Archive of Our Own

Emotions churn in Max Jagerman’s chest as he falls through the top floor of the Waylon house. A few seconds in all, but time slows to a snail’s pace and it allows him to take everything in–the feelings, the sounds, the sensations: tonight’s confusion turned dread turned fear turned joy.

Turned of course, to stomach-dropping dread as he flails out for a hand, and grasps nothing. 

All at once the world sharpens in crystal clear relief before him. The wind whistling past his ears. Every crack in the walls, splotch of mold, place where wood has rotten away to water damage. As he spins in circles, failing to steady himself, he sees the ground: ragged wood floor glinting in the moonlight, cobwebs strung along jagged edges of wooden planks stacked around the room. 

When he spins up one last time, he sees Steph’s face leaning into the hole he left behind. Her face is clear as if they are inches apart–hair draped around her shoulders, eyes shining, mouth open in a yell.

His teeth clench when he sees her, locked on her doe-eyed stare. Fucking Steph. 

No sooner does he open his mouth to cuss her out does his fall shudder to a stop. A pair of two-by-fours impale him straight through the chest. 

For some time, all he can do is scream. He screams and curses and sobs against his will. Quickly he is overcome with body-wracking coughs, spitting up blood and feeling it pool in places it shouldn’t. Air gurgles in and out while he tries to catch his breath. 

By the time everyone makes it downstairs, he’s too weak to move. And they should count themselves lucky–if he was able, he would get up, rip the planks out of his chest and beat every single one of them to death for doing this to him. This fuckin’ geek and his loser friends and…Steph. She’s the one that lured him here. That fact alone fills him with enough anger to raise someone from the dead. 

But he’s pinned by these planks. Immobile. Blood spurting from his chest in slowing pulses. Every time he tries to breathe it hitches with a sputtering cough. 

Holy shit, he thinks, I’m about to die right now. 

The idea only half phases him as he watches those four idiots pile downstairs and bumble around. Trying to figure out what to do as if there is anything to do–even if there is, it’s not like they’re equipped to do it: Flemwad’s writhing on the ground with her hands in her pits. ShitLips trembles from head to toe, staring at him like a ticking bomb–is he fucking crying? Max rolls his eyes and they land on Peter, who wrings his hands and stares into nothing.

He watches them cry and scream over his dying self with detached amusement. In fact, watching nerds flounder like this would make him laugh under different circumstances. But then his gaze drifts between them, landing on Steph. She must feel him looking, because she turns her head and they lock eyes. Though he can’t quite hear what she’s saying, there's a passing mention of calling 911. 

Something snaps.

The anger hits him like a truck–it cuts through the realization he’s about to die, the urge to cry. So he bursts out screaming. 

At her. All of them. All these fuckers who planned this, who murdered him. A bunch of nerdy prudes just murdered him. They know it, so does he. 

Steph leers back. Now she looks more afraid of him than for him. It satisfies him, because she should be. 

Sure, he’s about to die. But that doesn’t mean it’s over. You can’t just get rid of Max Jagerman. His name is etched onto the very walls of Hatchetfield High: a constant reminder to anyone who walks those hallways that they’re his bitch, that he’s eternal. Even long after he graduates, his legacy is sealed for any nerd or loser that dares to step out of line. 

He makes the laws. He rules these people. He–

Screaming’s getting harder. A cough interrupts him. He spits up more blood. Soon he’ll be dead. But that’s fine. Anger carries him to the grave, and he makes a promise before his last breath leaves him him. And he always keeps a promise. 

Nerdy prudes must die. 

_____________________________________________________

Pain. Immeasurable pain.

Then nothing. Then black. 

It confuses him. It’s not like he’s religious or anything, like he’s expecting some grand afterlife or purgatory or whatever the fuck they want to call it. But he’s far from a nihilist. If not heaven or hell, he figured there’d be…something after death. Some place for the mind the soul to go afterwards. But not this. Not just black.

Part of him starts to panic. 

A blinding spotlight shoots out from above. There’s an instinct to throw his hands over his eyes, but he can’t move his limbs. They’re numb. Or gone. He can’t tell. 

One by one, a circle of spotlights illuminate him, and suddenly he’s flooded with sensation. Not more pain–which is what he’s expecting–but cold. Coming from underneath him, like he’s laying on his back. 

The stale smell of wood and fabric wafts into his nose. There’s a low, electrical hum buzzing a few yards behind him. Above, the spotlights come more into focus–he notices metal scaffolding holding them up.

His head lolls to the left. In the foreground, he makes out a glossy wooden floor, laden with dents and remnants of masking tape. Beyond that, darkening rows of seats. 

A stage. 

In a flush, feeling comes back to his arms and legs, and he turns on his side with a gasp. Instinctively his free hand flies to the middle of his chest. The planks are gone. His fingers come back bloody. When he feels again, he pushes past the hole in his shirt where they’d been, into the mangled skin underneath. He stops prodding, hissing in a breath to quell the panic. 

The taste of blood coats the inside of his mouth; he spits off to the side once he’s to his hands and knees. 

Again his hand presses on his chest, and he takes a deeper breath. How is he taking a deeper breath? His fingers are warm with blood, but he’s not coughing. There’s no pain. He’s awake. He’s moving around. When he looks down at his palm, it’s pale. The tips of his fingers are almost purple. 

What the fuck is going on? 

Out towards the rows and rows of empty auditorium seats, a sound catches his attention. In the shadows, someone he cannot see is clapping slowly. It starts quiet, then gets louder, layered, like a standing ovation all around him, like it’s booming from surround-sound speakers. He clamps his hands over his ears. 

When it finally peters out, he peers into the darkness. He still can’t make anything out. But now he hears a voice. 

A low chuckle. A deep baritone lulling, “You put on quite the performance, Max.” 

He doesn’t respond. Just stares out into the shadows, listening.

“I’m very impressed.”

In increments, Max starts to get to his feet. Again he expects pain with his movements, but it doesn’t come. Why doesn’t it come? 

In the passing silence, the voice tsks. “Don’t tell me you’ve got stage fright now, of all times. Your greatest solo is yet to come.” 

A deep uneasy feeling plants itself in the base of his gut. Now standing, he looks around, tries to get a better view of the place. But beyond the first few rows of seats, it’s all dark. To the left and right hang silhouettes of velvety curtains. But somehow they, too, look like shadows. 

“Want to take a bow?” calls the voice. Max gets the image it’s smiling as it speaks, each word strangely enunciated. “I don’t blame you.”

“Where am I?” Max finally asks. He’s looking out towards the audience, trying to make out a person in the darkness. But nothing presents itself. 

There’s a brief silence as the voice considers the question. “Mmmm. End of act one, rounding into act two, I’d say.”

“What?”

“But you’ve got some time. I don’t think your big reveal is due for quite some while yet.” 

Max shouts, “Aren’t I dead?” 

Again, more silence. “I wouldn’t say that.” 

He looks down at himself. His bloody, grime stained clothes. His gray hands. His chest, which still rises and falls. “I’m alive?”

The voice guffaws. “No. I wouldn’t say that either.” 

He groans. “Then what the fuck is happening?” He walks to the edge of the stage, now looking for a way to step down and figure out who the fuck’s hiding back there. But there’s no exit in sight. “Who are you?” 

The voice doesn’t answer. There is lingering silence, muffled footsteps, as whoever’s back there weaves through the rows of seats; meanders up and down the aisles.

Max ponders jumping off the stage and finding whoever it is that’s back there taunting him. He just got mocked once, he doesn’t need to tolerate it a second time. But something stops him–some invisible barrier keeps him within the confines of the stage. When his body comes into contact with it, he flinches back, feeling an electric zing squeeze his muscles. 

It makes him more aware of himself. How heavy-but-light he feels. How solid-but-fragile. How there’s a latent tingle at the end of his fingers and toes he can’t shake out. Among it all he realizes he’s breathing manually, and…stops. He looks at his chest once more. It lays still. He doesn’t get the urge to breathe in. The notion makes his heart race, but only as long as it takes him to realize his heart isn’t beating either. His hands shake, and he closes them into fists. 

When he looks back up, a silhouette is perched just at the edge of his sightline in the middle aisle. Etched in shadow, no visible details, but there. Even still, Max can feel that it’s smiling. 

“Deus Ex Machina,” it says, still in its lilting, musing way, “Terrible narrative choice in the wrong hands, really. But always so lucky for the characters involved.” 

A spike of anger shoots up his throat, and he goes to shout, but can’t. Like something keeps his mouth clamped shut–like it isn’t his turn to speak.

“I’m sure you would think yourself unlucky in a moment like this, Max. But really, I envy your position. You’ve a wonderful setup.” 

“For what?” he hisses through gritted teeth. 

The figure finally dares to approach the stage, stepping through the spotlight’s glare and allowing Max to take him in. He’s surprised that it looks…human. Fuzz lined jacket, a beret, shiny black shoes. 

But he doesn’t look quite right. He’s taller, scrawnier than he should be. Something blue and viscous leaks from either eye. Hanging at his belt is what looks like a mask that sways lightly as he walks. It’s made of stone, or clay, or something else entirely, with three black holes as its eyes and mouth. A crack runs down the middle. The space within pulses a fleshy neon blue. If Max listens hard enough he can hear it moaning. 

The figure smiles, tilts his head a little. “A reprise,” he says, as if it’s obvious.

Slowly he ascends stairs that weren’t there before. Then they’re yards from each other. The circle of spotlights open up to welcome him. His grin is too wide and his teeth are covered in a rotten blue grime. The light frames his face, and it exaggerates his features. But when he gets closer they stay that way: long and strange and smiling.

The stairs, the seats, disappear behind him. It’s just them onstage. Despite the void, Max feels a million pairs of eyes on him.

The man takes the swinging mask off his belt and cradles it with both hands. He runs a thumb over the crack. The smile never leaves his face. 

“I’ve only just become aware of your work, Max,” he says. “But I must tell you, I’m a staunch fan.” 

Max sneers, barks, “Stop with your fuckin–” he kicks out at the man, but his foot hits that invisible barrier keeping him under the spotlights. A shock ripples through him, and he staggers back, breathless. 

Mechanically he straightens each muscle, standing tall, regaining composure. “Tell me,” he says, fire behind each word, “who the fuck you are, and what the fuck you want from me.”

The man goes to speak, but Max cuts him off, “No! Answer my questions, or leave me the fuck alone!” 

At this the man smiles, opens an arm wide. “There it is!” he says. The mask he slides back onto his belt, and Max swears he hears it whine. “Even here, even now, you stay committed to your role.”

A pause. “But what I admire most about you is how well you kept everyone else in theirs.”

For only a brief moment, confusion cuts through Max’s anger. “What?”

He puts a finger to his chin, looking up in thought. “Something of a…stage manager. Script supervisor. Making sure everyone keeps their places. It’s the only way a show like this could possibly come together.”

And annoyance cuts through the confusion. “Is my version of hell having to listen to a theater nerd monologue for the rest of my life?” 

The man’s face falters for only a second–a flash of dark, gnarling–before returning to his cheshire smile. He clears his throat, and speaks in a perfect mimic of Max’s voice. His stance changes until they mirror each other. It roils some pit of nausea in Max’s stomach, and he has to look away. 

“I bring order to Hatchetfield High. Light–” the man raises his arms, and the spotlights brighten in a glaring way that makes Max squint– “to darkness.” 

Darkness falls. It’s hard and cold and its gravity pulls him down into himself.

The man’s voice echoes in an otherworldly way that grates against the senses. “I’m your god.” 

Every second spent in the darkness stretches out into infinity, and suddenly Max can’t breathe. It’s not like he was breathing before anyway, but right now the suffocation feels real and all consuming–a cold hand pressing him down by the neck until he sinks to his knees, gasping roughly. 

Through the black, the invisible eyes from before bear down on him again with a fervor. They’re closer now, pressed up against his skin, the itching cackling burn of we see you we see you we see you–!

Max is used to being seen. Becoming the center of attention is a skill he mastered a long time ago–but usually everyone looks at him with fear, or respect, or lust. These eyes aren’t any of those things. They feel hungry and wanting, onlookers at the coliseum waiting for blood to spill. 

For a few beats there is silence. The electrical hum gets louder, and behind it he starts to hear music. Some trilling piano. Some droning minor chord. It beats in and out of earshot. Something about it feels familiar, like he’s heard it before.

The man’s voice floats along the music, distant but somehow all too close, his words rotating like a carousel behind his eyes. “What happens to the disciples when their god dies right in front of them?” 

Max tries to speak in the silence, but he isn’t allowed. Something like frenzy twists at his chest:  a trapped scream that won’t come out. 

The piano gets louder, louder, then stops. Echoes into silence. “They stop believing.” 

All at once the lights come back on. The eyes pull back, the stage reappears. His muscles release in a burst, and he falls to the ground, cursing. When he looks around, he can’t see the man anymore, but feels his presence, his smiling stare, all the same. His eyes feel different than the rest–even with the rest of them gone, Max still feels two holes drilling into the center of his forehead, two burning blue dots that stay attached even though the spotlight is no longer on him. 

Tucked further backstage is a light illuminating two figures. He can’t make out their faces right away, but he sees their lips moving, hears muffled talking. The first figure sits on top of a classroom desk–the second is draped over his lap, kicking her feet out and throwing her head back in a laugh. 

The light gets brighter. It’s just as he realizes who it is–Kyle and Brenda–that he hears the words fade into his hearing, “Thank God Max is gone.”

Something inside Max’s chest crumbles a little bit, but he can’t figure out what. In a flash of anger he shouts, “Hey!” and tries to lunge for them. A hard hand on his shoulder forces him backwards, and when he turns around, the man is smiling down at him again. 

“They can’t hear you,” he says. “They’re only vignettes.”

Max jerks away. Though now he feels off, unsteady. He watches Kyle and Brenda sit and laugh on the desk, mashing their mouths together without a care in the world. After a while, the whole scene resets, like a clip rewinding and starting from the beginning. They laugh again, they kiss again– “Thank God Max is gone.” 

He exhales hard through his nose. A hot brew of something broils at the bottom of his stomach, and he looks away. 

But when he does, another spotlight flashes the place he’s looking, and it illuminates another scene. This one shows an interior booth at Pasqually’s, with two people tucked onto the same side of the table–Steph. Spankoffski. 

“What…” Max mumbles. They’re hunched over an open text book, and Steph is scribbling notes. Then Spankoffski points at something she’s written; she scratches it out, grabs a breadstick from the plate in front of them while he draws something out on the paper. She nods, eyeing him in a way that makes Max want to throw up. 

“Is this real?” he snaps, now whirling to face where the man had been standing. But he isn’t anymore, and instead he witnesses yet another spotlight turn on with a mechanical thunk. Underneath it stands Ruth–Flemawad herself, twisting her feet and putting on some character. And…is she fucking singing? 

Despite himself, he lets out a chuckle. Now that’s hilarious considering how she acted back when he fell through the floor. Now she stands and prances around like some kind of main character, no stupid ‘social anxiety’ to be seen. When she jumps to one side, her image flickers, like it’s edging out of frame. But when the light goes to follow her, it lands on the man again.

The blue dribble pulses out of his eyes like viscous blood. A little bit leaks over his upper lip and coats his teeth. Max backs up a few steps. 

“It’s as real as it gets, Maxie,” he says.

A blink of the lights, and suddenly he’s gone, replaced with another scene. This time it’s Jason, Kyle, and Shit Lips, all gathered on the football field. They’re slapping him on the shoulder, talking in an infuriatingly gentle tone. Apologizing for bullying him? What the fuck?

His hearing pulses in time with his quickening heartbeat, his simmering rage. He only hears a few passing words that Jason says to Richie: “We don’t want you here. We need you here, man.” 

Max scoffs. We need you? They’re in football gear the night of the homecoming game, Max is gone, and they need fucking Richie there? Sorry, is Shit Lips gonna make the winning catch when Jace fucking punts it to the other team because he has no sense of direction? is Shit Lips gonna be able to throw 40 fucking yards over everyone’s heads? 

We don’t want you here, we need you here man. 

They’ve never said that about Max before. 

All around him, more spotlights shine new light on another part of his kingdom that has dared to fall in his absence. He doesn’t know how much of it is real. But it feels real, somehow, in this unreal landscape he finds himself in. It feels real, watching these people go on with their lives, breaking his rules, like he never existed to begin with. It feels real, this hot growing seed in his gut that travels up his throat, still not allowing him to scream. 

The sounds from each vignette overlap, get louder, like they’re peaking through the speakers, like the dial’s turned all the way up. Their voices morph and change until they don’t sound human, earthen, until they drown out his very thoughts. Again he throws his hand over his ears, but they won’t stop. The eyes are back and they’re paired with clapping, with a roaring audience that shifts in and out of screaming, cackling, howling: a standing ovation from hell. 

He doesn’t know when he ends up on the floor, half curled into a ball, fists over each ear. But there he stays until well after the sounds fade, and all that’s left is the lightboard’s electric hum. When he inhales his breath catches, and he clears his throat, like his voice is hoarse.

He sits up and looks around. The stage is empty. The space beyond still a black void. Fading pairs of eyes look on hungrily to see what he does next. There’s a wet spot trailing down his cheek; he wipes it away roughly, turning away from the audience. 

The man’s voice comes back, still in its sharp but sugary tone, lilting between his ears. “Has it only taken two weeks for your temple to fall?” 

“What?” Max is breathless. He pushes to his feet, whirling around to spot the man in the shadows. He swears he can see small furry things skirt behind the edges of curtains, but they could just be tricks of the light. “It’s– it’s only Friday night.”

When he turns back around, the man appears in front of him again, inches from his face. He leers back, only just keeping his hands from rearing back a fist. “Stop fuckin’ doing that,” he spits.

The man is unphased. “Time passes quickly when you’re onstage, Max,” he says, hands behind his back. His elbows jut out at odd angles–the anatomy isn’t quite right. “It has to. Two weeks, two months, two years. All to serve the story.”

He paces slowly in front of Max. Every now and then he’s silhouetted by the main spotlight. In the shadow his features twist and change, but only for a moment. Every time Max looks at him, he looks less and less human. 

“Entire lives are lived on this stage. Wants, needs, regrets, desires…” He gives Max a once-over with eyes so hungry he feels the need to button up his letterman. “All experienced on these very floors. They must be–and quickly–lest the audience get bored.”

The man throws his arms over his head in an over-exaggerated yawn. “And I am, Max.”

He flinches. A wisp of anger flutters in his chest every time this thing says his name–in much the same way his father calls him Maxwell. But only if he’s in trouble. 

Not much worse trouble than this. 

“So let us take another time skip…to the best part of the show.”

Max lets out a forced sarcastic chuckle. “Oh, finally?” His tone has none of its usual gravitas. His eyes keep falling to the ground. His feet keep twisting in place. 

“You see, Max.” He snaps his fingers.

They aren’t onstage anymore.

Or, they are. When he looks down, the floors are still the same glossy, dented wood from before. But all around him the environment has changed. They’re standing in the bottom floor of the Waylon house. He’s just inches from the spot where he died. The soggy smell of blood wafts into his nose. 

It’s sunrise, or sunset. He can’t tell. Some kind of light burns through the broken windows, the cracks in the walls, and illuminates the spot where he’d fallen. The planks are gone. His body is gone. Just a brown stain and some weird bulgy spots under the rug. 

The man stands near the fireplace, running his finger along the top, inspecting the dust. He flicks it away. “The land of the Waylon house has…what some might call a curse.” He turns his head slightly, offering another slimy grin. The mask at his belt mimics the emotion. “But in your case may turn out to be quite the blessing.” 

Max doesn’t say his question out loud–and what blessing is that? This conversation has started to feel less like a back and forth and more like a monologue. He figures if there’s any information this thing wants him to know, he’ll tell him. 

And he does, “Anyone slain on its grounds gets the chance to…” He turns towards Max fully, throwing his hands up with a twinge of delight. “Come back.”

That perks his ears up. Without meaning to, he turns and looks at the brown stain on the floor. He blinks–is that blue light shining through the cracks? He mumbles, “Wh– like back…back to life?”

“I wouldn’t say that.” A pause. The man hums. “What is a reprise, really? Reusing the same…musical structure? Narrative beats?”

Underneath his words, Max can hear that same piano melody from before. The same seven notes playing over again, this time underlayed by a darker chord that makes his hair stand on end. He isn’t sure where it’s coming from, but it feels stuck at the bottom of his stomach. 

“But not just simple mimicry, no–a reinvention. Taking something that was, and twisting it, turning it new. Giving it not just a new sound, but a new purpose. A new meaning within the story and within itself.”

“Meaning what?” 

The man pauses, looks Max up and down. Laughs a short laugh. The mask at his belt is crying. Blue blood tears drip onto the stage floor. “Meaning you have a chance to set all of this right. Your friends? They’re changing the script.”

His eyes flash darker, black. Voids, holes in the middle of his face. For the first time, he frowns. “And I don’t like it.” 

“But I like you, Max.” The smile returns. Neon blue dribbles down his lip, out of his eyes. Max wants to back away–they are only yards from each other. He can’t move his feet. “I love your chemistry with the stage. The others…mere side characters when compared. I grow bored of their D-plots. But you…?”

He steps forward, closer, until Max can smell the decay on his breath. He’s whispering, “Don’t you want to take back the spotlight?” 

Max doesn’t respond. That rising scream that still won’t come out swells his throat shut. Either that or the man’s rancid, rotting smell. 

“You–” The man gestures him up and down, stepping back in awe. Again a mimic of Max’s voice underlines his as he speaks, “The star, the quarterback, the King of Hatchetfield High. Don’t you want it back?”

There’s a sting in the middle of his chest. Because yes. Of fucking course he wants it back. Max isn’t stupid–he knows that when he graduates it’s all downhill from there. College has never been an option: star quarterback, sure, but he’s never had the grades to transform that into a collegiate footable career. Not that he wants to anyway. College is for nerds. 

His dad already has a job lined up for him at the factory. Long hours, huge checks. He’ll be set for life. 

Or whatever’s left of it now, anyway. 

And he doesn’t get to finish his senior year? This is the fucking year. The biggest pep rallies, the best parking, first float in the parade, the homecoming game. It was all his. And he reveled in it–the scurry of nerds trying to clear the way as he walked down the halls. The swarm of girls at his disposal. The parties, the games….all in the palm of his hand. 

Then it turned to sand. Fell from his grip like it never existed to begin with. Like he never existed to begin with. Those nerds took it away. Those fucking nerdy prudes stole it from him.

It’s only September. School just fucking started and he’s laying there dead under the floorboards and no one knows. 

Or cares. 

The man watches Max intently. He lets the silence settle on their shoulders, lets the electric hum of the soundboard fill the space between them. It’s not in the house, not that Max can see, but they hear it all the same. 

Finally his voice cuts through it, quiet, like he’s cautious not to pop the bubble. “And what about that love interest?” he probes. 

Max looks up at him. He didn’t realize his gaze had drifted back to that stain on the floor. “What?”

A door squeaks open across the room. The man smiles. “Enter Grace Chasity.” 

He bristles at the name, and his head swivels towards the front door of the Waylon house. When it swings open, he can’t see her, like she’s off the edge of a TV–he watches her edge into frame: hand over door then arm and panning up to a cautious, wide eyed expression that immediately trails down to the bulging foyer rug. 

She shuts the door in silence, pockets a key, then pivots. She turns and walks towards him, gaze still fixed to the floor, and on her way to the rug she passes right by. He blinks, for a second struck speechless– “Gra- Grace–?” –as her bobbing head of hair wafts right under his nose. 

Grace walks to where the man is standing; she starts to pilfer through the various sets of debris and supplies that are gathered there. Moving cans of paint and buckets and wood, muttering in an increasingly anxious tone. 

He watches her. Something…. not anger pulls at the bottom of his chest, but he doesn’t know what it is. His eyes linger on her, up and down. 

“She can’t hear me,” he said. 

“No.”

A beat. Grace moves to another side of the room, peeking under each corner of the rug. Her hair keeps falling in her face, and she keeps tucking it back behind her ear. He follows the motion. “What is she doing?”

“Looking for something.”

“Do I get to know what?”

Over his shoulder, the man shrugs. “It’s offscreen.”

Grace is now frantically throwing things around. She keeps talking about where is it where did I put it I thought I put it back on but no–! Her words play over and over in a loop, grainy as if burned to tape. 

Max can feel that the man’s eyes have never left him. Two pinpricks on the back of his head. When he turns to face him, he’s ever so slightly leaning down, almost gawking him with that same fucking grin. At his belt, the mask cracks into its own smile. Its middle pulses fleshy blue. 

With a sickly sweet tone, the man says, “Never did get a bite out of that forbidden fruit, did you?”

Max turns away, masking his disgust. Even still, he gives a small shake of the head, eyes landing on Grace once again. “No.” She’s near him again, this time tearing the couch apart just a few feet to his left. Somehow her babysoft scent drifts into his nose, and he breathes it in. 

“Mmmmmm,” the man hums. “Then I believe your arc is yet to be completed.” 

Max blinks. Grace is gone. They’re back on that black void stage, and he’s staring out into the invisible audience. He looks away, trying to cover up his startle. If the man notices, he does not comment on it. 

He’s close now. Far too close, and Max can’t back away. Their spotlights meet in the middle, and the blinding light accentuates his already twisted features–sharper teeth, stranger angles, bloodier breath. For a few hanging seconds he says nothing, to the point Max almost asks him what the fuck he’s looking at. 

Then he holds out a hand. Palm up, fingers curled ever so slightly. Max stares down at it for maybe too long. 

The man’s voice is gentler now, back again with its singsongy quality. “Your cue approaches.” 

Pretty much every other part of Max does not want to touch this thing. This thing that never stops smiling, that has 90 degree angles for limbs, that smells like blood and ozone. He didn't retain much from his forced Sunday school classes as a kid, but if he remembers anything about what the Devil looked like…

But that aching, simmering pit at the bottom of his gut. That part of him with strings attached, that moves without his say so, that wants so fucking badly to put those nerds back in their places, to taste that forbidden fruit. 

It reaches out and takes Pokotho by the hand. 

For a moment, they’re both frozen in space. In time. His eyes are locked on the sight of their hands interlocked. Something tingling, stinging, creeps in through his fingertips. The man reaches with his free hand, and gingerly pulls up his fuzzy jacket sleeve. 

At the elbow, neon blue pulses under his skin, and a spidering of veins become visible. It pulses in waves–slow, rhythmic beats that travel down his arm, up his wrist, his fingers, where he and Max touch. 

Then the blue travels to Max’s hand and all at once he sets on fire. 

He’s felt pain before. Especially recently, given the nature of his death. He’s fallen, gotten shit thrown at him, been punched, kicked, slapped, and did briefly catch fire in a backyard party gone wrong. He’s familiar with the territory. 

But this. 

When Pokotho lets go of Max, he falls to his hands and knees. He watches the blue crawl up his wrist; he yanks up his jacket sleeve and it continues up his arm. Like acid to the veins, poison to the blood–his entire body writhes. Teeth are clenched to the point of cracking. The floor sways into double vision. Before he simply ‘wasn’t breathing’. Now he’s suffocating. 

It is only now, as this toxin makes its way up his throat, that he is finally able to scream. 

It’s a chasm opening up inside of him. From the bottom up, it erupts, it cracks him in half. The audience joins in, along with their roaring, thunderous applause. His voice rises in pitch, in volume, until they’re all in key together. Until the scream is all he is, all he ever will be: no body, no soul. Just rage. 

Somehow it ebbs. The roaring of the audience fades. The floor comes back up underneath him. All the other voices are gone. Max is still on his knees, braced by his palms. His veins pulse in waves of neon blue. He is still screaming. 

But it morphs. Becomes more laughter than scream. Eventually he’s pushing to his feet, hands over his stomach, bent over in a guffaw. When he finally goes quiet, his face settles into a wicked grin. He looks down at his hands, flexes his fingers. The blue in his veins twitches in response. 

Pokey stands downstage, watching the whole affair with glee. When they lock eyes he asks, “How do you feel?” 

Max nods decisively. He feels good. He feels fuckin’ fantastic.

“Good,” Pokey says. “Know all the lines? The lyrics? The choreography?” 

Again that piano drifts into his hearing. Only this time it’s coming from inside his head. He nods again. 

“Wonderful.” He offers a short bow. “Break a leg, Maxie.” 

He snaps a finger. Everything goes black. 

_____________________________________________________

In the cold dark empty of Waylon house, something under the floor starts to shift. Floorboards creak and bend. A hole sizzles itself through the rug. For a few seconds all is silent. 

An arm–a bloody letterman sleeve shoots up from the dirt below. Its hand is gnarled and blue. Somewhere amidst it all, there is steady laughter. 

Max Jagerman crawls out of his own grave with one singular, steadily beating thought. 

Nerdy. Prudes. Must. Die.