AUTHOR'S NOTE: So I've been away a while. This chapter's also been done for a while, but I had a frustrating little incident of MS word shuts down and deletes the whole thing before you can save it. Then I got busy. So, now I've got this chapter, 20, and 21 on the way. Just a matter of typing up.

SHOUTOUTS:
Brownie/Melody - ahh stop reading ahead! Lol… pretend like you haven't heard about recent developments…
wiseupjanetweiss - -working hard at writing paper- meh! Getting so close now!
Roxy Eno - hey awesome! You've seen my website! Lol… nice to get feedback off it…
SiriusBlackfan5405 - oh man.. I love cliffhangers, in case people haven't noticed yet. Lol… pretty evil of me, I know, but I can't help it
What Lurks In Shadows - -gasp!- not that big a fan of the original movie? Well well then… now I feel really special to get so much attention!
Miss Loaf - what? Curt? Maxwell? Happy? Is it possible? I guess we'll see…
Valo - oooh danke!
Alexandria Queen of Dreams - well, then again, Curt/Demon is very similar to the Curt/Brian in some stories, since he's sportive created off an aspect of Brian's personality.
Lady Wormwood - wow! Such a great review! Lol I'm glad to see you gave us a chance… it's nice to pull people in from outside the norm! thanks!

Chapter Nineteen

Maxwell was upset for weeks afterward, and the slightest sound inside or outside or around the flat would send him running for the attic stairs in apparent terror. He knew the trouble he was in. And I was getting paranoid too, locking all the doors, shutting curtains, not really going out much myself.

But no one came around. Not even to visit or ask me out to a party or anything. Or bitch at me for not coming into the studio for all that time. Jack had somehow cut off all my outside communication. And with Maxwell so flighty, mental enough to where he would lash out at me if I came up on him without adequate warning and stop speaking for days at a time, it was unbearable. I didn't even have any booze to help me get through it. Fuckin' torture. I had to get out of there.

And eventually, we started running low on food as well, since I hadn't been out. Gave me a good excuse for leaving. Maxwell whined and begged for me not to leave, overly anxious, going so far as to bite and pull at my shirt, holding me back away from the door. But I just kissed him and reassured him and pet his hair and face until he was calm enough to let me go and to where I didn't want to kill myself out of guilt for leaving. And I told myself that I'd bring him something back. A present of some sort, to make me feel better. So I headed out.

It was cold by then, winter, snowing a bit in that nasty, dirty way it snows in cities. Not like Michigan. There it would snow real snow for hours, none of this slushy shit. Pure. And everything would be coated and soaked in white for days afterwards, with school cancelled and the works. It was one of the only good things about that place.

But gray snow fit here, shitty as that sounds. Gray was the kind of feeling these places had at times.

I passed the TV store, where they used to always have those cameras pointed at the sidewalk to where the TVs in the window would show pictures of you or whoever else was walking by. There was a crowd outside, around the front window, talking animatedly about something or other. I could make out the fear in their voices as I came further down the block, closer to them. I tried to crane my neck to look over them and see what they were seeing. One of them caught sight of me and pointed, and the voices all dropped to a collective accusatory whisper and then they were allpointing as I shoved my way through the crowd to get to the crosswalk.

"Look! There he is!"

"Curt Wild!"

"The man with the demon…"

I stopped dead. Demon? Surely I'd heard wrong. I turned to look back at the TVs and the crowd avoided my eye. And there, on the screens, multiplied twenty times, was Maxwell. I dropped my cigarette. The police had him backed into a corner of the apartment, snarling with his fangs bared and wings fanned to try and keep them away. And shaking.

So I ran. I ran all the way back to the apartment, rounding the corner to find Jack standing outside our door, smoking and looking bored. I growled at him and grabbed his shoulders, pushing him aside, forcing my way into the apartment past the reporters and camera crews. The cops spotted me and them and the SWAT guys tried to drag me back out, kicking and screaming. They deposited me at the door and when they went back in, so did I, and they tried another time.

I jerked free and at the same split second, so did Maxwell, lunging into my arms and knocking me down to the floor, sending a shock of pain through me upon impact. I heard shots fired.

"No! Don't!"

Maxwell yelled in pain inside my mind, the sound louder than I'd heard it, seeming to stop all my thought processes. At the same instant he jerked his wing back and something clipped my shoulder.

"Stop shooting!"

I was clinging to Maxwell, hugging him close and he was wincing and when it fell quiet I was whispering to him as he shivered and dug claws into my skin, tearing bloody marks there without either of us realizing it.

"Don't fight…. don't fight them… they'll hurt you…"

I heard another kind of noise and he flinched in my arms as a tranquilizer buried itself in his shoulder. He was whining and whimpering like he had before I'd left, and as I stroked his cheek and hair, I realized he'd been right. It hurt to hear him like that.

"Maxwell… baby… don't worry, I'll get you out… I won't let them hurt you…"

But he was already falling asleep against my chest and I was pleading with him now and with the men in uniforms and white coats who were coming closer but my vision was fuzzing out, and either I was fainting or I'd been drugged as well and hadn't noticed, and as I blacked out they pulled him away from me with the camera flashes screaming in the back of my eyes…