Ch 5
The guard told me I had another visitor. I told him I wasn't going to go out there again. He clearly didn't take the hint, and so there on the other side of the bars stood the man I hated most in the world. Alfred Woden, the one-eyed monster himself. I yelled for the guard as he left the two of us alone. He looked back over his shoulder and glanced nervously at me, and then at Woden, and continued back on his way, his boots echoing down the hall. When the echoes ceased, Woden gripped the bars and put his face up to the iron and smiled widely. I lunged at the bars and tried to punch him in the face before he moved. He jumped back faster than I thought a man his age could. He smirked and shook his head.
"Max Payne, I must say, I admire your fighting spirit" he said, looking at me sideways. There was something not right about the way he looked. He was too lively, too much pep in his step, too loose and relaxed. He seemed, and looked, somehow, younger. It just made me hate him more.
"Glad you like it. Come on in, you'll see even more of it." I said, my fists tightly clenched around the cold iron bars. He raised an eyebrow and smiled. The skin on his face was tight and smooth, as though it might squeak as he changed expressions. He opened his mouth, about to say something clever. I felt like being an asshole, and interrupted. "So Alfred, got a facelift, I see. Although I think a faceless look would suit you better." "I knew a man like that once" he said. A minute passed. I said nothing while he regarded me silently with a strange smile. Momentarily unnerved, I quickly determined not to play along with any of his mouse-caught-in-a-trap bullshit. I wanted to know why he hadn't just killed me and gotten it over with. His apes at the motel were more than willing, why wasn't he? I was sick and tired of him. I was used, in the most horrific way imaginable. I felt like a mislead Nazi, duped into becoming a mass murderer. No, I felt worse. Even as I was doing it, I didn't think it was the right thing. I only did what I wanted most. There are only two places fit for a man like me to go. Jail, and hell.
"There is a reason I left you alive" he said. He sat down cross-legged on the cold floor. I turned and faced away. I hung my head down low. He was determined to feed his ego. He wanted me to feel, somehow, indebted to him. "Fuck you, Woden. I don't owe you anything" I said. Something soft bounced off the back off my head. He giggled like a child. I whirled around, infuriated. His hand was covering his eye, and his giggles swelled into a full laugh. His eye patch lay limp on the floor. "The look on your face!" he laughed, "Oh man, if only you could see it!" He was like an annoying little boy, and my anger swelled into a full-blown state of pissed-off. I refused to dignify him with a response. I glared into his uncovered eye, half-closed with laughter. After a minute or so he settled down, and sighed, smiling. "Oh, Payne, just can't take a joke, can you?"
"You didn't come all the way down here to screw around. An important man like yourself-" I cut myself off. With his free hand he was vigorously picking his nose. He pulled out a big green one and flicked it into my cell. There I was, standing infuriated, perplexed, and dumbfounded. I had just been corrected by a booger.
"You were saying?" he said, grinning widely. How could this possibly get any weirder? The man who embodied all of my earthly hate, who was responsible in part for the death of my wife and baby girl, had flung a booger at me. He was looking around with a bored frown. I still didn't know what to do or say. A booger. I couldn't believe it. I finally thought of something to say. "You just flicked a booger at me." He shrugged. "Yeah." he said, dismissively. A grin started so spread back across his face, like a little boy who just got the spirit of mischief in him. He looked up at me with a glint in his eye.
"So, you still miss your family, right?" as soon as he said that, he whipped his hand away from the bad eye, and for an instant, an image of my wife and child filled my entire vision. I was knocked back off my feet, the force of it pushing the breath out of me, and I landed hard against the wall. He covered his eye again, and the image was immediately gone. I began to hyperventilate. My lungs felt like they were about to rip out of my chest. He slid his hand down below his eye, and I could see his eye was jet black. He waved it up over it, and my wife was there, inside his eye, knocking on it as if it were a window, trying to yell something to me. His hand went back down. Black. Back up. Michelle and the baby. Back down.
"Tell me how you did that" I demanded. "Magic" he replied. He was toying with me. I jumped at the bars, reaching out through them, trying to reach him. "Tell me how you did that!" I screamed. He waved his hand, gesturing me to back away. I was knocked back again, as though I had just been blasted in the face. Fury and hatred and desperation overtook me. I flung myself at the bars, over and over again, and each time, I was blasted back with powerful force. He began to taunt me. "Remember how you thought it would never end?" I lunged again. Blasted back. "Remember the night your daughter was conceived?" My bones were cold. My skin was numb. My whole body ached. I lunged again. "Hell of a thing, the Italian trapeze. Remember how you thought your wife looked like Jodie Foster?" Blasted back. My vision began to blur. I was being beaten senseless. I lunged harder. "You never told her that. Guess she'll never know. Remember the time B.B. came over for dinner, and she whispered to you how he made her feel uncomfortable?" I was sent flying back, hitting the wall with my head. I flopped down on the floor. A warm trail wormed its way across my forehead and into my eye. My vision turned red. "Should have listened to her, Maxie." I was back on my feet in a flash. I rubbed the blood out of my eye. "Remember how you met her? Strangers on a Subway train, reading the newspapers. You both laughed, at the same time, reading Captain Baseball Bat Boy." I ran and dived. I was about to hit those bars like a bullet. He waved his hand upwards. My back hit the ceiling, knocking the breath out of me.
Hanging there, lying on my back, staring down from the ceiling, I watched beads of blood drip frantically down, shrinking into small beads before they splashed into the red puddles on the floor. My entire body ached in anguish. My head felt like a repeat of Frank Niagara. The world was spinning out of control, reality seemed to crumble along the edges, giving small, faint glimpses of something more sinister. It felt like a dream, but it was too frightening to not be real. Through the blurry red, I saw Woden, sitting there on the other side of the bars, a smug, insolent smirk stretching across his cheek. He plopped his hand down in his lap. I fell from the ceiling and hit the floor, my own blood splashing up into my face. Terrified, defeated, and desperate, a knot balled up in my shocked stomach. My eyes were blinded with blood. The knot seemed to explode, the force of it propelling itself up into my lungs, setting every part of my innards on fire. I screamed. Tears washed the blood from my eyes. Pathetically, I rolled over on my back. Alfred Woden was kneeling over me, his sharp smirk close to my face. I wanted to know what the hell was going on. It didn't make any sense, this voodoo crap, and now moving through solid bars. I was frightened. I wished Michelle was there, to give me the strength I needed. For once, I had run out of fighting spirit. I was crushed.
Woden fished in his shirt pocket for a handkerchief and wiped my face with it. "Max," he said, "I know you want her back. I have a way to make it happen. First, we have to get a few things straight. You're not at the end of your road. Not yet, at least. I can't promise you will survive to see your wife and daughter again. Secondly, the name you're going to have to get to know me by another name. Calypso."