Chapter 18

The darkness behind his eyelids was suddenly replaced by the light of the cold stone room that had been the backdrop of the last dream. He saw movement in the corner of his vision, and he turned to find the Alius standing off to one side, and right off the bat there was something different. Its leering mask had been replaced with a Jaroni mask, like what was used in the midsummer festivals, the mask's large teeth snarling at Max.

"You are the stupidest fucking animal I have ever had the displeasure of meeting." It spat, staring right at Max as it stood with its fists clenched. "You have come back, limping and bleeding, time and time again, for me to kick you, harder and harder each time, and yet no matter how hard I kick, you come back for more. Well, your stupid persistence has led you up to this moment, where I will make my promise to you that first day come glaringly true for you. Damn you for bringing us both to this point!"

He grabbed the curtain, and in one strong move tore it away from the ceiling. Max moaned in despair as he saw, as the Alius had promised, his parents were strapped to strong wood chairs like his siblings had been yesterday. Papa, covered in burnished bronze scales, pulled against the restraints, his reptilian eyes glaring at the Alius. Mama locked eyes on Max, her plump frame sagging in her chair, as she broke into fresh tears, her eyes red around the edges.

In that moment, he broke down into inconsolable sobs. Here he was, faced with the knowledge that he would likely watch the two people he cared about most in life die, and die because of him. Even though his mind told him, over and over again that it wasn't real, it didn't change just how painfully real the whole thing seemed to be.

Max heard a metallic clatter at his feet. "You know how this works." The Alius spat. Opening his eyes, Max saw that the blade had been thrown at his feet. This brought a fresh wave of sobs from his mom, and a muffled shout of anger from his father. "The one you don't kill lives. You have two minutes to decide, or I kill them both."

The Alius stepped over towards Max's parents, taking his place between them. Breaking the silence, his mom bawled, "Please, Max, don't pick papa. Pick me. Oh, Uther help me, pick me. I couldn't forgive myself if your papa died in my place. I'm so, so sorry you have to do this sweet pea, but you know it's gotta be me. You're such a strong man, I know you'll be just fine without me. I love you so much." She choked up and fell back into incoherent sobbing.

Papa's eyes had locked onto Max, and Max noticed that his father was crying. "Max, this is the one time I'm going to tell you to disobey your mama. You must choose me. I sacrificed everything to marry your mama, and I've not regretted it for a moment. But I can't imagine going on without her. Your mama is a strong lady. She'll handle everything around the house just fine without me, and you'll manage the fields just fine without me too. You must choose me." He said in his best stern voice, but it cracked near the end. "I love you, Max."

Mama broke out into a fresh wave of sobbing, though Max hardly noticed it he was now so distraught. "I can't." Max sobbed. "I can't do it." No matter how he chose, he was going to be forced to watch one of his parents die.

"What's your choice?" The Alius said, his icy voice audible over the noise of despair.

He couldn't even manage anything other than a whimper, already collapsing to his knees from the grief that was threatening to overwhelm him.

"Last chance, Max."

He still didn't respond, his mind screaming with opinions telling him why he should choose each parent, only just audible over his own sobbing.

"Time's up, you fucking weakling."

Max heard the blade scrape against the floor in front of him as the Alius picked it up, striding towards mama. Max heard an enraged scream from papa, his father thrashing in his chair with his teeth bared. "You twisted, disgusting thing! Don't you dare take Daisy from me!"

"But I will. And it's all your damn son's fault."

"No! No, don't you dare! Take me instead!"

Max could see nothing, his eyes squeezed shut and his hands covering his face as he wept.

The Alius stepped over to mama, his knife flashing. "Say goodbye to mother, Max."

"No! Please-" Mama screamed, but her words were interrupted by the Alius's knife.

"NO!" Papa shouted, drowning out mama's death throes. "You piece of pig shit! Why didn't you pick me, Max?! Why did you let Daisy die?! Why didn't you pick me?!"

Max only sobbed all the harder in response.

"I think he wanted you both dead." The stranger said. "After all, you brought him into this disgusting world. That seems like fair retaliation for a lifetime of suffering, don't you think?"

Papa's snarl returned to full intensity. "I'm going to kill you, shithead!"

"Say goodbye to father."

Papa screamed at the Alius until he too was silenced, leaving the room deathly silent, save for Max's uncontrolled weeping.

The Alius moved to stand behind Max, yanking his head back. "Do you see what you've done, you filthy maggot? You killed both of them. Open your eyes and see the cost of your fucking weakness."

Max shook his head as much as he could, grimacing from his tears. "Nooo."

"Open them!" It thundered.

Max didn't know why he complied, but he did. Looking up, his parents' corpses stared at him with their blood-soaked clothes and dead eyes, judging him for allowing both of them to die, and there was nowhere he could look to escape their stare. Having looked, he found he could not tear his eyes away from them.

"I think you really do hate them." The Alius's voice hissed in his ear. "Why else would you choose to kill them both? If you really loved them, you would've saved one, but you fucking blew that too." It walked around to stand in front of Max, putting its face inches from his. "Don't come back, or I swear that I will cut them to pieces in front of you, and make sure that they never have the mercy of dying."

The shock had begun to wear off, and Max felt himself tumble into a bottomless well, splashing down in the despair seeking to drown his soul.

Max's world turned over sideways, and he awoke back in the classroom. The suddenness of the change made him pause for just a moment, catching a small breath of air before he fell back under the waves of his despair, curling up on the mat and wailing uncontrollably. Behind his eyelids, he could still see his parent's lifeless bodies, their stares accusing him. Could still hear the sounds of their pleading. The sounds of their deaths. Both his fault.

There was no sense of time amidst the seas of his grief. No room for any sense of propriety. Just the endless black grief, both above and below him.

Some force nudged him into a sitting position, and he didn't make any attempt to stop them, or even understand what was going on. Nor did he resist when a vial was held to his lips, beyond struggling to get air around the sickly sweet liquid. He felt himself falling back into sleep shortly thereafter, and though he raged against it, it pulled too strongly and him couldn't help but answer sleep's call. The last thing he remembered was being lifted off of his mat.

His worst fears about what sleep might bring came true. He saw his parent's corpses, still bleeding, get up from their chairs and approach him, telling him it was all his fault. His siblings were suddenly there too. They had knives, then they had claws. His parents were now on him, pushing him against the wall, holding him there, their bloody faces smiling grotesquely at him. The knife flashed in front of his face. He felt the knife, saw it go for his throat-

He awoke screaming and thrashing, falling onto the floor from the bed as he tried to get away from his parents. He'd freed himself of their grip and just needed to get away, so he started crawling blindly in a direction. He only made it a few shuffling steps before he stopped, collapsing onto the floor and breaking down into sobs again. He felt a presence kneel beside him, a pressure on his shoulder. "Max, you're okay, nothing's going to hurt you here."

Max sobbed in relief at hearing Alva's voice. "Where am I?" He choked out.

"My room. You were inconsolable back in session, so Blair gave you a sleeping draught and brought you here to sleep off the experience. I was staying with you until you awoke."

Max shuddered, what had happened still painfully fresh in his mind.

"Come, let's go back to bed, hm?"

Max was too tired to resist, allowing Alva to help him back into bed. They settled in behind Max, both of them under the covers. Their body was warm against Max's back. They had an arm draped around Max, holding him protectively, their arm plumage draped loosely around Max like a blanket.

Their warmth encouraged the drowsiness he already felt, but with the scare Max had just had, he wouldn't dare to go to sleep again that night. Alva said nothing, merely stroking Max's chest. In a bid to stay awake, Max muttered. "He made good on his promise."

"Hm?" Alva said.

"He made good on his promise." Max repeated, a little louder.

"They did? So, you saw your parents...?"

Max swallowed hard, feeling the urge to break into tears again. He nodded against the pillow.

"Gods below, Max. I'm so sorry."

"I could've saved one." Max said, tears now dampening Alva's pillow. "He wanted me to...kill..." Max said, choking up for a moment. "...kill one to save the other...and I just...couldn't. How could I do that to either of them? I love them both too much to do that to either of them, and because I couldn't be strong enough to choose, I watched him kill both of them." Max's voice warped by sobs. "It made me look at their bodies..."

"Shh, it's okay, Max." They whispered, as Max started gently sobbing. "Your parents are both safe and sound back home. None of it was real."

"I just want to see them to know it wasn't real. To know I didn't kill them." Max sobbed.

"Hey, you didn't do anything wrong. Everything you saw was the Alius's fault. You're not responsible for any of it."

"But I could've-"

"Max." Alva said firmly, interrupting him. "Do you really think things would've gone better had you chosen one? Instead of laying here thinking you were a failure, you would've been laying here wondering what drove you to kill one parent over the other. You would've had to live with the memory of killing one of them. Instead, you did the bravest thing possible. You chose not to play the Alius's game. You chose not to participate in making the experience any worse than it already was, and who's to say they wouldn't have killed them both anyways? It wasn't like they had to honor any agreement with you."

Max sniffled. "You think so?"

"I know so. The Alius is a complete bastard. The best thing you can do right now Max is try to forget what they've done to you. They can't hurt you any more than you let them, and beating yourself up over a thing that didn't even happen is only hurting you more. Sleep, if you can. I won't go anywhere tonight, and if you need me, don't hesitate to wake me, okay?"

"Okay." Max said, after a moment's pause.

Talking with Alva had dimmed Max's grief somewhat, and his felt his eyes growing heavy from exhaustion. Coupled with Alva's warmth and drowsiness from whatever Blair had given him, it didn't take long for him to fall into another stint of troubled sleep. He awoke with a jolt from a nightmare that had ended with his parent's cold, dead hands wrapping around his throat. He shifted in the bed, and he felt Alva move behind him.

"Another bad dream?" They muttered.

"Yeah."

In answer, Alva pulled Max a little closer to them. They were quick to fall back asleep, but Max was unwilling to go back to sleep so soon. It was strange to him that he was, somehow, okay with Alva so close to him. It struck him that he'd not even noticed it until now. That they were even willing to, despite what it would look like-. He stopped his thought. They didn't see it that way. This was just something friends do in their mind, he supposed. That thought was even more startling. He almost didn't dare to hope that maybe, just maybe, he had managed to stumble onto a friend. A good friend, no less. It was unthinkable...yet it seemed to be the best explanation.

His mind reeling from the revelation, he settled back down, feeling more at ease than he had in a while. When Alva's quiet breathing lulled him back to sleep again, it was black and dreamless.