Max Miller: Psychic Spoonbender
"What are you doing?" Ms. Miller demanded panicking. Max now had the gun in hand. I tensed, trying to find a way to get out of this without him shooting us.
I gasped as Ms. Miller went flying across the room, slamming her head into the kitchen counter. "I said shut up!" Max shouted, the windows shook slightly in they're frames.
"Are you insane?!" The words came from me before I could stop them. I bit my lip as Max glared at me, derangement in his eyes.
"Who the hell are you?" Max sneered, like he was so much better than us. Yeah, he just killed humans instead of the supernatural monsters that we killed everyday.
"We just wanna talk." Sam said, trying to calm him down. It didn't seem to be working at all. It just worked Max up all that more.
"Yeah right," Max scoffed. "That's why you bought this!" He waved the gun madly. He had a point, but we weren't going in here empty handed. Well Sam did but that was just Sam. It was clear he'd never held a gun before in his life.
"Well we knew we were walking into something." I shrugged.
Sam stepped a little in front of me to get Max's attention. I scowled. "That was a mistake, alright?" I may be the smallest and a girl but I didn't need protection. "So was lying about who we were." Well we weren't going to tell the psychic murderer the only reason we show up is because our brother could see your killings before they happened. "But no more lying, just hear me out."
"About what?" Max demanded. He didn't sound all to please with us right now. The maniac was the one with the gun and I guess, four hostages, including the unconscious Ms. Miller bleeding from her temple.
"I saw you do it." Sam explained. Max looked started, eyes red from holding back tears. "I saw you kill your dad and uncle before it happened." It was still creepy every time you thought about it.
I swallowed hard, "It's true." I agreed with Sam. Max just looked confused, clearly not realizing there was more than just him and his mind powers in the world. Did he think he was so special that he was the only one?
"I'm having visions Max." Sam said slow, cautiously. He took a step forward. "About you."
Max looked startled, before going into straight up denial. "You're crazy!" Says the boy that can move things with the power of his mind.
"So what, you weren't gonna launch a knife at your stepmom?" Sam tapped his eye where I assumed he saw in his vision. "Right here, is it that hard to believe, look at what you can do?" He did kill his family without even being in the room. "I was drawn here, I think I'm here to help you."
"No one can help this guy." I muttered, looking away for a brief moment. Max clenched a hand around the gun glaring hatefully, a single tear rolling down his cheek. Oops, I made the psychic killer cry.
"Let me try." Sam said. "Me and you talk, we'll get Dean, Chris, and Alice out of here." I looked at him in disbelief. Like hell I was leaving him alone with this guy.
"No way," Dean spoke up firmly, feeling the same as I did. I looked up, feeling worry course through my veins as the chandelier started to shake as Max grew angrier with every passing second.
"Nobody leaves this house!" Max shouted, face an angry red.
"How can we, you sealed the doors." I scowled, hands curled into fists.
"Nobody has to leave." Sam said quickly, making Max calm only so he could hear without blood pounding in his ears. "They'll just go upstairs."
"Sam, I'm not leaving you alone with him." Dean protested firmly.
"I guess that makes two of us." I agreed. Family was everything to a Winchester, meaning we weren't leaving the youngest of us along with a psychic killer.
"Yes, you are." Sam said with force, not taking his eyes off Max. "Loo Max, you're in charge hear, we all know that." It pained me to admit we were caught by Max's hand. "No one's going to do anything that you don't want to do but I'm talking five minutes here."
"Sam!" Dean protested loudly.
I was scared, what if we went upstairs only to come down and it be to late. Sam died trying to save this monster, just another proof that not all people were so different from the ones we hunt. "Think about this for a minute!" I begged.
"Five minutes, go." Max said, watching cautiously as Dean picked Ms. Miller off the floor. I didn't move from where I stood even as Dean paused at the foot of the stairs looking at me.
"Chris, go." Sam said, not looking at me. I took a hesitant step back, not wanting to leave him alone with Max but not sure if I really had a choice in the matter.
"No." Max suddenly said when I took a hesitant step towards Dean. "I don't want to many people up there planning. You stay down here."
"Like hell she is." Dean said, and boy, if only looks could kill. Max would've been dead five minutes ago, a thousand different ways and each more painful than the last.
"Dean, I'll be fine. Go." I chanced a glance over my shoulder at him. Dean didn't look thrilled but seeing Max still had his gun, slowly started back up the stairs with Ms. Miller.
Sam and I slowly sat on the couch while Max sat in the chair across from us. I sat stiffly, hands clenching on the holes in the knees of my jeans. Max had my knife out the wall and was curiously making it slowly spin around, the point barely touching the table. He was moving it by twirling a single finger with ease. "Look," Sam broke the silence. "I can't begin to understand what you went through."
"That's right, you can't." Max said cruelly. But u could, he wasn't the only abused child in the world. The difference is he stayed till he was twenty two. I ran away at seventeen.
"Max, this has to stop." Sam said firmly. Max just scoffed.
"You've already killed your tormentors." I tried to make his see reason. He shook his head.
"It will, after my stepmother." Max was adamant about finishing off this one last family member.
"No." Sam said quickly. "You need to let her go."
"Max," I grabbed his attention from Sam. "Did your mother ever hit you?"
"No," Max admitted, but his anger came back full force as he seemed to remember something. "But she never tried to save me, she's a part of it to."
Sam watched our talking quietly. "I know what it's like." I said quietly, leaning forward. My hair down for once hid my face from Sam.
"You?" Max scoffed, looking at my body, seeing the healthy look of my eyes, my clean hair, well fed and although clothes well worn, still looked alright. "How could you possibly understand."
"Hey, your dad and uncle, they were bad people." I said. "Nobody should be treated like that growing up."
"Growing up?" Max sneered. "Try last week." He stood up and yanked his shirt up to his neck. "My dad still hit me." It revealed his chest covered in bruises. "Just in places people wouldn't see it." It was clearly recent. "Old habits die hard I guess."
I wasn't impressed, I've seen bruises like that marring my skin once years ago. "You wanna see battle scars?" I stood, raising my shirt till I reached my bra line. I ignored Sam's gasp as I revealed the large scar that went down my side. "Foster father when I was nine, pissed because I made him look bad to the school board for failing a class." I lowered my tank top back down. "Trust me, even after I left his care, I never failed a class again." My bangs hung in my eyes. Sam clenched his fists hard into his knees. He felt pissed, more pissed than he'd ever even been at his dad. He wanted to go and kill the guy, brutally and viciously for what he had done to his older sister as a defenseless child.
"...Sorry." Max lowered his shirt.
"I guess I could say the same." But saying sorry wouldn't help or change anything in the past. I took my seat, keeping my eyes off of Sam, not wanting to see him looking in disgust at the marred flesh that never fully healed but didn't hinder my movements or cause pain like it once had. Many peoples talked behind my back growing up, or the bolder ones to my face when it was seen in the changing rooms during gym class. I ignored the ones behind my back, punched the ones that thought they were so brave as to go up to me.
"When I first found out I could move things, it was a gift." Max slowly took his seat as well. "My whole life I was helpless but now I had this." I used to feel helpless to, that was why I trained myself, focusing most of my energy into becoming a hunter after I learned the truth in my early teens. "So last week, dad gets drunk." I used to sneak out my window whenever my recent family went on an alcoholic binge. "The first time in a long time." It's been a while since I was beaten in a drunken rage. "And he beats me to hell." I winched at the mental images of my own beatings I've tried blocking from mind. "And then I knew what I had to do."
Sam swallowed hard, trying to focus on the case but still thinking of a midget little girl Chris with a tall imposing shadow looking over her. "Why didn't you just leave?"
"I ran away when I was seventeen, hiding till I was old enough that child services didn't give a damn." I said. They thought they were helping but a majority of those in the system probably didn't.
"It wasn't about getting away." Max twitches a little. "Just knowing they would still be out there." He started twirling my knife again. "It was about...not being afraid." I could understand that, probably why I changed my last name back to Winchester from the name of my first almost adopted family officially after I was legally an adult. "When my dad used to look at me, there was hate in his eyes." How could I when I never really had a dad to begin with? "Do you know what that feels like?" Maybe Max and I shared a similar enough past. Only I never went back just to kill them all.
"No." Sam said quietly.
"He blamed me for everything." Max looked like he was starting to find it difficult to breathe. "For his job, for his life, for his mom's death."
I looked at him confused. Dad apparently didn't want me because I looked like mom. "For your mom?" But I certainly never once heard me being the blame for her death.
"Why would he blame you for your mom's death?" Sam asked. Clearly he had been very young when she died if the neighbors an hour away remembered him as a small child with a stepmother.
"Because she died in my nursery while I was in my crib." Max swallowed hard, looking away. "As if that makes it my fault."
Sam and I shared a look of surprise. My eyes had widened and my jaw clenched a little. "She died in your nursery?" Sam repeated.
I leaned towards Sam, "What are the odds?" I muttered. It couldn't be a coincidence that both his mom and our mom both died in the nursery as the babies slept away.
"There was a fire." Max explained. "And he'd get drunk and babble on like she died in some insane way." Insane, like dying pinned to your ceiling? "He said that she burned up." Makes sense it a fire broke up. "Pinned to the ceiling!" He clearly didn't believe it but my jaw dropped a little and Sam looked stunned. Honestly, it never occurred to me that what happened to our mother could have happened to another family, and maybe more for all we knew.
"Listen to me Max." Sam quickly leaned forward, sitting on the edge of his seat. "What your dad said about what happened to your mom, it's real."
"What?" Max looked startled, wondering if we were making fun of him or just plain nuts.
"The fire, pinned to the ceiling in the nursery." I said casual, trying to feel as detached as possible. It just made it easier when I would think about mom who never saw her children grow up. I pointed at Sam. "Same thing happened in his nursery, our uh, dad," I stuttered a little only remembering the man that had abandoned me. "He saw her on the ceiling too."
Max shook his head, running a hand not twirling the knife through his hair. "Your dad must have been as drunk as mine." I'm sure anyone would get drunk after losing the love of they're life so suddenly.
"No, no," Sam said quickly. "It's the same thing." Max's dad saw answers at the bottom of a bottle. "The same thing killed our mothers." Whatever it was, our father dedicated his life to finding and killing it.
"That's impossible." Max said like anybody would.
"Maybe it was, but what if it wasn't." I shrugged sounding casual. "You are able to suddenly move things with your knife." I looked cautiously back at my knife still moving in a circle on the table.
"Maybe all this is why I'm having visions during the day." Sam suggested, getting more excited. "Why they're getting more intense." Like he'd done made one big connection. "Cause you and I must be connected in some way." The only similarities the two had were the ways they're mother died. "Your abilities, they started six, seven months ago, out of the blue?" That would have been before Dean broke into my apartment...when Sam had started dreaming about Jess dying before it actually happened.
Max looked at us suspiciously, "How'd you know that?"
"Cause that's when my abilities started." Sam explained like it should be obvious.
"Only his seems stronger." I said curiously. "You've never moved things without touching it, right?" I turned to look at Sam.
Sam didn't seem to be paying attention, thinking hard on something else. "For some reason...you and I were chosen." I felt a sliver of fear down my spine. I didn't like this, not at all.
"For what?" Max asked.
Sam looked up wide eyed. "I don't know. But us; Dean, Chris, and I, we're hunting for your mom's killer." Even if it's taken twenty two years. "We can find answers, but you have to let go of your stepmother." And back to Max's killing spree.
"Killing her isn't the answer." I scooted to the edge of my seat. "It's not going to erase everything that you've been through over the years."
Max looked for several long seconds like he was thinking it through. "No." He decided quietly and my heart plummeted. "What they did to me...I still have nightmares." What, and he think I didn't? "I'm so scared all the time, like I'm waiting for that next beating." It took me a year after leaving the system to be able to walk outside with my head held high. "I'm so sick of being scared all the time, I just want this to be over!" I was scared until I got into the habit of carrying a knife in my boot.
"It won't, don't you get it!" Sam insisted but Max didn't look interested in listening. "The nightmares won't end, it just makes you as bad as them. You don't have to go through all this by yourself."
"We can help yo-" I never finished my sentence.
"I'm sorry." Max said.
I shot up to my feet, "Sammy!" I screamed before Sam was just going backwards by some invisible force, into the hall closet. I didn't have time to reach for anything that could help me. It felt like I was hit from behind but couldn't feel anything. I shrieked as I as lifted off my feet and flung into the closet, landing on top of Sam who hadn't had a chance to stand up yet. It had happened so fast. The door slammed shut behind us, the darkness overwhelming and I heard something heavy behind pushed in front of the door.
Sam started banging on the door, screaming for Max not to. I fell into the corner of the room, a light sweat broke out on me and my breathing grew heavy. I slid down a little, my eyes glancing around the room in a panicking frenzy. Was it me or were the walls closing in? Sam stopped his pounding. "Damn it, we have to get out of here." Sam cursed loudly, kicking the door as hard as he could. Only then did he realize I was strangely quiet, a loud wheezy sound started to fill the room. "Chris? Are you okay?" He turned to me but I couldn't speak, feeling my throat closing in on me, constructing my breathing. I faintly heard Sam calling for me, light slaps hitting my cheek. He grabbed my shoulders roughly, shaking me violently. The sudden movement stopped the blood pounding in my ears long enough to hear him when before, it had sounded like he was miles away. "Breathe, Christina! What's wrong?!" He had never seen her like this before. I would get him later for calling me Christina.
"Claus...Claustop..." I couldn't get the words out. That I was claustrophobic, a fear of small enclosed places. Just like Sam was scared of clowns and Dean afraid of flying.
But apparently I got enough out. "Claustrophobic?" Sam asked. I shakily nodded. Looks like we both have problems because Sam suddenly cried out, a pounding headache hitting him all at once. He could see what was about to happen upstairs in a few short minutes. He let go of my shoulders in his pain and I fell to the floor shaking. Sam could hear my wheezing grow fainter as he got absorbed in the vision. The vision that told him Max just shot Dean point blank range in his forehead because he got between him and Ms. Miller. Dean's blood splattered across the wall and his body fell heavily to the ground, dead eyes staring with no life.
In the closet, Sam gasped as he came out of it. "No." He whispered, looking around the tight space. "No!" He said louder, looking at my shaking form on the closet floor. He clenched his fists. "NO!" He shouted, the book case flew out in front of the door, the door flying over.
Although Samuel Winchester hadn't even touched it.
I felt my muscles relax as the air rushed in. Sam grabbed my arm, yanking me out the closet. I spotted my knife still on the table, knees shaking. I picked it up, running after Sam with it in hand who was already at the top of the stairs. I stumbled into the room, one hand on the doorway to keep me up as I got control of my emotions, my other hand tightly holding onto the knife. Ms. Miller was awake, looking terrified as she stood behind the protective Dean. Sam was stepping cautiously towards Max with his hands raised a little. "It's not going to fix anything." Sam said slowly. I readjusted a cautious grip on the knife handle.
I held my breath, looking at Max. He looked horrible, shaking uncontrollably, swearing more than I had been locked in that closet and unable to kick the door open, tears were just seconds from falling. And then he changed, like he was a totally different person. "You're right." Max relaxed, shoulders dropping.
The gun floating in the air suddenly turned from Dean to face Max himself. Nobody could do anything to stop what happened in seconds. I screamed as he mentally shot himself, the blood splattering on my face from the position I stood. Max's body fell to the ground.
Several minutes later, the cops showed up after neighbors reported hearing screams and gunshots. That gave me just enough time to use the bathroom to clean the blood off my face. This was one of the few times we actually stuck around when the cops were here but it was only because they arrived before we could ditch out. "We really shouldn't be here." I muttered to Dean, crossing my arms as we watched Ms. Miller being interrogated. She was sitting on the couch, looking like she was in shock, not surprising over everything that had happened the last few days, or last half hour more specifically. It was a lot to take in for us, let along someone like Ms. Miller.
"Max attacked me." Ms. Miller said slowly. "He threatened me with a gun."
"I know." Dean muttered back to me. All three of us looked uncomfortable standing near the couch.
"And these three." The cop gestured to the three of us. I held my breath. Was she going to say we impersonated church members to gain access to her house? How her stepson knocked her out without touching her, shot himself without ever touching the gun? Or...
"Family friends." Ms. Miller slowly answered, looking at them gratefully. "I called them soon as Max arrived, I was scared." She didn't know exactly what had been going on but she did understand that she was alive because of that small family. "They tried to stop him, they fought for the gun."
"Where did Max get the gun." I looked away innocently. They didn't know he also once had a long knife that was now currently hidden in the side of my boot. Sam and Dean exchanged a look over my head.
"I don't know." Ms. Miller started to cry. "He showed up with it." The police would never know Max Miller had gotten the gun by mind pulling it out the back of Dean's pants after catching sight of it when Dean's shirt got stuck between the gun and his back instead of over the gun like it was supposed to be.
The more sympathetic cop said, "Its alright Ms. Miller."
The woman started to cry heavily, unable to hold it back any longer. "I've lost everyone." She sobbed, shoulders shaking violently.
The second cop ignored her and turned to us. "We'll give you a call if we have any further questions."
"Of course, anything to help officer." I said. We had given him fake names and fake numbers so they wouldn't be able to contact us. And we'll be out of town in a few minutes.
"Come on." Dean said. We left quickly, ignoring stray policeman and paramedic as we walked down the pathway to the car parked on the side of the road.
"If I'd just said something else." Sam shook his head full of guilt. "Gotten through to him somehow."
I said, "Look on the plus side, we saved Ms. Miller from dying through her...psychic spoonspending stepson."
"We couldn't have done anything." Dean stopped us as we reached the car. "Max was too far gone." He'd been gone long before we even knew the Miller family existed.
Sam looked away sorrowful. "When I thinking about how he looked right before...I shoulda done something."
"Done what?" I scoffed, tucking my hands into my pockets. "I was right beside you and all I could do was have blood splattered on me." I had a drop or two on my jacket but that wasn't anything new in our line of work.
The three of us walked to our usual doors for the car. "The only way we could have saved him was if we had gotten here twenty years earlier." Twenty years ago, I was four years old and angrily ripping Barbie heads from they're bodies.
"Well I'm sorry Chris," I looked to Sam confused. "But we were lucky to have dad."
I looked away, "I'm sure you were." I said quietly. He hadn't been the one dad pretty much threw away.
"I just mean..." Sam thought for a minute. "If dad had a little more tequila and a little less demon hunting, we woulda had Max's childhood." He paused. "Yours." I bit my lip, slowly opening my car door. "All things considered, I think we're all okay now."
Dean stopped us just before we could leave. "Wait, what does he mean by 'your' childhood." He glanced between Sam and I.
"Nothing." I said quickly. I glared at Sam with a look that said, you tell him and I will slowly kill you, with every torture I knew of.
Back at the motel room several minutes later, "Are you seriously not going to tell me anything?" Dean had been on my case ever since Sam let loose that my childhood was less than awesome.
"That's exactly what I'm going to do." I said, stuffing a stray shirt I found kicked under the bed.
Dean looked like he was going to press on the issue. He never had a chance before, "I've been thinking." Sam had just came back in after putting a back in the trunk of the impala.
"Well that's never a good thing." Dean joked.
"Isn't that true." I chuckled, zipping up my duffle bag.
"I'm serious." Sam said firmly and I straightened up. "Why would this demon, or whatever it is; kill mom, Jessica, and even Max's mom. What does it want?"
Dean looked away, "I have no idea."
"Maybe they were all connected...somehow." I said doubtfully. Jess was barely born when our mothers died, the wife (Max's mom) of a drunk (Max's dad), and the wife (Mary Winchester née Campbell) of a mechanic (John Winchester).
"Could it be...maybe," Sam paused for a minute before finishing. "After us? Max and me?" I felt worried, ominous, like this wasn't the end of the whole psychic wonder getup.
"Why would you think that?" Dean demanded, forcing a pair of boxers into his bag.
"I mean," Sam picked up a few papers they'd been studying for this case. "Either telekinesis or premonitions, we both had abilities." He folded up the papers evenly. "Maybe he was...he was after us for some reason." He stuffed them into one of our smaller leather bags.
I dropped my duffle by the door. "Pay attention, if he wanted you, he would have taken you years ago. Not wait until you're all grown up and can kick his ass. This is no way your fault, or Max's fault."
Sam shook his head desperately, finally turning around to face us. "If it's not, then what is it about?" I wasn't sure of an answer for that one.
But Dean did. "It's about that damn this that did this to our family." The thing that tore us apart. "The thing we're gonna find, the thing we're gonna kill." And I would enjoy every last minute of it. "And that's all."
"Actually, there's something else to." Sam said slowly. I narrowed my eyes, was he going to tell Dean about my past? Overprotective big brother Dean would never let it go.
"Ah jeez, what?" Sam asked.
Sam looked away and said slowly, "When Max left us in that closet...I moved that big cabinet against the door."
"So you moved a cabinet, big deal." I said dismissively, pulling my duffle onto my shoulder.
"I guess you just have a little more upper body strength then I gave you credit for." Dean said. Which shouldn't be to surprising considering Sammy was made out of nothing but height and muscles.
"No." Sam said firmly. "I moved it...like Max."
I felt chilled, worry ebbing away at me. "I'm, I'm sure it was...just a fluke." I suggested with a stutter in my voice. Didn't she miss the good old days when they're worried was hunting a wendigo and tracking down dad. Now this whole psychic abilities was just making things more complicated then they needed to be.
"One way to find out." Dean casually picked up a silver spoon from the table, holding it out to Sam. "Bend this."
Sam rolled his eyes, clearly frustrated. "I can't just turn it on and off!" He waved his hands madly.
"Well you did it somehow?" I exclaimed. Psychic connection didn't exactly appear in people at random. It was usually through genetics and as far as any of us knew, Sam was the first.
"I don't know how I did it." Sam said, looking down, like he was lost. "It's just...I saw Dean die and it came out, like a punch." And punching was something we all knew well. "You know, like a freak adrenaline thing."
"Yeah, well I'm sure it won't happen again." Dean said like his words would make it true.
"Yeah, because that's gonna stop it." I muttered, stepping up to the door. We'd be leaving this town behind us soon, like every other town we've ever stepped in.
Sam slowly shook his head. "Isn't anyone here worried? Aren't you worried I could turn into Max or something?"
I looked at him in disbelief. "Seriously, that's what you're afraid of." Sam wasn't a murderer. Well, he killed things but only supernatural evil. That was different then killing your entire family instead of just leaving and never returning.
"I know he won't." Dean told me with a proud little smirk, pulling on his jacket. "Sammy here has one advantage that Mac didn't have." I looked at him curiously, not getting what he was talking about.
"Dad?" Sam guessed. "Because dad's not here." He hasn't been my entire life, he hasn't been for the past seven months or so for Dean and Sam.