RETURN TO OZ
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Probably will make a lot more sense if you read "The Ballad of Curt and Maxwell" first, seeing as this is the much-requested sequel. Also, this is a working title- I'm totally up to suggestions, but also be prepared for it to change.
CHAPTER ONE
Weird shit starts happening when you're cooped up in a house alone. Hell, weird shit starts happening when you were Brian Slade's lover. I thought I gotten used to it. Not much weirder stuff could happen, as far as I thought. This was my time of relaxation, being stuck in my apartment. They thought I needed some "chill time" after I supposedly freaked out. I agreed with them, about the chill time. Not about freaking out, I think my actions were logical enough.
Mostly, I think I got off easy. That is, with the whole "killing Maxwell" thing. Although quotes aren't needed; I killed Maxwell and I admitted to that. Hell, the whole thing's on security tapes; I never needed to lie. But even so, I got stuck with house arrest and a fine. That's it. I expected to be shut away for murder, but they hadn't viewed Maxwell that way. What I got punished for was "destruction of property."
Property. Stolen property even, if they insist on looking at a living being, near human, that way. Maxwell would have belong to Brian… which I guess meant he would have belonged to me, after Brian died. Or Mandy. But really Maxwell just belonged to himself.
So here I was, living comfortably in my not-so-little apartment without a thing to worry about. Nobody to see me, guards outside my door. Nothing on my schedule. Food was delivered to my door, my clothes were taken downstairs to be washed and returned clean and folded, and all recording had been delayed on account of I wasn't allowed to undertake anything that might make me money. Nothing on my mind. Brian and Maxwell were both at rest, people had happily carried out my goal of destroying Jack Fairy's reputation for me. Animal rights sort of people. Maxwell hadn't been an animal, but Jack Fairy defamed was all good enough for me.
Maybe that had been the cause of it all. Not enough on my mind? With an empty slate, who's to say what might come to mind. Then again, I always was a magnet for the weird. Legends of wolves and all that. Bullshit, but hard to shake off. The heroin and all (not that I'd been able to have any recently, nor did I really have that much desire for it anymore, but there's all that talk of being permanently fucked up and all)… that probably didn't help each either.
Or maybe I just missed them too much. Brian, Maxwell. Killing the Demon had taken that last shred of Brian from me. And I missed him in himself, the way he'd propped me up after Brian had died. Sometimes I wished myself dead with them, at least then it wouldn't be so lonely. At least then I could see them again, and maybe Brian and Maxwell would be one, and that would be good enough. One, two... I just wanted them back sometimes. I never really worried about it, I just wished for it. Strongly.
But it happened one night that while I was laying in my bed and sleeping with my mind blank like that… things started to come to me. What I saw was mostly haze, foggy cloudy-type stuff. But there was something there. A figure with wings. I thought it was Maxwell, and I ran towards him. But as I got closer, I saw that the wings weren't Maxwell's dragon-like skin, but soft feather, faintly glittering, and Maxwell's spines and tail were gone. I didn't have time to see more of this reincarnation of the Demon, though. Everything faded away like they tend to do. Try and get a grip on the image, it only goes faster. Will yourself back, and you only wake up, you know? You can never really see all you want to.
I guess you might call it a dream, this vision of a new Maxwell, perhaps only some paradox my mind made up because it never was quite right, but in our world, the world of glitter and seduction and demons and the impossible… dreams sometimes don't stay in that land of sleep.