chapter eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

           

            Maxwell had never had such a paranormal experience before.  Granted he had experienced many strange and bizarre things in the past few days, but nothing as deeply life changing as this.  And the experience didn’t sit well with him because it hadn't fit nicely into an explainable, rational level of understanding.  The experience, it seemed, had fundamentally been on a totally unique level. 

            Once he'd finally awakened later that evening in the emergency room, he saw his mother sitting at the side of his bed, clutching her Bible, and crying.
            "Oh Christopher, I'm so glad you're okay."
            "Where am I?"
            "You're in the hospital.  Do you remember anything that happened?"
            Maxwell could only remember bits and pieces of what happened.  The sheer volume of information that had been dumped into Maxwell's small brain would without a doubt, take quite a while to sift through and assimilate, but there were a few very specific things that he did seem to remember.  Rather than say too much at this point in time, he decided not to say anything at all about the subject.
            "I don't know, ... what's going on?  Why am I here?"
            "Darling, you don't know what you've put me through today.  I hear screaming coming on the front porch, and then there you are, shaking and holding yourself like you were freezing to death.  I immediately dialed the hospital, and we got you to the emergency room as soon as possible.  You've been more or less unconscious for the past three or so hours, ... good grief child."
            Three hours?  It felt more like an entire lifetime had passed since he last saw Tom's finger stretching outward towards the center of his forehead.  He shifted his bodyweight as all his muscles began to groan somewhat in agony.  "Can we get out of here now?"
            "We have to sign some papers first, but if your doctor says its okay, then we can go."
            "I'm fine, mom.  Let’s just get out of here."
           

            Maxwell was starting to get impatient.  Images of the beast randomly flashed through his mind.  He thought back through his dream.  There was a girl who couldn't speak, ... Primi.  Then there was an old man, which of course had to be that of Tom.  And the shadow cast by the lamp post had turned into a huge serpentine beast with wings.  Maxwell couldn't see the beast's face at first, but while it was replaying in his head, it truly began to have a terrifying countenance.  What he feared was now inevitable it seemed.  Somehow, he was going to have to come face to face with this fearsome, winged, snake-like beast.
            The doctor came to Maxwell's bed with a clipboard, "Mr. House, how you doing buddy?  You've had quite a night, haven't you?  Well, here's what I can tell you.  Your son is fine.  There's no sign of anything abnormal.  In fact, I'm glancing over his lab results and his numbers are more than fine.  He's exceptionally healthy.  What I'm going to tell you might sound like nonsensical quackery, but its just that you're a growing boy.  Sometimes when boys turn into men, strange things start to happen.  I think this is just an example of something very strange that is happening to an adolescent who is growing up faster than his body knows what to do. You're free to go home now, as nothing is out of the ordinary." 
           

            Maxwell and his mother gathered their things and headed for the car.  As they were driving home, Maxwell began to feel excruciating pain around his head.  Cars would pass by as the lights would shine so bright that Maxwell could barely keep his eyes open at will.  He realized that the euphoria he felt from the paranormal experience had already begun to turn sour on him. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary?’
            "Do you remember what you said on the front porch?," his mom inquired.
            Maxwell had no idea that he had said anything at all, "No, what did I say?"
            "Right before the ambulance came you said how you 'believed'.  You kept saying it over and over again.  What is it exactly that you now believe?"
            Maxwell vaguely knew what his mother was talking about.  He tried to say something, but found he couldn't.  He didn't know why.  It really was very difficult to tell her.
            "Son, I don't know what's going on with you but I really believe you have angels watching over you.  I don't know why I get so worried.  Its just that you've been acting so strangely as of late.  I don't know what any of this means, I just pray to God that my baby is going to be alright.  Are you okay, Christopher?  Is there anything that you want to tell me about?  You know I'm your mother and that you can talk to me about anything, right?"
            "I know, mom."
           

            When they pulled up to the house, Maxwell got out of the car while his mother walked next to him up the steps of the front porch.  He was definitely beginning to feel depressed again.  He could feel anxiety welling up inside of him as if there were a spring of negative energy inside his spine.  His mother turned on the light of the kitchen as they walked inside.
            Maxwell decided it was time to come clean with his mother, or at least just a little bit.  She deserved to know, after all.  And what difference did it make if she did know, anyway?  He closed his eyes and concentrated, and slowly went back through what had happened to him in his head.  He remembered seeing the intense light, and inside that light he began speaking.

            "Mom, when I said I believe, I think what I meant was that I think that you're right.  I think there really is a God.  I don't totally understand it, but I still think that it's true."
           

            His mother began to tear up.  She hugged her son as tightly as she could.  "Baby, I'm so proud of you.  What did I ever do to deserve such a wonderful son?"
            "Mom, please don't call me baby," Maxwell pleaded, somewhat jokingly. 
            "You know it isn't about me being right or you being wrong.  All I ever wanted was for you to share the same faith that I have, because I know it's so wonderful for me.  It isn't as if I have a whole lot to base my belief on in the first place, but sometimes you'll find that your faith is all you have.  It's all you'll ever have and all you'll ever need to get you through the toughest situations."
            Maxwell simply nodded.  He didn't really know what to say.  All he knew was that it was nice to see his mother so happy right now, even if he felt awkward during sentimental moments.
            "Okay, try and get some rest now.  You've definitely had a rough day today.  I'll see you in the morning."
            Maxwell walked upstairs and went to bed.  As for sleeping, however, he didn't sleep a wink.

            The next day at school was a bit hazy.  He got to class on time, which was unusual of course.

             Ms. Mooseknuckle began her lecture by talking about integers.  As she stood up at the podium in front of all the students, Maxwell began to feel a little strange.  Strange according to Maxwell, assuredly, is all relative at this point, but even as Maxwell was in a depressed wake of another extreme cave experience, he began to feel an even deeper kind of dispair.
            Maxwell wasn’t feeling very well at all as a matter of fact.  This he noticed as he was struggling to control his gag reflex.  The classroom began spinning around.

             'All this because I couldn't get to sleep last night?'  Maxwell felt every fiber in his body begin to ache.  He became acutely aware of every curve and contour of his body gradually to the point where it was hard for Maxwell to distinguish where his body ended and the classroom began.  The boundaries, it seemed, were being merged together.  Then he felt inside himself a deeper kind of pain, as if there were a troubling sense of urgency.  The trouble with the urgency was that he didn't even know what was so urgent in the first place.  Even if Maxwell did know what was so desparately needing his attention, he felt tethered and chained, making it impossible to spring to any kind of action.  All of this caused him a great deal of anxiety.  He looked around the room.  There were students, yes, but they looked somewhat out of place.  As a matter of fact, nothing seemed right about the classroom at all.  He saw the kids of course, but they didn't look like children to him.  They looked like goblins disguised as children.  Mindless, programmed, overstimulated, underachieving goblins.  Maxwell felt as though he could slowly connect to what they were feeling.  The blurring of the boundaries extended from desk to desk, and from student to student.  Yes, he was indeed connected, as only he knew exactly when his neighbor would cough, and he felt exactly what his teacher was going to say.  Maxwell closed his eyes and thought back to his memory of the light.  Chills ran through his body as his hair stood on edge.  ‘This must be what a hangover feels like,’ he thought to himself.
            Then he slowly reopened his eyes.  He was losing executive control of his facilities by now.  Even his thoughts seemed to be locked into a certain pattern.  Struggle as his did, he felt the presence of every single child in the classroom.  He didn't know what to do with what he'd uncovered.  It was a sense of entitlement and narcissism.  It ultimately made Maxwell want to wretch.  He couldn't look at them anymore.  He tried to think of any redeeming qualities that they might've had.  He was sure they felt things like love and compassion, a higher sense of morality of some kind, but try as he might, he couldn't sense any of these qualities inside them at all.  He didn't want to see them like this.  In fact, he felt it was not his place to judge them in the first place, but he knew strange facts like how they'd all ate too much, watched too much television, gossiped too much, and definitely all thought way too highly of themselves.  Most of them would end up putting someone down without a second thought for the sake of bettering their own situation.  Maxwell was really beginning to feel nauseated.
            'They all think that they're so special,' Maxwell thought.  'Mom and Dad's perfect little angels, but mom and dad don't know how you pick on little Jimmy do they?  Maybe they actually do know, and maybe they even encourage it!'  He could feel all of the negetivity in the classroom at this point, and it made him revel in utter horror. 

            "What's going on?," Ms. Mooseknuckle asked, as she noticed Maxwell struggling at his desk.
            "I'm just, ... not, ... feeling very well, ... at this moment."

            Maxwell immediately began dryheaving.  The entire classroom looked at him. 

            Ms. Mooseknuckle was having quite enough of it, herself.  She'd not be letting this snot nosed little brat interrupt her morning lecture, and she'd definitely see to it that she was not going to be upstaged by this young man.
            "Go to the office right now!"
            "I'm okay, ... I just, ... need to lay my head down," and so he did.  He was feeling very, very exhausted.  Ms Mooseknuckle was a very disgusting person.  He could feel her too, unfortunately, so he knew for sure.  How could Dr. Schmidt have any interest in this woman?  Either he must be really hard up, or ...
            "Alright, that's enough.  Get up! ... I said 'GET UP'!"
            "But I can't."  Maxwell was totally on autopilot at this point.  He could see what was happening, but he knew he was no longer under the control his muscles.  The artificial light from the iridescent bulbs was so bright it made his eyeballs hurt.   The light made his teacher look like an orca whale mixed with a lemur.  A flash of terror seared through his brain.
           

            "What is your name!"  Ms. Mooseknuckle was furious by now, she was looking around the room at all of the horrified children trying to figure out the name of this little trouble making twirp.
            "My name, ... is, ... 'Jesus-Christ'," he said in utter frustration.  

            'I don't even know my own name!,' he thought.
            By now, Maxwell was no longer coherent, nor cognizant for that matter.  He'd slipped into a state of pure delirium.  And there it was, right in front of him, ... the beast. 
           

            Ms. Mooseknuckle stood at his desk looking down on him as his head rested upon it.  "Alright, that does it!"  She then grabbed Maxwell by the ear and forcibly dragged him all the way down the hall to the principal's office, and just like that, the spell went away.  The nausea began to fade first, and then he slowly came to, not exactly sure why he was being pulled ear first through the hallways which now occurred to be extremely strange to him.
            The door barely survived as Ms. Mooseknuckle slammed it shut on her way back to the classroom.
            "Why am I here?  What's going on?," he asked Dr. Schmidt.
            "I'm afraid you called your teacher a dirty cunt."
            "Are you really being serious?"
            "Yes, I'm serious, and this is serious, Maxwell!  And you said your name was Jesus Christ to boot.   Are you okay, Christopher?  Are you getting out of line?"  Dr. Schmidt didn't look all too pleased right now.  "Do you understand that I could expel you right now?  Give me one good reason why I should go to bat for you?  What in the world are you doing calling your teacher such a terrible thing?  And don't you know that you aren't allowed to sleep in class in the first place?"
            "I didn't even know I was doing any of these things, are you kidding me?  Why in the world would I ever say something like that?!" 
            "That's what I'm trying to ask you right now!"
            "I know.  I wouldn't say something bad about my teacher like that.  Not in my right mind at least.  Weird things have been happening to me lately.  You have to believe me, Dr. Schmidt!  Very weird things, but I promise you I'd never call my teacher a dirty, ... whatever it was that I called her!  Look, all I'm saying is, I wasn't feeling very well this morning.  I started to dry-heave, then all of a sudden I'm in your office, and that's the bottom line."
            "So you're pleading insanity, then?"
            "Well, yeah, I suppose I am," and just like that, Maxwell recalled some of the information that Tom had delivered to his brain.  He didn't know if it was true, but he believed it might just work.  "Look, I've been under a lot of stress lately, you can ask anyone.  I've been to the doctors, I've seen psychiatrists, ... I don't think I'm exactly crazy, but I definitely passed out momentarily in that classroom.  The video recorder sort of turned off for a moment, I think you know what that's like, don't you Dr. Schmidt."
            Dr. Schmidt looked at Maxwell utterly confused, "What are you talking about?"
            "You know what I'm talking about, back when you were in the military, back when you got kicked out of the military."
            "What!, how'd you ... I never told you I was kicked out!"
            "I know, but that isn't the point.  What I'm trying to say is that you were kicked out because you were deemed unfit for service.  You blacked out too, just like I did, don't you remember?  I know you do."
            Dr. Schmidt, who'd been standing this entire time, had now decided to take his seat.
            "It's what you did when you blacked out that got you kicked out.  You were damaged though, and they knew it.  You'd seen too much war, It shattered your mind.  When you beat up your best friend because you thought he was trying to kill you, the whole time he was only trying to congratulate you."  Maxwell had no idea of where this information was coming from, but he could see it very clearly inside his head, almost as if he were actually present when it had happened.
            And just like that, Dr. Schmidt drifted back to that very day.  He was being awarded a medal for his service during the war.  His friend, who'd also been an officer in the military, was to present him the award.  All of his associates and several other dignitaries were around him.  His family, his friends, they all witnessed the spectacle.

            As his friend pulled out the box containing the award from his pocket, the microphone immediately began sending vast amounts of feedback through the loudspeakers causing him to project back to that hostile territory.  He imagined his friend a terrorist, pulling out a bomb. The feedback suddenly stopped as he came back from his hallucination, but not before he'd beaten the ever loving soul out of his best friend.
            "How'd you, ...How did you know?   I was so embarrassed.  My friend, Doug, he forgave me, but he always thought I was crazy after that, and I am aren't I?  I mean, come on!  Look at me!
            It was true, Dr. Schmidt was a little crazy.  He was wearing a bright orange suit with a Blue checkered tie.  There were all sorts of action figures strewn across his desk from where he'd been playing with them earlier, but this was all beside the point. 

            'It's actually kind of a good kind of crazy,' he thought, "Its called post traumatic stress disorder.  Have you ever seen a doctor for it?"
            "No, I've been too embarrassed and ashamed to."
            "Don't be sir, you can still get better, I know you can.  You still feel a lot of powerful emotions from all the things you've seen and been through, but don't be afraid to ask for help," and abruptly, at just that point, Maxwell walked out of the office and back to his class.

            "You didn't even get in trouble?  That's insane!"
            "I know, right?  Now give me some of your fries, I'm freakin' starving."
            Jenna didn't sit next to Maxwell or Jimmy that day, but she did glance at him a few times.  Maxwell ate some more of Jimmy's fries.  He knew, somehow, in all of this madness, he just wasn't that safe yet.  He still hadn’t truly faced the beast.