Before Max had a chance to bring up the weapons he realized that he had fallen right into Morganfokker's plan, once again, all along. He was being played like a piece on a chess board, which made him even more angry.
Morganfokker brought up his hands; both were cupped like a grail, and unleashed a blast so powerful it was blinding - in a brief instant of memory it reminded Max of that old Japanese animation show where they channelled power. And that's what Morganfokker was doing the whole time, channelling power.
The blast caught Max in the upper torso and blew him back through his apartment window, across the 50 feet chasm of the street into another building, through that building as Max crashed through living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms, knocking people about, destroying things in the process until finally coming to rest on the ground floor of the complex.
Morganfokker walked to the edge of the open window and peered at the feat he had just accomplished.
"I'm going to love it here," he muttered....
The dam had finally busted and a flood of memories - old, new and some not even born yet - flashed through his head. Like a slide projector malfunction at an event, images appeared and disappeared and seemed to merge together.
"I'm Max," he said. "Though which version am I?"
His arms snapped out and took the two paramedics down, hitting them in their pressure points and they dropped to the floor like sacks of flour.
"Ah, Max," Morganfokker said. "Good, good. It's nice to see that you haven't lost your touch... Maybe your mind... but not your touch."
"You," Max said; his voice couldn't mask the rage and the hostility in it. "You did this to me!"
Morganfokker just smiled and nodded. As Max glanced around his surroundings it began to dawn on him what was going on.
"But this isn't about me, is it," he said matter of factly, clasping his hands behind his back. And as he did Pain and Joy were in the process of digitizing in. They were his signature weapons of choice and they felt good in his hands, the sensation was almost orgasmic in nature.
Purgatory had a way of amplifying senses.
"You, my dear old friend, were just the bait to get her here," Morganfokker said. "And it worked like a charm. I'm sad to say that we should have thought of this earlier."
Max brought the weapons up and around...
The paramedic ripped open Max's shirt and started feeling the chest; he had the needle in his hand like a stabbing instrument.
"He's going," said the other paramedic. "Time to hit him!"
The paramedic with the syringe was about to bring down the needle, but his hands were stopped in the air.
"Let him be," the fellow told them.
"But, but he's going to know!" one of the paramedics said.
"Yes," the fellow said. "That's been the plan all along."
"What do you mean?" the paramedic asked.
"We had to bring her here somehow," Morganfokker said.
Maggie ran up the flight of stairs; she was too impatient to wait for the elevator. She was going to fly up but then realized that would probably trigger an alarm.
Then The They would come to fix it.
The last time she had dealt with The They was a long, long time ago and that hadn't ended up too good for anybody.
"You're almost there," the voice on the blue tooth told her. "Just three more floors to go."
"Hope I'm not too late," Maggie whispered. She was second guessing herself and thought she should have "winged" out and dealt with the problem when it happened.
Max felt better; he was lying on the floor of his apartment staring up at the ceiling. He was counting the dots on the tile, it was the only way to stay focused. There was a pounding sound and he figured it was from the door.
Hira must have called the paramedics when he had screamed.
The door to his apartment opened. The manager of the complex had the key code and unlocked it for the responders. And they rushed right in, stretcher and all.
"I'm fine now," Max said but no one listened.
He glanced to see Hira peering in from the door, a look of horror on her face. Hira's mother came and covered the child's eyes.
"Look," Max said as he reached for the counter; a pack of smokes digitally appeared there. "See, that's how that works."
The paramedics knelt over him; one them took out a syringe and prepared to embed it into Max's chest.
"The tether is still holding," the voice on the blue-tooth said. "You've got another 24 hours to find him or else you're stuck there as well."
Maggie unconsciously felt for it behind her but didn't feel a thing. She had fought demons, devils, other angels, alien monstrosities, lawyers and worse. She had been through hell a few times, as well as the battlefields of heavens. Though this was the first time she had ever been in
Purgatory.
His head hurt, the constant ringing in his ears seemed to unleash a migraine. He downed three extra-strength aspirin and chased it with a shot of brandy. He opened his eyes to see everything as if they were in pixels. He equated it to a photo blown up where you could see the squares in it.
"What's happening to me?" he muttered. He placed the glass down onto the coffee table and it shattered, breaking into static then disappearing.
"Mr. Koob, are you okay?" he heard Hira ask from the door of his apartment.
He stood up and the migraine in his head seemed to stab through his brain. He slumped back into the chair, defeated, crying like an athlete going for gold but ending up being disqualified.
"What's wrong with me," he whispered. "What's happening?"
Drive me insane, trouble is gonna come to you,
One of these days and it won't be long,
You'll look for me but baby, I'll be gone.
This is all I gotta say to you woman...
Maggie strolled through the mall, the headphones in and she had the volume cranked and she felt like dancing like no one one was watching. Tortelvis was wailing away on the Dread Zeppelin song. She blamed Max for this since he got her hooked on this fringe cover band.
She had asked Max where he had discovered them and he told her some old Native fellow whom he had sat down with at a bus shelter one evening and talked about iterations of worlds. The Native fellow told Max that all realities eventually bleed into each other. Like coffee rings on a coaster or table. Each ring blends together forming another whole.
She wondered if the ritual had worked.
It had been three hours since it was cast. It might take some time to weave. But, as soon as the ritual was completed she had the urge to listen to some Dread.
"Mags," the voice said from the blue-tooth device that was now in the breast pocket of her jacket.
"Mags?"
Still no answer.
"Crap on a stick," the voice said.
"Your time is gonna come," Mags sang.
"It's working," the voice said, sounding relieved.
Lyin', cheatin', hurtin, that's all you seem to do.
Max looked out the window of his office and scratched the back of his head. He wasn't sure what he was feeling at the moment since a jumbled amount of thoughts where dancing around his head. The problem was that he wasn't sure if they were his thoughts to begin with.
Messin' around with every guy in town,
He could hear music playing in the distance. He finally put it together that it was a soundtrack in his head. Max wasn't sure if it was Elvis singing this song but it sounded like him.
Puttin' me down for thinkin' of someone new.
The buzzer on his desk chimed. He ignored it.
Always the same, playin' your game,
It was maddening, like a sore festering in your mind for days and unable to scratch it. He figured something was damned up in his mind but he could not pinpoint it.
Drive me insane, trouble is gonna come to you.
Maggie was sitting at the counter, her fingers dancing across the invisible keyboard in front of the monitor. It didn't take her to long to figure it out. The sensors on the monitor knew what she was typing.
She scanned the newsheets looking for a tidbit of information, gaining what she could from where she was but still not a hint of Max anywhere to be found.
"Maybe, he's mindlocked," a voice chimed in from the bluetooth-like device in her ear.
"Could explain a lot," she replied. She reached for a diet cola and took a sip. "This is really strange. Like fish out of the water strange."
"Care to tell?" the voice asked.
Maggie looked at the dozens of watches on her arm, checking the time on each were about a minute off. "In another forty or so minutes."
"Jesus, Mags," the voice stated. "You're not going to go full Doc Brown on me now are ya?"
His watched chimed at him again; Max glanced down and noticed the time was 2pm. Break time. He got up from the desk and walked to the water cooler where several others where standing around, holding plastic cone cups and jabbering about whatever they talked about around a cooler.
"... a meteorite landed outside of the city..."
"... did you catch the news about the body missing from the morgue..."
"... someone stole a bunch of watches from a S-Store..."
Max grabbed a cup and poured himself a drink. Sipping the heavenly liquid, the water danced over his taste buds making them feel alive. He was questioning his sensations.
"Yo, Maxie," Chan said. "Wassup with that?"
"Huh?" Max questioned.
"The whole body quivering when you drink or taste something - it's like you are tasting things for the very first time," Chan told him. "It reminds me of my niece when she tastes a different brand of baby food."
Max felt he was looking down a long dark tunnel; he took a glance at the cup and then back at Chan again and then back at the cup. He didn't know what to say so he quaffed the water.
She glanced at herself in the mirror, admiring the clothes she had on. Black leather pants, a black cropped tank top and a red leather long jacket over it. She also had on knee high boots; Uggs was what they where called. So now she was dressed and ready to go, though she had no idea where to go.
She turned to the woman on the slab and tapped her toes and said, "Sorry, sister. I need these more than you do now."
Maggie walked out the door and bumped into one of the coroners. The fellow looked at her in shock, a microsecond of fear in his eyes but then quickly composed because the dead don't usually get up and dress themselves. She figured it must have been one of his deepest darkest fears.
"Excuse me, ma'am," the fellow asked. "What are you doing here?"
"I got turned around in this place," she said shyly. She then added, "I wanted to see the angel."
"You get out of here now, and pay no attention to the rumours, Missy," the fellow told her. "If I ever see you down here again I will call security."
Maggie turned away and smiled a warm smile; she walked down the hallway at a brisk pace before the coroner discovered a body missing.
Max sat in the pub sipping a Newcastle Brown. He had the urge to smoke but couldn't remember if he had ever smoked or not and that was starting to bother him. He glanced around the pub and saw faces that he knew the names of but he couldn't remember how he knew them.
There were events that had happened in the past few days that didn't make sense to him. Since he woke up, and it was eating away at him like rust on a car.
Derek, the bartender, was pouring some drinks and noticed the perplexed look on his face.
"Looks like you got the 'kindas'," Derek said to him.
"Kindas?" Max asked.
"Like you kinda forgot something and are trying to remember what it is," Derek chuckled. "A grocery list, a doctors appointment, those kind of things."
