chapter two

Chapter Two

            When Maxwell woke up the next day, it took him a couple of seconds to realize that for the very first time in his life he had dreamed during his sleep. He had, for the first time in his life, a full-fledged dream.

             Naturally he was stunned for his mind had been opened to an entirely new experience.  For however long his dream had lasted, he'd entered a world totally different than the everyday world to which he was accustomed.  It felt like he'd gone through an interdimensional shift before he realized that 'this is what happens to normal people when they sleep'.        

Even though it may seem rather strange, it happens to be absolute fact that Maxwell House had never dreamed before the twitch.  Most people have movie-like dreams that come with pictures and dialogue. This isn’t to say that empty nothingness filled the hours of 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. for Maxwell.  During this time he would have direct contact with different emotional states.  You could say he 'emoted', if you were so inclined to make up a word.

Sometimes it was a good emotion, like an intense love, more powerful than any love he'd experienced in all his life.  Some nights he had horrible, terrible nightmares; dreams of incomprehensible pain.  And some nights he felt emotions that could only be describable as alien, states that didn't seem match up with any particular corresponding human emotion.  

            And so for the first time since Maxwell was conceived, or at least as long as he could remember, he had a real honest to God dream. It was quite vivid, almost as if whatever it was were actually taking place.  Perhaps the most perplexing thing about the dream was the scenes which presented themselves. 

 He pulled off his covers.  His room was freezing so he quickly covered himself back up.   Just another day in paradise, he thought.  Hell might actually be preferable than this.  At least he wouldn’t need arctic snow gear to get to the bathroom.

Maxwell would've liked to have slept for another eight hours, but his mind was still too stunned for him to possibly fall back asleep, so he lay in the warmth of his blankets perplexed about this strange and novel phenomena.

            He couldn't remember much about the dream but several things did stand out to him.  One, there was a girl, and something about her made him believe that she was very important.  He couldn't recall the color of her hair, or the shape of her nose, or rather anything descriptive about her features, but he knew she was a girl, and he knew there was something very special about her.  She also made it clear that she had something important to say (without actually saying it, in a way that can only make sense in dreams), and she was trying to communicate whatever 'it' was to Maxwell, but the words were disappearing somewhere between her mouth and his ears.  Maxwell begged her to repeat herself so that he could understand her soundless message, but she disappeared before she had a chance.   She didn't so much disappear but rather morphed into something altogether different; she had turned into an older gentleman right in front of his eyes!  Maxwell couldn't remember his features either.  In fact, he might've been completely featureless, something more like the essence of an old man in human form, but it was impossible to tell.  Maxwell asked the old man about the girl, who is she?  What is she trying to say, and why am I not able to hear her?

            The old man only smiled.  He was standing next to a lamp post, which cast a long shadow into the night.  There was something frightening about the shadow stretching into the darkness, something ominous and sinister.  Slowly and steadily, the shadow began to change its shape, transforming from the old man’s humanoid into a ghastly, demon-like creature.  The demon had many different faces and arms and claws and grew and grew, larger and larger until it defied all imagination, and then, ...

            Beep!-Beep!-Beep! 

            He was awakened by his alarm clock. 

            He rubbed his eyes, still not wanting to get out from under his covers, Maxwell knew he'd have to eventually get his rear in gear and turn on the light.

            All of a sudden, at the very moment he thought about turning his bedroom light on, the light in his room did just that, without him physically flipping the switch.  His left eye began twitching frantically, and then slowed back down to normal speed again.

              As if the dream weren't shocking enough, now this!?  

---

           Maxwell got out of bed and sprinted to the bathroom, body shivering and teeth chattering from the cold. 

            He turned on the shower, hoping that a warm shower would get him moving. Too smart to make the same mistake twice, he stuck his hand in for a few minutes only to find it was still icy cold.  Still no hot water?           

            No shower this morning.

            He went downstairs for breakfast.  His mother was already at the kitchen table, eating some toast with jelly, and drinking her coffee over the newspaper.

            "We're going to get that looked at," she said.

            "What are you talking about?," Maxwell asked.

            "That thing, whatever's going on with your eyes.  I'm making you a doctor's appointment today.  You'll probably see a doctor sometime next week."

            Maxwell didn't say anything and made himself a bowl of cereal.  He was glad to hear he would be going to see a doctor.  Maybe the doctor could give him something that would make the twitch go away.  If the marvels of modern science couldn't help him, he didn't know what could!  He hurriedly ate his cereal and then they were off.

                         Maxwell entered room 217 just before the tardy bell sounded.  He was always getting to class late, and if his teacher had any clue what was going on in her classroom he would probably have had a detention or two by now.  Most of the students had already taken their seats, so Maxwell quietly shimmied through the aisle to get to his spot.  He put his books on his desk, carefully unbuttoned his coat, placed it neatly behind his chair, and then took his seat. 

                         Just as quickly as he sat down, he sprang immediately back up and into the aisle.

            "Mother flipping nipple burger!!", he shouted.  Excruciating pain radiated up his left butt cheek as he jumped out of his chair. 

            The classroom went silent.  Maxwell looked down at the chair beside him and there he noticed taped to his seat- a pointy little tack.  Giggles began reverberating throughout the classroom.  This could only mean one thing, ... 'Philip'.

            This had to have been the work of Philip Dick.  Philip embodied his name, and he definitely came as advertised.   Philip, who was Maxwell's most fearsome arch enemy, the absolute bane of his existence just so happened to have the same name as one of his very favorite authors of all time, Philip K. Dick.  Irony never escaped Maxwell.  Upon seeing Maxwell pull the tack off of his seat, the classroom erupted in laughter. 

            Maxwell could feel a very definite change in his body chemistry.  Adrenaline flooded his veins and his heart began beating faster.  His face felt like it had just been torched with napalm, and sweat began pouring out of his glands as if the Bible flood itself were being reenacted under his armpits.  Intense rage combined with humiliation and incredible embarrassment washed over him.  He saw through his head the image of the 'demon-beast' flash and then quickly disappear.  His heart started beating faster and faster until it felt like it was going to explode, and then, ...

            'Pop'!

           

            One of the fluorescent light bulbs on the ceiling went out.  All of this happened just as Ms. Butternut walked into the room. 

            Maxwell sneered at Philip and sat back down, his rear end still smarting.  He couldn't imagine today getting any worse.  His eyelids where twitching extra rapidly. 

            "Today we have a special guest," Ms. Butternut began.  Ms. Imogene Butternut looked as if she and Colonel Sanders could have been at least first cousins.  She was an old, portly lady who had more facial hair than anyone with two X chromosomes should ever have.  Her senility ensured that all of the class clowns and jerks got away with just about anything they pleased.  Spitballs would fly, notes would be passed, conversations spoken, and tests cheated; she never knew the difference.  Maxwell felt badly for her in the same way he felt badly for his priest.  She also exhibited a palpable loneliness inside her that he could relate to.  She continued just as a dark complected girl walked into the room.

            "Her name is Premi Chandrasekar, and she is from India.  She is staying with us for the day to learn more about our country."

            Maxwell stared at Premi and realized something strange about the girl.  Yes, it was strange having a dark skinned girl at a mostly all white school in the middle of nowhere, but she really was 'different'.  She had a radiance, literally, a certain glow about her that suggested she might be from another planet altogether.

            Maxwell rubbed his eyes.  The pearlescence was still there.  Nobody else in the class seemed to notice this peculiarity as they all went back to what it was they were doing before Ms. Butternut had “so rudely” interrupted.  Premi sat down across the room from Maxwell.  He watched her as she folded her hands on her lap and looked straight ahead.  There was definitely something luminous outlining her body, Maxwell felt one hundred percent positive about this.  Either he was going crazy, or the bizarre light was there, and the way things had been going lately, he wouldn’t have been surprised if it were both.

            Before Ms. Butternut had a chance to start her daily lecture, Premi shifted around in her seat and surveyed the entire classroom.  As her eyes wandered from student to student, they finally landed on Maxwell and stopped.  She was looking directly at him!  It took him a moment to realize this, but once he did, he abruptly looked away as if nothing had happened.

            Premi smiled, and then turned back in her seat and faced the front of the classroom.  Maxwell felt embarrassed and creepy.

            The rest of the morning Ms. Butternut's class was business as usual.  Business as usual except for the fact that it was starting to snow outside and summer vacation was only a few weeks away, on top of the fact that there was a radioactive Indian girl glowing on the opposite side of the room, a peculiarity that nobody but Maxwell seemed to notice.

            Maxwell's eyelid continued to twitch.  It was “on its own freaking program,” as Jimmy had called it in the hallway before class.  The other students were beginning to catch on as well.  At lunch, a table of jocks asked him if he was too poor to afford new contacts. 

           "They dry out and really irritate you after you have them in for a couple of months, you know?” and then another would chime in with, “You should really get some new ones!" 

All of the girls in the lunch line giggled, including the very beautiful Jenna Myers.  Jenna was arguably the hottest girl that Maxwell had ever seen.  She was cosmetically beautiful of course, but Maxwell was pretty sure she could crawl out of a dumpster and she would still look gorgeous.  Her father was a lawyer, so that made her very 'rich', and she was always very well put together.  She was dating William Beckley, who was the most popular kid in school, the male equivalent to Jenna Myers.  William's parents owned everything, the grocery store, a couple of gas stations, all of the fast food restaurants in town, and they also lived in the biggest mansion in all of North Laurel.  On top of that, William was good at everything.  Sports, school, you name it and he was good at it.  He was good at being a complete jerk too, Maxwell and Jimmy both agreed. 

            Another gaggle of random goons, which happened to be the same group of ogres that one Philip Dick associated with, simultaneously stared at Maxwell as he walked by and blinked, mockingly.  What a bunch of clowns, Maxwell thought, but who can take them seriously, anyhow?  It hurt his feelings that people were treating him badly, but more than anything, it just made him feel angrier and angrier.  He was used to getting picked on; so much so that it was starting to lose its novelty, if said cruelty ever had such a thing to begin with. 

He now recalled how terrifying the beast from his dream was for a brief moment, and slowly felt rage growing inside him. Trying his very best to contain this anger, he quickly walked to the table where Jimmy was sitting.

            "Hey there Macmillan, I see you're still ticking, wink-wink" Jimmy said, laughing.

            "Haha Jimmy, you're so funny.  Funny in the same way really bad jokes are funny, which means I am laughing at you rather than with you."

            Jimmy recoiled and looked appalled to hear Maxwell say this.

Maxwell knew all too well he was only being sarcastic.  Jimmy didn’t care what anybody thought of him.  In this way, Maxwell was even more envious of his best friend.

"In fact Jimmy, why don't you go back to your homeland?  I hear Mr. Wonka has been worried to death about you since you went missing!"

            At this point, Jimmy began performing a very crude Oompa Loompa impersonation.  “Just because I am black don't mean I’m a slave, you bigot.”   Both boys chuckled.

             Seemingly out of nowhere Premi, carrying her lunch tray, sat down right next to the Maxwell at the lunch table.

            "Uh, how do you know that seat isn't taken?" Jimmy asked.

            "Don't be an ass Jimmy.  Nobody ever sits at our table.”  He glanced at the new girl who was still glowing. Her skin was almond brown and appeared to be very soft.  Her face was warm and her dark brown eyes immediately met Maxwell’s “Of course you can sit there."  Maxwell then hit Jimmy in the shoulder.

            "I was being facetious, okay?  But you don’t have a sense of humor, do you?!"  He winced as he rubbed his shoulder, "Where did you learn to hit like that?!"

            "Ignore my friend; he sometimes has a tendency to be rude."

            Premi smiled and then blushed.  Interestingly enough, the faint glow around her body grew more intense, and then began to throb like a beating heart.  She slowly started eating her Salisbury steak. 

            Not knowing what to think or say, Maxwell fumbled around with his own lunch.  He had to be going insane.  There was no way that Jimmy noticed anything strange or out of the ordinary about this girl, which ultimately meant he was the only one seeing this glowing business.

For a few moments there was an awkward silence before Maxwell abruptly asked Premi? "Do you like it here in America?"  

            She looked at Maxwell and even blushed a little more.  He'd never seen a girl look so different.  Of course he'd never been out of his own state either, much less his own country.  She was actually very pretty. Not in the same sense as Jenna Myers was pretty, which was actually more along the lines of “completely and utterly drop dead gorgeous,” but she was pretty in her own way.  When he tried to think of a word to describe it, exotic came to mind.           

            "I don't...," she paused slightly, "speak very good English."  She didn't look nervous, but she was clearly not confident in her ability to converse.  She continued, "but I have ... it is very ... what is the word ... um, different than my home."

            "You speak English very well," Maxwell told her, "I hope you don't think all of America is like this.  There's a lot of what we like to call rednecks around here.”  He shot an accusing glare at Jimmy.  

            Premi most likely didn't understand what the word redneck meant, but she smiled and nodded anyhow, as if she'd already gathered that the people in this town might just be a little backwards.

            Maxwell was very intrigued by Premi.  His eye was still twitching quite badly, but he'd basically gotten used to dealing with it at this point and hardly even realized as it was happening.  Premi didn't seem to notice either.  At least she didn't make fun of him or mock him like everyone else did.  He wouldn't have realized that she did indeed notice the twitch, were it not for what she was about to say next.

            "Your eyes," she began, and then paused, searching for the right words, "they are ... umm ... expressing?  I don't know the word."

            They are expressing, Maxwell thought to himself, how peculiar?  What did this mean?  He didn't have much time to think about what Premi had just said because at that very moment Phil Dick and his friend Morgan Childress came up to the table and stole a cookie from off of Jimmy's tray.

             "Hey, you doucher, give that back!" Jimmy pleaded.

            "Give what back?" Phil responded. 

            What a jerk, Maxwell thought.  "Don't play dumb, Phil, just give him his cookie back.”

            Morgan, who somewhat resembled a baboon, just stood next to Phil, looking stupid.

            "How about this," Phil went on, "I'll give him back his cookie,” he said with a shrewd grin, “if you lick my ass...  Does that sound like a fair deal?  Or would that be too embarrassing for you to do in front of your injun girlfriend.”

            Maxwell could feel his blood beginning to boil as the ticking began to speed up. “Does that mean you like having your butt hole licked?”

“No..” Morgan answered as both he and Phil glowered.  “We ain’t faggots.”

"What in the world is wrong with you?” Phil asked Maxwell as he made exaggerated, mocking blinks.  "You look like you're mentally retarded or something.  Hey, are you one of them retards?"  

            Phil started blinking and curled his lip over his teeth.  With an overbite like Philip Dick's, it didn't take him much to achieve the look he was going for.  Maxwell thought he looked like a donkey, or perhaps a mule.  There were many directions he could have gone with such fodder, but he simply wanted to mute a potential squall, so he didn’t say a word.      

He turned around so as to continue his conversation with Jimmy and Premi, but naturally, Philip and Morgan where not finished with their shenanigans.  

            "Don't you have a comeback for that?" Philip asked, "Or does the cat got your tongue?  Maybe you should say something so your injun girlfriend doesn't think you're a lil' sissy."

            "Okay numb-nuts, that's enough.  She's Indian, not a Native American! learn the difference!  That means she is from the country of India."

            Morgan began whooping with his hand over his mouth and started dancing around like a Native American with cerebral palsy.  Phil, not wanting to miss out on a chance to look extra retarded, soon joined in.

            That was it.  Something inside Maxwell's head had completely snapped, like a fuse had just gone out.  He had reached his boiling point, and the beast again flashed itself through his mind.   All he knew was that he had put up with this sort of nonsense for too long.    

What happened next surprised everyone, especially Maxwell. 

           

            He calmly pushed his tray forward and then slowly sat up.  He walked over to Phil and looked him directly in the face.  Maxwell was a good four or five inches shorter than Phil.

            "What are you going to do, you little twirp?  You better back up or I'll knock your ass clean out!", he boldly stated.  Maxwell clutched his fist.  For a brief moment the twitching eyelids ceased altogether.  The sounds of the cafeteria muffled into nothingness.  The scene Phil and Morgan had made had already attracted much of the cafeterias attention, so all eyes were on Maxwell.  Everyone was silenced, watching to see what was going to happen next. 

            Maxwell reached back.  Someone, a long time ago had told him how to properly make a fist.  Align the knuckles and wrist and arm so as to deliver maximum force.  Fingers curled tightly so as not to break any bones. Thumb to the side. Time slowed to a still, and Maxwell mustered every ounce of forward momentum he could.   The room was so quiet that the sound of cartilage breaking was clearly audible.  Maxwell had punched Philip Dick square in the face.

Philip was stunned temporarily, until he felt blood rushing down his face and into his mouth.  His face turned bright pink, and for a second looked as if he would retaliate.  And then, right there in front of everyone, he started crying like a little baby.

 Exactly five minutes later, Maxwell found himself in the principal's office.