A continuation from the end of Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
By
Chanlin Marr
Vinnie. Vladimir. Woden.
Mona.
I lean down to her once more, kissing quickly cooling lips. A late goodbye. The only one I had.
The cops swarm around me like blue hornets, all the surrounding the destruction and blood not letting them take any chances. They order me down with barked words and strong arms, and there's nothing left in me to resist. My cheek hugs the floor, and I never stop looking at Mona, her profile a perfect mountain range of purest white amongst all the darkness of this world.
She's so beautiful.
It hurts to look at her.
I shut my eyes.
I'm being grilled like a cheap hamburger back at the precinct. Bravura stands in the corner of the interrogation room, silent, his eyes acting as judge and jury. I don't recognize the cop applying the heat to me. There are threats of prison, death row, and more bad coffee as the hours tick away. And through it all I say nothing, my mind still having one foot in this reality, and the other in memory.
Her eyes…
Finally, eons later, the cop, who I discover is appropriately named Burnside, asks me something I can answer:
"What do you have to say for yourself?!"
I take a breath, and then unravel the entire tale. I tell of Woden's Inner Circle, Nicole Horne and Valkyr. I connect the dots to Vinnie, to Vlad, to Winterson. I tell them where they can find the phone calls, the tapes, the documents. I tell it all.
And then I tell them of Mona, or try to. Some of the words emerge, but they threaten to invite tears along for the ride, and I stop short. Everything has stopped.
Burnside leaves, a notepad full of scribbles he has to verify clutched in his furious hand. And then it's just me and Bravura. His eyes have gone from executioner's cool to swing-vote uncertainty. The part about Winterson and Vlad must have struck a chord or two, memories of Winterson's clandestine phone calls, and Cop-house jokes about a mysterious boyfriend. Maybe he didn't have all the pieces yet, but he would soon enough.
"I hope to god you're making all that bullshit up, Payne," he says finally. A cough, a sigh. The aura of doubt brightens around him, but I don't care. I just stare down at my hands: calloused, and stained with blood and burnt cordite. War wounds.
Her voice…
I'm on the wrong side of a cell door, spread out on the torture device the precinct calls a bed. Ancient springs burst up from the mattress, stabbing into my back. There are one hundred and forty-four cracks in the ceiling.
I'm home again, and if it is a dream I can't tell. I'm on the couch with my wife, sitting before a roaring fire. I look down at her, and Michele smiles up at me. I turn to the flames. The heat rises, and my face feels like it's burning. And then the fire takes shape, and it's Vlad, smiling a demon's grin and raising a gun. I look down at my love, and Mona smiles up at me, but her skin begins to run like melted wax, and soon all that remains is the bare, lifeless skull, still grinning at me, beckoning me to follow.
I scream, and the echoes rattle through the bars of my prison, the only part of me with a hope of escape.
(To be continued as the urge strikes me. – CM)