SHOUTOUTS: (thanks to EVERYONE again! Because I now hold the review record on this site for Velvet Goldmine fan fiction! 43!)
wiseupjanetweiss - I really am considering putting it into a book… everyone on here is so encouraging. But it's a lot of work and legal stuff, permissions for the characters from Miramax and such… I'm not really sure what all else
Alexandria Queen of Dreams - lol. Thanks for the use of your muses… although I'm afraid they may return home a little worse for the wear… -Maxwell glowers-
Miss Loaf - hehe. I don't like Jack either. But it seems to me he'd get closer to Curt afterwards than a lot of people would…
Valo - ha. Well… this chapter sure isn't a love scene, I'll give away that much…
Katatonia - yes. I love Christian Bale, he's actually why I watched VG in the first… but Arthur is sooo… -shivers-
Brownie/Melody - lol you see where my conversations with people are going? Look, they notice he's creepy as well. But you knew about Maxwell long before they did. Haha. And you've seen the shite pictures, dearest. Maybe I'll draw the one you suggested sometime. But that would mean I would have to expand the link into an actual webpage. And we all hate that. Wait… where am I supposed to tell you this is not going where you think it's going?

Chapter Thirteen

I'm not sure if he ended up going back to sleep or not, but I did. Had some of the wine Maxwell had left and then stretched out on the couch so I wouldn't be stiff in the morning and went straight off.

When I woke up, his bathroom door was shut, so I went downstairs to make coffee and see if anyone was still hanging around. And they weren't. It was somehow late afternoon already and the flat was empty. Perhaps they'd taken the hint from my not being there the past twelve hours that I didn't want people around. And my apartment wasn't as trashed as I would have guessed. I wondered who I owed that to.

I cut off a piece of cake after putting the coffee-maker on and went wandering around while I ate it. Maxwell eventually slunk down from upstairs. I could never understand how he could keep his balance going down the stairs like that, on all fours. If I tried to do it or anyone else did, they would have ended up on their head, but he did it just as graceful as you please.

He did the same as me for a while, just wandered around aimlessly, eventually getting up to walk normally rather than his slinking crawl near the floor. I watched him from a chair in the kitchen. He came around to the parrot's cage and laced his claws into the bars, sizing up the parrot while the Macaw watched him warily. I suspected it had been sufficiently pestered the night before by all the drunken and high people cavorting around the flat and was expecting more.

-Whose bird is this?-

"Mandy's."

He growled softly at the name. I had been right, Brian's ignoring her toward the end had stemmed from Maxwell's distaste for the woman.-Why is it here?-

"She won't take the fuckin' thing home."

-You don't like it, then?-

"No. It bites and wakes up too damn early."

He nodded and released the bars, shifting over to the front of the cage. I wondered why he was so interested in the damn bird. Before I had the chance to question him, though, he had opened the cage and scooped it up, having it sit on one hand while he stroked the back of his claws over its feathers.

"Maxwell, what are you doing?"

He started purring at the bird, an actual cat-tiger kind of purr, not the sort of imitation you'd hear from a person.

-Nothing.-

But he suddenly got this vicious little nasty grin that showed his fangs and told me otherwise. And it dawned on me.

"You're going to eat it, aren't you?"

His eyes shifted up towards me and I knew the answer.

"Gross."

I got up and went over away from him, to start looking through the presents I hadn't gotten around to the night before. I wasn't going to watch this. Halfway through unwrapping the first item, though, I heard a crunch and the parrot squawk and fall to the ground. I couldn't help but glance up.

Maxwell was sitting on the floor, watching languidly as the bird, one wing mangled and broken, tried desperately to escape from where Maxwell had the claws on his toes pinning its tail feathers to the floor. Even as I looked, he let the parrot go and it hopped away a few feet, trailing blood before he pinned it again.

The next time he repeated this stunt he pulled out feathers, and the time after that he simply bit down on the Macaw's uninjured wing and tore it clean off while the bird screamed horribly. My stomach lurched.

"Maxwell!"

He looked over at me, dropped the wing from his mouth and started purring at me, pleased with himself and with me for letting him do it, blood turning his lips red like some macrabre lipstick. I struggled to keep my voice under control.

"Kill it now. You've… you've had your fuckin' fun, now kill it."

Put the damn thing out of its misery. And he did, by merely backhanding it, breaking its neck, before looking up at me sulkily and licking the blood off his lips.

I stood up shakily, as soon as I knew I could keep myself under control at least in front of him, then went to the bathroom and threw up all of the booze and cake from the night before.

-+-

When I cameback outhe was lying across the couch, picking through a bowl of fruit and reading the newspaper. The bird was gone, every little trace of it. Like nothing had ever happened.

I sat down on the other couch and he got up and came over all purring at me and I think I was in shock because I let him curl up in my lap and go to sleep. I knew he knew it freaked me out near as much as the parrot incident. I just turned on the TV and tried to forget what I'd just seen, ignoring the feeling of the spines along his back digging into my side…