A/N: This next chapter will be Fang's POV. Woo hoo! Yea! Problem: I have no clue what will happen. AT ALL. NO IDEA. COMPLETLEY WRITER BLOCKED. I think you get the picture. So… if this chapter sucks butt, that's my excuse. Anyway. I'm going to try to write it now. Also, sorry that this one is kind of short. But technically, this is a part of a chapter. So really, it's not that short. I'll try to get another update up whenever I can. Until then, toodles.
RMF#9: For some reason, people think I have a New York accent. Complete strangers will walk up to me and ask if I'm from New York. (I swear, they do! It happens at least once a week!) However, my best friend, who IS from NY, claims that I have nothing resembling a NY accent. According to this accent survey I took, my accent is a perfect blend of American Northern and Southern with a touch of Texan to it. Makes sense since I was born in Texas, raised in the South, and all my relatives are from up North. But why do all these random people think I sound like a New Yorker? It is truly a mystery of the world.
Disclaimer: No. I actually do own Maximum Ride. I am really James Patterson writing under a false name to observe how people react to my writing. Seriously. Really guys. You know I don't own this stuff. Do I really need to put these disclaimers in?
Chapter Ten: Real-Life Werewolves (Part One)
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"Fang."
I woke up automatically to the sound of my name. Lifting my head groggily, I quickly found the lit numbers of the alarm clock in the pitch black room. 2:14. Terrific.
I scanned the room cautiously. Max was still asleep. No one was at the window or the door. I didn't see anybody hiding in the shadows. So who frickin' decided to wake me up at frickin' two in the-
"Fang."
My head snapped back around to Max, who was definitely still asleep and had definitely just said my name, unless there was a really good ventriloquist behind the closet door. Max turned over and turned around again, making some sort of hand motion, and muttering something that sounded a lot like, "Broke his neck."
Crap. Nightmare.
I quickly slid out of the sleeping bag and stood over Max, ignoring my leg's complaints. Knowing from experience that Max might scream when she woke up, I carefully placed a hand over her mouth before I shook her shoulder and whispered loudly, "Max."
Max just groaned and dug her fingernails into her pillow.
I shook her a little harder. "Max!"
This time, Max's eyes shot open, filled with horror and fear. Breathing erratically, she looked up at me almost disbelievingly.
"You were having a nightmare," I explained quietly, pulling my hand away from her mouth.
Max sat up a little, breathing getting a bit steadier, but still too fast. Then she choked and started to sob silently. Crap.
I reached out to hold Max but she shied away, shaking her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. Stubborn as always, I moved closer and wrapped my arms around Max before she could do anything about it. Max sucked in a strangled breath and buried her face in my shoulder. I could feel her shaking as I lightly ran my fingers through her hair. "You okay?" I asked softly, rubbing her back with my free hand. Yeah, I know, lame, but if you can think of a better way to ask a person who's crying, 'What the hell just happened?' tell me.
Max nodded, weeping winding down, though she was still trembling. "Yeah," she croaked.
I brushed her hair away from her forehead and checked Max's temperature. No more fever, luckily. At least she wasn't delirious. "What was it about?"
Max stiffened. "I don't remember."
"Max, if there's one thing you remember, it's your nightmares," I said patiently.
She sighed and looked up at me. "Can we just drop it?"
"No."
"Fang, it's too early in the morning to argue."
"If you don't want to argue, then tell me."
Max sighed again and pressed her face back into my shoulder. Finally she muttered, "It was back underneath the subway tunnels. When I killed Ari."
I scratched the base of her wings while I waited for the rest of the answer. Sure, killing Ari had freaked her for a while, (especially that 'brother' part of it), but still, that was a long time ago, and the Eraser had been back on his feet and set murdering us within twenty-four hours. I doubted Max had much sympathy left for him.
After a long pause, Max hesitantly added, "But… instead of Ari… it was… you."
I involuntarily tensed for a moment and Max started to tear up again. Crap. I quickly pulled her closer to me and rested my chin atop her head. "It was just a dream, Max," I murmured. "You always have twisted nightmares. Nothing ever comes from them."
"What about the Eraser Max in the mirrors?" she mumbled into my T-shirt.
"I know you'd never intentionally hurt me, Max."
"What if it's unintentional? What if I can't control it?"
Inside, I cringed at the harsh words. As much as I'd like to say that that was crazy and would never happen, I couldn't. In our lives it was very possible, what with that Voice 're-manifesting' into her mind and whitecoats tinkering with her head. I hurriedly pulled myself together and said calmly, "Wouldn't matter."
Max shifted her head out from underneath mine and examined me doubtfully. "How so?" she asked.
Yeah, Fang. How so?
I mulled around for an answer while rubbing Max slowly between her wings. "When was the last time you beat me sparring?"
Max grinned weakly and I knew that she would be alright. I answered myself automatically. "Never."
"Not true…" Max protested. "When you dislocated my shoulder you forfeited the match to me."
"That doesn't count. That was a pity victory."
"Well, it should count. That hurt." Max huffed. A smile tugged at my lips.
"Get some more sleep, Max." I unwound my arms from her to let her lay back down. "And try not to wake me up in the middle of the night anymore."
"Sorry," Max muttered into her pillow, eyes closing. "Fang?"
"What?"
"Thanks."
I squeezed her shoulder softly in acknowledgement. I then crawled back into the sleeping bag, but I stayed awake, watching over Max until I was sure she was deeply asleep.
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And so began the reign of the night terrors.
Max has always had a problem with nightmares. Called it childhood trauma, call it too much stress, call it whatever the freak you want, it all boils down to the same thing. As far as I know, Max has never once had a normal dream. Not that most dreams are normal. But, you know, a dream where there's no one chasing you, trying to kill you, or anyone else getting killed. A dream. Max has never had a single one of those. Just nightmares, all the time, every time.
But not like this. She usually had a nightmare once a week, sometimes less often than that. The standing record was three and a had months with no bad dreams. Not that she ever told anyone about them. But you could tell when she'd had a crappy night by her extra paranoia and twingey-ness the next morning. Occasionally, the nightmares were bad enough to where one of us would hear her tossing, (usually me or Iggy), and have to wake her, (usually me). But in all of sixteen years, they'd never been like this.
The second night, we arrived to late to save Angel from the School. The third night, Erasers attacked Iggy the first time we left him behind at his parent's place. By the fourth night, Max refused to go to sleep. I wanted to stay up with her, but she commanded to me to go to bed. However, around 2:15 my biological alarm clock woke me up and I discovered Max dozing in an armchair, kicking and muttering something about chimpanzees in between sobs.
The Martinez's hadn't found out about the night terrors yet, though the vet had commented on how much coffee Max was drinking. I intended to keep it that way. There wasn't much either of them could do to help anyway, unless Dr. Martinez happened to have a degree in psychology.
Max didn't sleep at all the fifth night, mainly due to the huge amounts of caffeine she was consuming, (thank God for Vault and Mountain Dew). As now custom, my body woke me up a quarter after two on the dot. I crept silently into the living room and found Max watching television on mute, sipping hot chocolate. I went back to bed to try to catch up on some of the sleep I'd been missing out on.
And so, on the sixth day of my stay at Ella's, I woke up in the morning and stalked out to the kitchen, where Max was working on a crossword puzzle while gulping from a gigantic mug of coffee. I drained the dregs from the coffee pot and got another round going for Max, seeing as to how she was living off of caffeine these days. After grabbing the milk from the fridge and a bowl from the dishwasher, I hunted down a box of Cap'n Crunch for breakfast. I hate Cap'n Crunch, (it scratches the hell out of the roof of your mouth), but it was better than nothing. Getting a good breakfast was hard when you didn't have a certain blind boy around to cook for you.
Max glanced up when I sat down across from her. "What a three letter word for compete that ends with an 'e'?"
"Vie," I answered automatically, pouring some Peanut Butter Crunch into the bowl.
"What about a five letter word, third letter's 'c', meaning a poisonous protein?"
I drowned the cereal in milk. Makes it less scratchy. "Ricin."
"Six letters. First letter's 'c', fourth letter's 'g', meaning an old man."
"Codger."
"Four letter word. Last letter is 'k'. A zebra-like mammal."
I couldn't remember a matching word right away so I thought around for a moment, scanning mentally through my vocabulary. My memory search came up with nothing. "That's not a real word. You made that up," I accused around a spoonful of soggy Cap'n Crunch. I felt Max staring at me, so I swallowed and looked up. "What?"
"Did you like, read the dictionary or something?" Max asked wearily.
"Yeah. So?"
"When did you read the dictionary? No- screw that. Why did you read the dictionary?"
I picked up the cup of coffee dregs and cautiously took a sip. Ugh. I downed the rest of it before it could register on my taste buds. "Back at the old house. Right before Nudge turned eight."
"Why?" Max pushed again.
"I was bored. It was either the dictionary, the Bible, or a Colorado phone book. Dictionary was more useful."
"You were bored, so you read the dictionary?"
"Yeah."
"And you remember all of it?"
"Yeah."
Max sighed tiredly as the coffee maker's timer went off. I grabbed the pot and filled up her now-empty mug before pouring the rest into my cup. I decided to change the subject before Max started interrogating me again. "So what's on the agenda today?" I asked.
Max stifled a yawn and drank deeply from her mug. "I don't know. I think we've pretty much cleaned everything possible in the house."
Thank God. We'd been spending a good part of each day cleaning up around the place. I'm grateful for having free shelter and food and all that, but I'm not the housework type. It gets really dull and tedious.
"So I guess we can do whatever the heck we feel like," Max finished.
I felt like flying, but we couldn't do that during the day. Arizona was too sunny. Besides, Max looked a little too wiped out for a long flight. "And what are we going to do?"
Max traced the mug's edge slowly with her index finger. "I was thinking last night…" she mused. "And I think I figured out why the nightmares are so bad lately."
I waited, wondering what the heck this had to do with what was on today's agenda.
"Actually the Voice kind of hinted at it," she admitted. I raised my eyebrows a bit.
"What did it say?" I questioned bluntly. Max seemed to trust the Voice- at least a little. I sure didn't. It was probably Jeb or some other whitecoat screwing around with her mind, none of which were on my list of people to listen to. But occasionally the Voice gave out helpful advice.
"It said something about worrying too much about the future… and that there was an easy way to stop," Max answered carefully. I saw where this was going.
"You want me to use my power to show the future?"
Max nodded, watching me intently.
If there was a way for me to stop Max's night terrors, believe me, I would do it without hesitation. But this was… I don't know, different. For one thing, the Voice had suggested it. For another, I didn't even know how to do this whole "indirect physical premonition" thing. And… well, much as I hated to admit it, I was kind of scared about not remembering what happened. Yes, I admitted something scares me. Get over it. But tell anyone I said that and I'll deny everything.
I looked up from my cereal bowl at Max. God, she looked so exhausted. Bloodshot eyes, dark circles, limp feathers, the works. I suddenly had an idea. "If I try to channel, will you try to get some sleep tonight?"
Max nodded again, a bit more reluctantly this time.
"Okay, then." I stood, yanked the coffee mug out of her hands, and dumped it's contents into the sink. "No more caffeine for you. You're going to get addicted."
Max just smiled. "Let's get set up, then"
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A/N again: Man, this chapter is going to be LONG! I'm gonna have to do another three part chappie. Oh well… can't be helped. This chapter was inspired by my childhood of reoccurring nightmares. A lot of my phobias came from nightmares when I was a kid. EXAMPLE: When I was seven, for two and a half months, every night, I would have the same nightmare about being in a car crash. I finally managed to get them to stop by not sleeping for nine days. (Well, I did sleep, but I only took quick naps). But now I am afraid of cars and riding in them. (Thank God for bicycles.) In my entire lifetime, I've had only four good dreams and seven weird, but not scary, dreams. All the rest of them have been nightmares. Yeah, I'm pretty much messed up. I had to see a shrink about it. Now, I hardly ever have dreams, but when I do, they're nightmares. I hate going to bed…
To any people wondering, NO, Fang's extraordinary memory doesn't count as a power. He just has a really good photographic memory. I knew a kid who could read a book, then if you read off a random sentence to him, he could tell you exactly what page and which paragraph it came from. Pretty freaky. So no, Fang only has one real power.
Alrighty people, I need some help. I am currently writing the rough outline for the sequel and doing some research on stuff. (What's this research on? I shall never tell.) Anyway, I need a name for an OC. This is not the major OC that I have hinted at to some people, it is a different one. Anyway, I need a guy's name, nothing too odd because the character is human and parents don't go around naming their kids Shadow and stuff like that. Along with any name suggestions you might have, in your review I need you guys to vote for something. The next chapter is either going to be all Max POV or mostly Max POV with a chunk of Fang POV at the beginning. Which would you guys prefer?
