yes, that was it. Max was, regardless of Misty's personal approval or consent, an intruder on this night. An intruder into this home, an intruder into Misty's bedroom, an intruder into. Well. It went without saying that Max recognized the opportunity for a playful jab at the absurdity of the metaphor and the situation but resisted because he did not find it funny, but the point had been made, internally. There was sufficient cause to leave. He waited for a lull in the conversation, after he said something that made Misty gently laugh, to begin his exit.

"Anyway," he said, "I should probably get going." Before Max could sit up, Misty, with a start, as if she was not expecting or understanding of the fact that he would eventually leave, removed herself from him, sitting up straighter on the couch so he could peel away.

"Oh, oh right," she said as he stood up from the couch, "I guess it is getting late." Quick assent. Max appreciated her understanding. He nodded at her with a warm smile, and went over to the entryway to put his shoes on. She followed him over and stood nearby as he put his shoes on. He tried to tie the laces right, but for some reason he had little feeling in his hands. Maybe that was just a thing that happened, when they were rubbed like that, or a symptom of the fatigue he expected after being upstairs for that long. He found himself tying a shoe, fumbling the process somewhere partway through, and then restarting a multitude of times. At one point, he saw fit to take his shoes off, examine them to make certain that they were on the correct feet, and then replace them once he confirmed that they were in fact correctly placed.

"Is everything okay, Max?"

Max blinked and quickly turned around, seeing a look of concern on Misty's face. For some reason, it was a look that also suggested that she was self-conscious. That she was worried about how she did, if she did something wrong.

"Oh, uh, yes," Max stammered, "I'm just, my parents are probably worried about how long I've taken, a-a-and I'm in sort of a panic because I, well, with how well everything has gone, they regrettably slipped my mind."

It was impossible to tell how well that answer satisfied Misty. Her expression softened, likely because she now knew that she was not the cause of his departure. Really, she wasn't. It wasn't her. Max got the first shoe tied as he turned back around, and went to work on the second shoe with renewed confidence. His hands were moderately less shaky now that he had reassured Misty that everything was okay. Max was sure she understood. There was no way he hadn't successfully reassured her with that.

"Oh... right," Misty said, processing Max's words, "Of course, uh, tell them... tell them I'm sorry for keeping you."

Max nodded. He wanted to thank her for being so wonderful tonight, but he didn't properly understand how. His second shoe was tied much quicker than the first, which freed him to stand and get in one last goodbye hug, awkward as it was, before his departure. Thankfully, she seemed to accept it warmly.

And with that, Max absconded, wandering aimlessly out into the darkness until he found a main road that would direct him homeward.

That was his wayfinding stratagem, for the return voyage. For once he found his stumbling way to a street he recognized, it was only a matter of minutes before his course was satisfyingly aimed in the correct direction. Drifting gave him time to be empty. To hold no thoughts in his head. Concentrate purely on the intellectual curiosities of navigation through dense urban planning, the rigidity of structures caught in a limbo between revolutionary insight and redundancy in the wake of nascent cultural developments. The idea of a residential neighborhood, for example, was sure to become obsolete in the following years. Space is growing more and more limited, and the internet is bringing material goods to people in a more direct sense than before. A "neighborhood" is pointless, anyway, when the world is at one's fingertips. Max was satisfied with this musing. A complete thought. A mundane commentary on inane subject material. There was a surplus of such meaningless ideas bouncing about in his head.

He came to a street corner with a crosswalk and a button to push in order to change the lights. Max took the steps required to close the distance between himself and the button when he noticed a lightness in one of his dress shoes. The shoelaces, he noticed as he glanced downwards, had come untied on his right foot. Max sighed, took another step forward, and placed his foot on the base of the light pole, reaching down to hold the laces between his fingers, pulling them tight at the ends and folding them into knots. How primitive a mechanism, he mused, twisting one string over the other. He was supposed to tie his shoes, walk some more, and if he kept walking far enough the shoes would come untied yet again. A temporary way to keep leather and plastic strapped to his foot. A transient bond. A stopgap measure.

Silently, his hands stopped their work. They felt light, without mass, fragile and useless. Max took a breath, and found it was shallower than he wanted, so he took some more. And some more. His head felt light, his lips dry. And some more. For whatever reason, his teeth were vibrating. And some more. There was a fullness in his stomach that he did not appreciate. And some more. He had not requested that fullness. And some more. It felt more like he was bloated, heavy, sagging against the street pole, hands hanging in mid-tie. And some more. And some more, and some more, and some more, until each gasp of air was not just cycling through his lungs but pushing something else deep within him back, each feeble inhalation slowing the inevitable release of impulse quivering in his heart.

It hurt to swallow. It hurt to even think. He ran a hand through his hair and found it messed about, unkempt, unruly, yet strangely thicker than usual. Its usual fineness was gone, replaced with a greasy weight that he felt covering his whole body in a thinly layered sheen.

He let go of the shoelaces and felt the quick rush of air as he leaned and then quickly fell forward, raising an arm to cushion the fall of his forehead against the metal of the pole.

And there, slumped against a streetlamp in the dead of night, Max Rudolph, through a pale, languid, twisted half-smile, began to softly weep.

---

"The people I care about."

---

Max, seated on a bed in a bedchamber that he despised. The den of sin. The lair of lechery. It had come to this. The ultimate destination. After his arrival here, there was no righting of course. Max had gone well and truly astray if he was in this domain, preparing to offer confession to someone who masticated at the feet of the devil, yet claimed to be a Christian man. Hypocrisy landed sinners in Malebolge—Max could not describe his surroundings in more apt terms.

It had come to this.

Max, approaching Randy for advice.

"So, 'cos," he said, turning away from the web pages he was exiting out of quickly on his computer screen, wheeling squeakily on his rotating office-style chair, "what's on your mind?"

The most direct of questions. One that Max himself would pose, and yet it was the question that he was the least ready to answer. He exhaled, put his hands on his knees, and leaned forwards.

"Have," Max started, then faltered.

"Uh?" Randy questioned.

He was here on false pretenses. Max rarely approached Randy when it was time for them to commiserate. Usually, their interactions went exclusively in the opposite direction, Randy approaching him for an opportunity to, as he said, "bask in his brightness." It did more than skeeve Max out to hear the affectionate terms in which Randy spoke of him. They were not incredibly distant in age, yet Randy spoke with the kind of pride in his voice that would make an eavesdropper assume he had raised Max with his own two hands. Max did not enjoy having to speak with Randy, but he felt he had no choice. Talking to Misty about this was not an option. A discourse with his parents was similarly unfavorable—he shuddered at the mental picture of the ensuing calamity at him raising the subject of intimate relations. He could not risk the hit to his reputation if he brought it up with any of his other friends, from school. Confessing to an actual priest was out of the question; his attendance at church was not nearly prolific enough for the necessary emotional trust to exist on his side of the bargain. Thus, logically, rationally, it fell to Randy, for he already possessed a favorable opinion of Max, lacked a significant consequence in the event of causing offense, and was likely to offer emotional support. In undue qualities, of course, but emotional support all the same.

When Randy asked why Max wanted to come over, Max answered that he wished to check in on Randy. To see where he stood in his journey through life.

Deceivers also found themselves in Malebolge, in Dante's depiction of the infernal realms.

"What was it like?" Max spat out, "Uh, your first time. How did it go?"

Randy's eyes widened, and he leaned back in his seat, whistling a high note.

"Well, shucks," he said, "I've never, uh, that is, if I'm understanding what you're speaking of, I've never been that close with, uh, a girl."

The readiness with which Randy accepted this line of questioning disgusted Max so thoroughly that he could not help but look off into the wall.

"Did, uh—"

There was no way that Max was going to allow Randy to finish that thought.

"I did," he blurted out, "I did, I had, uh, I had an intimate personal connection with a young woman, a girl in my class, my prom date, I well you well I would I suppose would say, not someone I was intending on exactly pursuing any long term long time long standing relationship with in any further context or location or place and well I I you well see I just, I'm not used to. I've kissed people before. Women, exclusively, of course, that was not even a question that you posed, interrogated, fuck, shit, I—"

"Was it good?"

Max looked up and saw Randy leaning forward in his chair now, listening attentively. He could not suppress his instinct to scrunch his face in disgust, then immediately looked over at the wall again. As a matter of fact, Max felt so disgusted that he'd put his head in his hands. Disgusted at Randy's enthusiasm to know. Disgusted, too, at his own answer.

"Yeah," he mumbled, "until I had to leave her."

---

"The people I care about."

---

Max did not dream before he woke up. He thought he heard a series of distant noises, somewhere in the void that was his arrested mind, but went back quickly to his dreamless sleep shortly afterward. What woke him was not the noises. If only. If only.

What woke him instead was a bird decided to land on his body and tap its beak against his face. Startled, Max flailed his arms out, batting the bird away. He watched as it flapped its wings and withdrew against the sky. A seagull. He was on an island.

The island.

Max stood quickly and surveyed the land around him. It appeared he had been placed at the edge of a rice paddy. Max had never visited such a place himself, but he had seen plenty in pictures and documentary films such that the recognition was instant. His memory of the room and the video and seeing the vice principal getting killed returned. Max did not dream before he woke up; that was all just recollection. Not purely mental. It was real. The rest was soon to come.

He took a step forward and felt his foot brush against something. A pole, of some kind. Max looked down at what he had almost tripped over—his first thought was that it was a snake, indigenous to this region—and did a double take. It was a medieval weapon he had seen in illustrations as a child, one he had read about—one that had always fascinated him. The Mancatcher. Its teeth glinted in the morning sun. Clearly, its intention was as Max's designated weapon, but that was somewhat absurd. It couldn't seriously harm anyone. It was made for transporting prisoners from one place to the next, and for restraining violent citizens, not other armed combatants. Taking it up would be a fool's errand.

And besides, it wasn't what Max wanted to do anyway. He had no intention of harming anybody, for any reason. Very soon, people were about to get hurt. They'd need someone to protect them and watch over them, to forage for them if they could not. Someone needed to volunteer for the needy, to make sure nobody's death was so painful and without dignity that they could not accomplish what they truly wished to do in their final days. Regardless of how Max felt about his own regrets, of which he had many, there was no real reason why Max shouldn't help others in this situation. It was what he had done back home. Though it was a little ironic, he thought, that the way people would finally find out was when they wouldn't get a chance to tell anyone else. Good. He felt like that was the best way to be known.

First, though, he'd have to get people to help him out. People to help him help others. There was little doubt in Max's mind that as the wounded population grew his job would become unsustainable on its own and his whole enterprise would become twisted, mangled, sabotaged by some killer somewhere. There was no chain without links. He'd need a network of people keeping others healthy and safe. A group of friends, people that he trusted; the baseball team emerged as the best candidates. They were good, uncomplicated people. Not like the debate team. They were good, too, but they would be more likely to challenge his idea simply for the sake of it, and that wouldn't do. There was no room for argument when people's lives were at stake. Thus, the baseball team emerged as the best candidate for his network of helpers.

The first person he wanted to tell about this was Abel. The captain of the team would be instrumental in convincing the others to join. Max was not in a position of low regard on the team, of course, but he lacked the natural charisma that Abel had, the knack for connecting with other people. He'd need to find him as soon as possible. Time was of the essence. Max picked up his bag and started walking towards the center of the rice paddies, looking from side to side, wary of any potential meetings with his classmates this early in the game. He was going to be going through with this unarmed. Carrying a weapon would make his plan seem all the more selfish—he was aware that rounding up the most vulnerable would make them seem like easy targets to anyone with even slightly more industrious ambition.

He walked three yards through water and mud and grass. He looked east, west, north, and south. Left, and right. Max looked up at the sun and clouds and the tops of trees.

But in his hurry, Max did not look down.

Something brushed against his foot again. Something heavy. His first thought was that it was someone else's weapon that they had left behind. Someone with the same idea. Max looked down at what it was.
















and it was exactly what he had wanted, moments ago, to find.

Max stumbled back, almost falling into the water. His heartbeat rose up to the top of his chest and his vision went blurry, and Max found himself awash in a painful feeling, like there were tongues of flame rising from his skin. There was a body drifting in the water. Waterlogged and starting to rot, blood congealing in its immediate radius. Not just any body, but Abel's body. The killing had already begun. Max was too late to do anything to save him. The noises he heard in his sleep was Abel being killed. He had been so, so close. Max could have saved him. Max could have started with Abel, if only he had awakened in time, and and and and and—

it all came out, just like that; Max turned to the side and heaved into a cluster of rice plants, emptying out the contents of his stomach. Then, he turned and ran the three yards back to where the man-catcher lay, closer to the edge of the rice paddies. He picked it up and kept running, dazed and confused, feeling like there was more to eject from himself, barely holding his bag on his back, holding the man-catcher in a way that was liable to get himself tripped up and flung into the water himself. He ran far, far, far into the trees, into the brush and brambles and branches and blurry green leaves surrounding the rice paddies before he stopped, dropped his things to the ground, and collapsed to the ground. Hands on his knees, he dry heaved, head pointed at the ground. There was nobody to hold his head. There was nobody to stroke his hair. Max was alone, and determined, in whatever way he could,

to unsee what he just saw.

"I do not," he said in between heaves, "recognize the body in the water." He raised his hand and slapped himself across the face once, and then twice. His breathing was heavy, like his lungs had filled with rocks. "I do not recognize the body in the water. I do not recognize the body in the water." Each time, punctuated with a slap, until eventually he forgot where to put the punctuation at all.

"IdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonotrecognizethebodyinthewaterIdonot—"

and he rocked back and forth, mumbling, until he forgot how to speak.


















Max did not dream before he woke up. There was no sound. There were no birds. He did not know why the absence of either of those things were significant to him. He sat up, and looked around. He knew that this was not the first place he woke up, but he did not know why he had stumbled over here. Somnambulism was not in his medical history, but the gas could have been laced with some strange things. The man-catcher was, for some reason, a familiar sight. Familiar from his childhood, yes, but more recently as well. He also knew where he was, on the outskirts of the rice paddies. There were rice paddies, here, back to the east, around twenty yards away.

Walking over there…

...would be exposing himself to the enemy.

There were enemies everywhere, just waiting to kill someone. Anyone. Vile, sinful human beings, walking the earth. Something needed to be done about them before they hurt innocent people. The man-catcher was a perfect tool. They could be restrained before they hurt anyone else, or while the people attacked could have their revenge. Max could help those in need get what they wanted out of the people that wanted to take their lives. They deserved it, in return for what they did. The atrocities they had already committed, and those that they had yet to commit.

But he couldn't do that alone. He'd need help. It was an idea that anyone could get behind, but there were a few people he thought might especially want to help, if he could convince them. Members of the baseball team would be good for the job. They were physically fit, and they had bonds with Max. In particular, he thought it would be good if he could recruit the captain for the job. He'd be good in convincing other people that his cause was a worthy one.



…



But he'd also need to make his pitch work for anyone. Anyone at all. Anyone who would listen. Max turned and saw a camera hidden in the bush, trained straight on him. Perfect. This was the opportune moment to rehearse his pitch. His argument, to the world, for why his course of action was supreme. His answer to the question of what one should do when faced with a situation in which they were forced to kill, and maim, and do genuinely horrible things to survive. His articulation of the unlikely drive he found within himself to survive, despite all of those horrible things.

Max turned to the camera, then, and began to speak. To his family. To his friends. To Misty. To the captain.

To anyone out there in the world.

Anyone at all.

---

"The people who I care about are either gone, or dead."

Misty was back home, and he had no idea how close they really were. Randy was there too, and so was the rest of his family—how they had decided to deal with his disappearance, Max did not know. Abel was dead, a fact he had to learn, and relearn, and realize he had learned the first time, all over again. A monkey's fist sized pain thrummed in his forehead, just above his right eye. He blinked, and returned himself to where his body stood. A clearing in the woods, next to a branch, with someone who was offering to listen to what he had to say.

Darlene.

He still had Darlene.

Max took a cautious step forward towards her. He sniffed, and realized that he was crying, that he had failed to hold back the waterworks. He felt no need to whimper, to snivel, to gasp for breath. He was crying, and those tears were falling silently. A simple, involuntary expression of many things. Guilt. Regret. Emptiness. Among others.

But he still had Darlene.

He bent down and pulled her in for a tight hug.

"Thank you," he said with a sniffle.