Max and Sebastian - Chapter 31
Contemporary young adult horror fiction
Dearest Penguin People.
Welcome to Max and Sebastian, my evil kid/ghost story. A warm thank you to my regular readers who show up every week.
I’ve been posting at irregular times and haven’t released a stand alone short story in a while. Hopefully that sorts itself out soon. I’ve been dealing with family health issues that have to come first. Thank you for understanding.
If you are new to Max and Sebastian, please start here…
As always, a special thank you to P.Q. Rubin for the dapper little guy up top…
Max tip-toed into the living room. Adult voices rose and fell in the kitchen.
“She needs to go to the hospital now.” That was Autumn.
Sebastian’s rasp followed, “But Leonard is there.”
“Then we’ll go somewhere else. We can’t have her traipsing around like this in her condition.”
Max pursed her lips. “Her condition.” It made it sound like she had the measles or the flu. The chameleon rustled in the back of her head. She nodded. If she left now, she might have a chance. She sprinted across the living room to the front door.
“Where are you going, Max?”
Max gripped the doorknob. Larry hadn’t been there a moment ago. For a big man, he was surprisingly quiet. “What’s it to you?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Just thought we rated a goodbye.”
She wiped sweaty palms on her jeans. “Fine. Goodbye.” Then, she looked at the floor, afraid to look at him. “It’s better if I go. I know what I’m doing.”
“That’s what worries me.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you. Not like you would understand anyway.”
“Try me.” He stood in the center of the living room; hands clasped in front of him.
Max blinked back tears. It was cruel to have to put it into words.
And yet he waited.
Still looking at the floor, she said, “I can’t be what they want. I’m not as good as Sebastian wants me to be. I never was.” She shook her head. “He’s waiting for my brain to explode so that I can go with him into The Gray. And Mrs. Teaberry wants to dump me in a hospital so I can die invisible and alone.”
“That’s a bit harsh.”
She lifted her chin. “Is it? Life is harsh and sucky. You should know that.”
Larry knelt on the carpet before her. “Tell me, short stuff, what do you want?”
“I don’t want to cross over. What if I’m like Buttercup and I’m going backwards and I come back even worse? Would I have been born into this body if my soul was okay?”
Larry bowed his head, his voice quiet. “Max, do you think you’re being punished?”
“Look at me. I’m a freak.”
“I am looking and I see nothing wrong with you.”
“That’s because you’re a freak too.”
A broken smile crept across Larry’s face. “The world needs freaks. Don’t run from what makes you human.”
“Being human sucks.”
“So, what’s the plan?”
Max looked up into his wide, sympathetic face. His eyes softened into glistening brown pools, and she couldn’t keep the tears back. “None of this Gray crap for me. I’m staying here after I die.”
“At what cost?”
She stomped her foot. “Do I care? I’m doing what’s right for me. Everyone else can go to hell.”
“Everyone?”
Max looked at Larry’s kind face, her lips trembling. “Everyone.”
Her words hung in the air, bittersweet drops that she wished she could take back.
A chair scraped against tile floor in the kitchen. Soft footsteps. Autumn and Sebastian entered the living room wearing their grown-up faces. “What’s going on here?” Autumn asked.
Max clutched the doorknob. “I’m not going to the hospital.”
The look of pity in Autumn’s eyes was infuriating.
“I’m serious,” Max said. “I’m leaving.”
Sebastian hovered over Larry’s shoulder. “You won’t be safe out there.”
“They’ll find me wherever I am.” Max bit her bottom lip. “And maybe they should.”
She lifted her chin and pointed at the living room window. “Look.” A group of gray people floated on the other side, their faces glowing softly like moths in candlelight.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” May Teaberry emerged from the shadowy corner of the room. “I thought I told you busybodies to go away.”
They melted through the glass, into the room. “Can we stay here?” one of the gray people asked. “The Collector is roaming tonight.”
“So, you thought you’d lead her here?”
“She didn’t follow. She seemed preoccupied.”
May looked askance at Autumn. “Well?”
Autumn sank onto the couch with her head in her hands. She spoke to her slippers. “Would someone be kind enough to tell me who this ‘Collector’ is?”
The gray people answered with a muffled collection of sighs and one random mention of a peanut fetish.
“Lord help me,” Autumn said. “The day I get a straight answer is the day I find someone dancing on my grave.”
Larry placed his hand on her shoulder. She froze. Then looked up into his eyes, where infinity lay.
He whispered in her ear, “I do a great soft-shoe.”
“I have no doubt,” she whispered back.
Meanwhile, a furtive movement caught Max’s eye. A tiny shadow lurked on the other side of the window. It was a horribly mangled rodent. No one else noticed. It beckoned with a charred paw and then vanished. Max turned the knob. “I’m going.” She limped out the door without looking back.
Sebastian darted after her in a trail of mist and tatters.
Autumn remained on the couch and stared at Larry.
“Will you be okay, Autumn?”
“Go on now. They’re getting away.”
His lips curled slightly. “I’m a hard person to lose.”
Autumn dabbed her eyes with a tissue. She walked slowly to the door and watched Max turn onto the sidewalk. When she spoke, it was to the space above his left ear. “After all this, if you find that your utility shed is no longer hospitable, I might find some room for you here.”
“But you barely know me.”
Her eyes thawed. “I know you.”
He grinned.
“And Larry?”
“Yes?”
“Give her something to believe in.”
He gave her what would have been a hug if he had actually touched her and then rushed out into the night.
*****
Eve was parked in front of a Ready Mart convenience store.
Chloe climbed into the passenger seat.
“Feeling better?” Eve asked.
“I think so. My butt threw up. So, all good.”
“Real classy.”
“I do my best.”
Then a familiar odor crept up on them unaware, an overpowering stench of burnt flesh. “Oh God, what is that?” Chloe asked.
Eve rolled down her ambulance window, eyes watering. “Geoffrey?”
“Yeah, but how?”
The rustle of hundreds of tiny legs erupted beneath Eve’s feet. A wall of cockroaches swarmed up the door toward the open window.
Both doors flung open. They leapt into the parking lot, doing the herky-jerky dance as the roaches rushed over their boots. A Ready Mart attendant watched from the entrance, a cigarette dangling from his lower lip. The tiny black horde swept out of the ambulance and fled across the pavement toward the store. He cursed and went back inside, locking the door behind him.
Then everything was quiet with only the occasional hum of a car in the distance. Eve and Chloe stared at each other, not sure what to do.
“Two Eighteen copy Code 3.”
Eve reached for the mic without putting her foot inside the unit, the stench of burnt flesh getting worse by the second. “Two Eighteen.”
“Two Eighteen copy Code 3, unknown medical, 42 North Pine Ave, the Ambassador Apartments parking lot.”
Chloe was peering inside the unit with a flashlight. “I think they’re all gone.”
“But the smell,” Eve said, holding her arm across her face.
“I know.”
Then the impatient crackle of dispatch. “Two Eighteen?”
Eve keyed the mic. “Two Eighteen responding.”
*****
They pulled up to a rent-subsidized apartment building and saw a county engine parked in the center of the lot. Lieutenant Bansky, built like a tank but less forgiving, stood waiting for them with a clipboard in hand. He waved them forward and then pounded on the hood with a granite fist. He yanked the driver’s door open and spat his report into Eve’s face. “Forty-year-old female knocked on a stranger’s door and then pushed her way in. She then proceeded to run in circles around his living room clucking like a chicken.”
“Say again?”
From the lot, they heard a scuffle of boots on asphalt mixed with a few colorful words. Then, “Damn it, she bit me.” The back door of the unit yanked open on angry hinges.
Bansky thrust the run report into Eve’s hand and stomped away. “Move out.” Two freight train-sized firefighters marched behind him and jumped into the engine.
Chloe poked her head out the window; “Have a lovely evening!” she called out after them. The only response was a cloud of exhaust fumes.
Eve and Chloe peered into the back of their unit where their patient stood staring at them. She was short enough that she didn’t have to crouch. She had pink foam curlers in her hair and wore a powder blue V-neck tee shirt with a see-through half-slip with nothing underneath. Also, she looked mad as hell.
Chloe nudged Eve. “This has you written all over it.”
Of course, it did. Eve grimaced and walked to the back, putting on her blue nitrile gloves.
Her patient made angry clucking sounds when Eve opened the door, her hands clenching and unclenching into tiny fists.
“Why don’t you have a seat?” Eve guided her gently toward the stretcher.
The tiny woman stared straight ahead, the clucking noises becoming more insistent. Eve quickly buckled her in. The last remaining cockroach made a beeline for the back and jumped overboard as she closed the door.
The smell was even worse in the back. Eve stifled a cough. She glanced at the run sheet. “Claudia? Is it Claudia?” She tried to decipher the little bumps and blips that passed for handwriting. Her patient didn’t answer, her eyes fixed on the area just behind Eve’s ear. Eve had the sudden feeling that something was crouched behind her, its foul breath leaving tiny drops of saliva on the back of her neck. She looked cautiously over her shoulder but saw nothing. Claudia pulled nervously at a sponge curler in her hair, her hands trembling.
“You feel it too?” Eve whispered.
Her patient gave a small nod and then squeezed the curler in her hand until it cracked.
“Do you mind if I check your pulse?” Eve reached for the woman’s wrist.
Claudia jerked her hand back and growled. Her eyes were black pits that led to places unpleasant and unknowable.
“Alrighty, then.” Eve turned around. “Maybe step on it,” she called up to Chloe.
And they did, the ambulance surging forward across the dark, pothole-strewn streets.
As a side note…none of this was written with AI and I kindly ask that no one use it for training purposes. Thank you :)
Hope the family health problems get sorted out.
The world needs freaks and geeks 😀💛