Chapter 4: Darkness
Max couldn't believe any of this was happening. He was holding in his own hands the bullet he had just shot to himself a few seconds ago, right into his own mouth, but he literally spit it back.
He was completely confused, scared and in shock. He touched the back of his neck to check if he had any holes at all, to see if he really wasn't dead, and after patting the back of his neck constantly and desesperately, he noticed he didn't have any holes. The bullet did not go through. He was indeed alive.
The bullet was intact. It had no blood, no traces of flesh or muscle, only saliva. It was almost like if Max just ate the bullet and then puke it back out.
Max: No... T-this can't... T-this... This is not happening... This is not happening... No, this can't be happening... No, no, no, NO, NO, NO!
Trembling in fear and completely enraged, Max picked up the gun again and stood up, and suddenly began shooting himself multiple times in different places, until the gun finally got empty. He shot himself in the forehead, the sides of his head, between his eye brows, his chin, his stomach, his arms. All with the same result. Nothing, nothing, NOTHING. The bullets seemed to just bounce off of him, like if his skin was indestructible somehow.
Was this the reason why he didn't bleed when he grabbed Markus' knife? And now that he thought about it, he never felt like he was bleeding when Markus and his gang got their revenge, not even with all the punches and kicks they gave to Max.
Max froze in the position he was in when he saw the bullets he had just shot fall to the ground like nothing. Max fell to his knees, dropping the gun again, devasteded, confused and scared. Staring at all the bullets on the floor. He was shaking in fear. Shocked and not even sure what to think.
His mind slowly began to get clouded with different thoughts again. Why wasn't he dead? Why was this happening? Why him? Did this mean he couldn't die? That he was destined to keep living in endless suffer for the rest of his life? That he was stuck in this endless loop of pain, with no chances to get out of it? Max couldn't even think straight enough to try and answer those questions he made to himself.
Max just stood there. On his knees. Unable to move a single muscle, not because he felt pain, but because of the fear. Those questions kept clouding his thoughts and confusing his mind, nearly bringing him insane. One more question managed to form in the middle of all that storm in his mind; What now? What should he do? Max had no idea of what to do now.
After a few minutes of staring into nothingness, Max began to stand up once again, and walked through the door. He didn't know what he was doing. He just randomly thought of going for a walk. After all, what would anyone else do in this situation? Max needed to clear his mind, process all that just happened.
It was 6:53 pm, a few hours left before the sun goes down. Max was still allowed to go out, so he simply crossed the door and walked away from the orphanage, still with a very worried and shocked expression on his face.
Max didn't even know where was he going. He just wanted to walk away from everything to try and process what happened. He kept walking the streets aimlessly, staring into nothingness as he kept on walking throughout the streets of that town, not even bothering to avoid the people that were going different ways, and sometimes crashing against them lightly. Even if they stumbled uppon Max, none of them would notice. That always happened to Max before. However, now he didn't even care.
As Max kept on going with his aimless walking, his mind began to get clouded with thoughts, like an angry army of bees going for their stolen honey. Once again, thinking straight was a challenge for Max due to all those thoughts and questions in his head, and because he was still in shock, unable to think of anything else, but the deadly sound of those bullets, and the horrifying image of the bullets just laying there on the ground, like nothing had just happened.
Max could only walk for 15 more minutes before stumbling upon an alley at his right. He didn't even pay attention to what was on that alley... Or who.
Nearly everything around Max was empty. With no one near, other than him and those who were on that alley, filled with trash cans, broken beer bottles and empty packages of cigarretes. Only five people were in that alley, and those people were the last guys Max would ever thought of finding, or hope to. Markus and his gang of bastards again.
Markus, Tim and Chris were holding beer cans on their hands, speaking to each other, while Jake picked some cigarrets from his left pocket and started smoking, laughing at the pointless commentaries of his "friends", and John was just sitting there, disgusted because of the smell of beer and the cigarrets. Being him the smart one in the group he knew of the dangers of all those adicting substances, and thus, he never drinks or smokes. Max never noticed they were there at all. Although Markus noticed Max's prescense almost immeadiatly.
Markus: Hold on a second... Is that the freak?
John: Well, you can all thank god that he didn't die by falling off the stairs. And... Now that I come to think of it... He didn't even bleed once.
Chris: You're right... Now that I remember, out of all the times we punched him, he never bled from anywhere... And he apperently survived to falling off the stairs as well. That guy is a really freaky person.
Markus: Well, I give a crap if he bled out or not when we gave him what he deserved, because now we are gonna make him eat his own teeth for showing up again.
Markus and everyone else began to walk towards Max, ready to torture him once more. And now, since they were outside the orphanage, they could torture Max much worse than before.
Markus: Hey, you freak! You came back for more, huh?!
When Max heard Markus' voice talking to him, he stopped walking and turned to see Markus and his gang, coming closer to him to repeat what they did to him a few hours ago, but much worse than before.
Max thought to himself "fuck! How did I got here?! Not them again...", and froze there, standing still. Max had enough distance and time to escape. Enough energy to fight them again. But he just stood still. Unable to move. It wasn't because he felt pain or fear. Max just couldn't move at all.
"My body is not answering... I can't move..." Max said in his own mind. He was at least trying to move his fingers but his body didn't move. They were getting closer abd closer. Max could only stare at them, laughing, saying to themselves that he was afraid to even move. That wasn't the case. Max didn't feel pain, fear, rage or any other emotion. He was just standing still. He was still trying to move, but very calm. He wasn't desperate to move. Just neutral. Expressionless.
Chris ran over to him and grabbed Max from behind to prevent him from going anywhere, and as soon as Chris grabbed Max, everyone else besides Jake, who was holding a video camera and recording everything, walked over to Max and began punching and kicking him everywhere they could without hurting Chris. Jake kept recording and laughing at Max's pain, muttering to himself how many views and likes the video would get, as Markus, John and Tim kept torturing Max.
Max remembered how they did the same to him a few hours ago before they threw him off the stairs and how he was paralized and unable to do anything besides feeling the pain. He was in the same situation again.
Their laughter and shouting began to become silence in Max's ears. They were still moving their lips, but Max couldn't hear them. Like if everything went into complete silence, and he could only hear his heart beating faster and faster, as they kept on punching him, and his own thoughts clouding again, but like if he had a million voices in his head talking at the same time.
The only thing Max could do was say to himself "no more" over and over, with the voices in his head beggining to get louder, and those bastards beggining to punch him even harder. He then heard a loud voice in his head, louder than any of the other voices, nearly shouting "wake up".
After Max heard that final voice in his head, the pain suddenly disapeared, and his vision started to blur, feeling about to faint. Max could not hear or feel any of what was happening to him, and his sight was getting more blurry and dark as well. But suddenly, before fainting completely, Max could feel something. It wasn't pain, or anything like that. It was something indescriptable, that was filling Max with a feeling of power, fear and anger. Something very dark. And finally, Max's vision turned completely black, and so, he fainted. Losing conciousness. Feeling like it was the end. He almost wished it was.
