Painful Needs all Shattered and Torn

When Max first woke up in the dark, everything was wet. Her back, hair, legs; all of it drenched in the ichor that surrounded her. It had splashed and sloshed, carrying her screams along on ripples that disappeared into nowhere; nothing.

The water doesn’t make a sound anymore.

“The light, began to bleed, began to breathe, began to speak,” she mumbles. She’d sung, screamed Running up that Hill when she’d first found herself in the dark. Sang and sang and sang until her voice was nothing but a horse whisper that barely touched the silence around her.

She is done running.

“Do you know what? I love you better now.” She raises her eyes, though she finds nothing new. Sometimes she sees things, people, places. She can’t tell if they’re memories or reality. Maybe just something cooked up in her brain. Once when she was singing Watching You Without Me she had come across Lucas, curled up in a chair, reading something. By then, the visions had lost all sound. It had left her screaming Don’t ignore me over and over, stuck on the song’s bridge until it collapsed and she was gasping in the dark. She hasn’t sung that one since.

Above her is darkness; around her is blackness, but she can still somehow see herself and the inky ripples made by her feet. There’s nothing else. She kicks at the water, watching silent droplets fly into the air only to cascade like dark crystals back into the quiet turbulence beneath her feet. In her head, Max hears the gentle picking of a guitar playing a melody in her ears. At least, she thinks it’s a guitar. Maybe it’s Lucas’s laughter or El’s screams of rage. Wheels grinding over concrete or fists hitting skin.

“I am falling, like a stone, like a storm,” she continues, going through the second verse. Her voice doesn’t get tired here, not anymore. Nothing does, not even the dark. There is no longer a variance in volume. She could be singing at a deafening decibel or so quiet that the words are barely a breath. She’s pretty sure this is hell.

“Being born again,” she continues as something materializes in front of her. It looks like it might be her trailer again, but she pays it little mind as she continues on. Her mother isn’t in there, not anymore, and even when she was, she never heard her. She just sat and cried, and cried, and cried over the letters on the coffee table. If Max had anything left but numbness she might have been surprised. Usually, the trailer only appears when she sings Mother Stand for Comfort. She hasn’t sung that one in a while.

The trailer dissolves into the dark. “Into the sweet morning fog.” Her voice drifts after it.

When she’d first arrived, Max had had tears in her eyes and snot in her nose. She would wash it from her face with black water and try to pick out her reflection in the ripples. Even when cupped in her hands, it is silky and black like polished onyx.

“D’you know what? I love you better now.” Ahead of her is more nothing. Behind her, the same. Max keeps walking, listening to her voice, letting the words drip from her mouth like the tears she wishes she could still cry.

“I’m falling, and I’d love to hold you now. I’ll kiss the ground.” Max closes her eyes. There’s no difference; she only knows they are closed because there are no ripples.

“I’ll tell my mother. I’ll tell my father. I’ll tell my loved ones.” She opens her eyes, and her steps come to a stop as her eyes light upon a single object, strikingly white in the black. “I’ll tell my Brother.” She stops singing, her voice sitting in her throat. The angular gravestone sits at her feet. Words crowd in her throat; a rehearsed letter’s lyrics that are as burned into her mind as Kate’s songs.

The flick of a lighter fills her ears, or maybe it’s a guitar.

“Tell me what?”

Max blinks down at the white stone in the dark.

“Maaaaax.”

That wasn’t her voice, was it? What did she sound like again?

“Hey, Shitbird. You gonna keep staring at that piece of crap, or are we gonna talk?”

Max turns. Billy leans against the hood of his Camero, wearing what he had the last day she’d seen him alive, though it is clean. No black smears of blood, no holes. He takes a drag of his cigarette, the cherry’s glow brightening as he watches her. He blows out a lung full of smoke. Max can almost smell it.

“Billy?”

“Who were you expecting, Sinclair?” He takes another drag. “Almost was, honestly. Little fucker can’t throw a punch for shit. You wouldn’t be here if he could.” The words are annoyed, and a frown slips over Billy’s face. “Told you to stay away from him.”

Max steps forward and watches the silent water ripple out to make tiny waves around Billy’s feet. She watches them bounce back to her. Max stares at them. They’ve never done that before.

“Jesus, are you going to just stand there?” Annoyance laces his words. “Last time you were at my grave, you couldn’t shut up. ‘Your dad’s a mess without you, Billy,’” he says in mimicry of her voice, hands up making dramatic motions as the cigarette bobs in his lips, “‘I Imagine that we could’ve become friends, Billy. I’m so, so sorry, Billy.’” He drops his hands and takes another drag. “That about cover it?”

“God, you’re a dick.” Her voice sounds flat.

“There you are.” Billy’s face breaks into a smile. A real one, like the ones when he rode a particularly harsh wave or threw a particularly good punch. It looks like how it did back in California when he’d take her to the beach and use her to pick up chicks.

“Thought this place got you for a second.” He pushes off the hood, cherry glowing as he breaths deep. Smoke curls around his head as he approaches, making him look almost demonic in the sincerity of his smile. “Glad I was wrong.”

“Why,” Max starts, her mouth trying to string together a sentence that isn’t rehearsed lyrics or pulled from her list of insults, “Why are you here?”

“Because, Max,” he stops in front of her, “We’re family. Doesn’t matter that dear ol’ Neil served up the divorce papers. I’m still stuck watching out for your ass.” He takes another drag. “Gotta say, you haven’t been making it easy for me.” He flicks the cigarette out into the water. Max’s eyes follow it until it disappears into the dark.

“Darkness here is worse than the fucking crawlspace back in Torrance,” Bully murmurs.

Max’s eyes come back to Billy. His denim jacket hangs open, his hands fishing out a fresh cigarette and his lighter.

“Remember when you lost that stupid board of yours under there?” He gives a shake of his head, a smirk on his face. “I was picking spiderwebs out of your hair for hours. You looked like a fucking witch.”

“You were the one that had a spider in their hair,” Max replies. The memory is smoke, wafting between them. A tiny dark space back in California, Billy cursing and Max begging him not to let go of her leg as they both inched under the house. Max went first, Billy following after, hanging onto her ankle with an almost bruising grip.

“I was afraid you weren’t going to pull me out,” she mutters.

Billy smirks down his nose at her. “I almost didn’t.”

Her hand moves instinctually, smacking his elbow. He gives her a gentle shove, just enough to make her rock on her heels but not enough to make her stumble. Max’s cheeks feel tight. She reaches up and touches them.

“You’re smiling, dumbass,” he tells her as he goes to step around her. “Was surprised how often I saw you doing that back in that shit-hole town. At least until, well...” He trails off.

“Until you died,” she thinks.

“Hey.” He reaches over and tugs on one of her braids. A sensation of slight pressure zips over her scalp. She thinks it might be pain. “Stop that shit. I’m sick of people doing that. I didn’t die just to have people mope over my ass.” The drag on his cigarette turns almost a third of it to ash. “Man, you die, and everyone just forgets about all the shit; talks about you like you were a goddamn saint.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Except you,” he adds as he looks over at her. “You kept me pretty straight in your head.” He gives her another one of his dumb, obnoxious smirks. One of the ones that other people tended to find charming. It makes Max want to roll her eyes, so she does.

“And she’s back,” Billy says as he opens up his arms, red dress shirt open almost to his navel. “Mad Maxine, the evil witch of the west flying back in from nowhere. Do you have any idea how hard it was to catch you?” He takes another drag as he steps forward, eyes narrowing. “Running up hills and all that shit. Though, sorry to tell ya, Max, there’s no God here.” He motions around him. “Nothing here at all, actually, and yet your skinny little ass still somehow got lost down here. Fucking figures you’d somehow drag me to the end of the world to pull you out.”

Max’s hands tremble, and there is a prickle in her palms. She realizes that it’s her fingernails.

“Why are you here, Billy?” Her voice shakes as she asks, emotions that had gone flat and grey bubbling back up through her feet, stealing through her bloodstream and causing the drab thudding of her heart to find a better beat.

“I told you. I’m watching out for your ass.”

“Why?”

The single word kills his smile almost instantly. She watches as his face goes carefully blank like it would after Neil left a new bruise or her mother tried to offer him something to eat before leaving the house. Billy stares at her, and Max stares back. She can feel his eyes tracing her face, now a perfectly blank mask. She’d learned from the best, after all.

Max’s muscles are tight under her skin, waiting for him to shoot forward, to feel a vice grip on her arm and the flower of fear bloom in her chest. Billy closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

“God damn,” he says, a little chuckle falling from his mouth as he stands, hands on his hips. It doesn’t sound happy. “You really are a Hargrove.”

“I am not,” she snaps.

“Don’t worry,” he says around another drag, “I didn’t mean it as a compliment.” Billy walks over to his headstone, the white granite still stationary. He sits down on one side before patting the other. “Take a seat, kid. We need to talk.”

Max doesn’t move at first. She stays rooted in the still water, just another droplet in the sea. Billy runs another hand through his hair, letting it rest at the nape of his neck as he looks upward into the dark. He closes his eyes.

“Please, Max.” The words almost seem to pain him. ”We don’t have a ton of time.”

Max takes a step back. The only time Billy has ever said please for anything was when she had trapped him in the sauna. The single syllable rocks her more than a slap ever could.

“Shit,” he chuckles. “I was really that bad, wasn’t I.” There’s no question to it.

“Yeah,” she says without thinking.

Billy nods before he finishes off the cigarette and sends it sailing into the dark.

“You have some weird taste in music.”

The change in topics makes her head spin.

“What?”

“What? What!?” Billy mimics in a screechy voice that startles her. “Get over here already. I swear, if I have to go chasing you around again, I’m just going to leave you here, you little witch.”

A familiar wave of annoyance fills Max’s chest before she stomps forward. Each step channels the rage of her twelve-year-old self; scraps on her knees and elbows and spiderwebs in her hair as she yells that she is not a witch. She sits heavily on the cold stone.

“Finally,” Billy sighs. “If I had to hear another of Kate Bush’s worst hits, I was going to off myself again.”

“Wh—” she catches herself as Billy rolls his head onto his shoulder, giving her an annoyed side-eye.

“Alright, I’m sitting,” she says instead. “Talk.”

“Still a pain in the ass.” His voice is wry but amused. He lifts his hand for a moment, the direction twitching towards her. It hovers before falling back onto his knee. Max says nothing, just looks at him sideways and shifts. The leather of the car seat is familiar, the interior of the Camero hanging in the nothing as if it belongs there.

“Well, ain’t this familiar,” he chuckles as he pats the wheel connected to nothing.

“Billy.”

He turns to look at her.

“Cut the shit.”

The blankness slips over his face again. She lets her own mask slip on as well. It feels natural here in the nothing. Maybe she’s been wearing it the whole time she's been here.

Billy reaches toward his pocket, and Max waits for him to light up. He doesn’t.

“That night, in the mall,” he starts instead, looking out over the wheel of the phantom vehicle as if he were staring through a bug-stained windscreen. “There wasn’t anything you could have done.”

Max opens her mouth. She isn’t able to get out a single syllable before Billy turns toward her with the ferocity of a rabid dog at the end of a chain. His hands grip the center console, turning the knuckles white as he leans into her space.

“There was nothing you could have done,” he repeats, words shaking and eyes wild. “I was dead no matter what you think you could have done. That thing was going to kill everyone. Your little friends, you, me; it wanted the world like a dying man wants a cigarette. And believe me, Maxine, I really, really wanted a cigarette.”

Max stares at him wide-eyed.

“So before you start spouting out that shit about running over and pushing me out of the way; about pulling some dumb-ass move that would have gotten you, and me, and everyone in that shitty town killed, know this. I don’t regret it.” He stares at her, face flushing red and the blue of his eyes growing glossy. “I’d take that fucking monster to the chest a thousand times over before I’d let it get its fucking hands on you.”

Max’s eyes feel frozen wide. “Why?” Whisper or scream, the question spreads around them.

Billy stares back at her, a tear escaping his wide-open eyes. One large hand shoots up and clasps the side of her face. The sensation is foreign after so long, warm and sharp, like his fingerprints are cutting brands into her flesh.

“Because, Shitbird, it’s my job to look out for you. You understand?” He adjusted the hold on her face, pulling her closer. “You’re my shitty little sister, and as your asshole big brother, I am the only one who gets to kick your ass, you got me?” His eyes bore into hers, filling them, and she feels the first hints of heat on her cheeks. “Not those monsters, or Sinclair, or Neil,” he continues, plowing ahead, going 80 in a 45 and only stomping down harder on the gas. “Me.” He pushes their foreheads together painfully, their eyes locked on one another’s, and heat pours down their faces.

“And guess what, Maxine,” he says, voice taking on a manic edge. “As your big brother, I get to tell you what to do. And you know what? You do not get to be here. Not yet.” He shakes his head against hers, eyes somehow never leaving hers. “I am not sharing an afterlife with you when you haven’t even learned how to fucking drive.” He cups her other cheek in his other hand. It’s shaking.

“You are not dying younger than me; you got that?” He gives a harsh sniffle, his tongue refusing to find the breaks as he barrels forward. “You don’t die until you live, Max. Until you live for both of us.”

Her sob is high and shaking, filling the air around them. She tastes the salt of tears and snot in her mouth.

“Do you understand?” His grip is vicelike as they sit on his gravestone, foreheads bruising under the force of his pressure. “Tell me you understand.” Max’s pulse is roaring in her ears.

“I-I understand,” she whispers.

“Louder!”

“I understand!” She shouts it into his face, spittle flecking over him as they stare at one another, eyes wide as tears and snot drip freely down their faces. Billy’s fingers wipe over her cheeks once before he pushes back, releasing her so suddenly that she almost pitches forward.

“Good.” He stares back out into the dark and gives a little nod. “Good.”

Max wipes her nose on her arm as she stares at his profile. He looks young, like when she first met him. Before he gained all the muscle and his facial hair started to fill out. Before Billy got caught at school with weed and was pulled out before the transgression could go on his permanent record. Before Neil transferred to Indiana so he could afford to take care of a larger family and give them all a fresh start.

“Billy.” His name sits between them. The gravestone is uncomfortable to sit on.

Billy lifts his hands and quickly wipes at his eyes and cheeks. He produces a cigarette as if by magic, and the flame follows after. He takes a deep drag, his chest expanding seemingly forever. He holds the smoke for an eternity. In the dark, it very well could be. When he exhales it, it takes on wispy shapes that she follows with her eyes. A bed. A chair. A boy with a book reading out loud.

“Shit, how does that song go?” he mutters.

“Huh?” Max looks back at him.

“It was one of the ones you kept singing down here.” Billy stands, stepping out into the water. Max hears the wet slap of his foot against it and how it sloshes up around his feet. “Always fucking singing.” He stares out into the dark, smoke haloing his head. “It was the one about the witch.”

Max sits quietly for a moment before it clicks. “Waking up the Witch?” she asks, confused.

“Yeah, that one. How’d the ending go again?” He turns towards her, bemused smile back in place, face clean. The cherry of his cigarette glows, dull compared to his tanned skin and sun-bleached hair. He’s dressed in a black tank and psychedelic swim trunks; the crazy green sandals he always wore to the beach. She wants to check him for spiderwebs.

“Billy.” Her chest is hot, her stomach burns. She feels like running. Max stays still.

“Wait,” he says, putting his hands up, looking like he’s about to conduct an orchestra with his cigarette. “I remember now.” He puts his cigarette between his lips and claps a hand on her shoulder. He’s smiling at her as he would at the beach when she impressed his impromptu dates with one of her skating tricks.

“Get out of the waves.” He squeezes her shoulder. “Get out of the water.”

“You’re an asshole.” She tries to say it with a smile, but there are too many tears.

“Shut it, Witch,” he replies. “I’m pulling you out before you get lost.” He pulls Max to him. The hug is harsh, tight, and she hates that it’s the first real one she can remember him giving her. She wraps her arms around him, trying to cover as much of him as possible, shielding him from things in the dark.

“I love you,” she whispers, her face pressed to his chest. She can smell the sea and cigarettes.

“Yeah yeah.” His tone is aloof, disinterested; he holds Max impossibly tighter. It hurts. She doesn’t want it to stop. “It’s time for you to get out of here, and don’t you even think of coming back. You remember what happens if you disobey.” His voice is stern, a little mean, a touch sad. “You disobey—”

“You break things,” she finishes for him. She feels his chuckle in her bones. They stay still for a moment longer, Max’s heart trying to beat for both of them. Billy pushes his face into the crown of her head.

“Wake up, witch,” Billy whispers into her hair. It’s as loud as a scream.

The shove surprises Max as it rips her away from Billy, sending her backward. She tries to grab him but only skims his arm as she goes. Max expects to fall in the water, to make a splash, but her back finds nothing. Instead, she falls like a stone, down past the dark. She stares up as she goes, wide-eyed as Billy stares down over the edge of his surfboard, the water around it rippling.

“Give ‘em hell, Max!” Billy whoops, his face twisted into a manic smile as he spreads his arms wide.