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It was no secret that Max Jagerman ruled Hatchetfield High. He decided who dated who. He decided who was a nerd and who wasn’t. He was their god, their leader. Their King.
But that power only extended as far as the other students. He couldn’t touch the teachers, annoyingly enough. Oh, a few of them let him get away with things, just by virtue of him being the most valuable player on the Nighthawks football team; he won them games, and people loved winning, so some teachers let him do whatever he wanted. Others, though, thought they had a say in the things he said and did. When he arrived at class, when he left, who he talked to, things like that. It had always been annoying.
This week, though, it seemed to be bothering him more than usual.
He’d spent all of Sunday at that stupid amusement park north of town with his mom, on some weird bonding trip that she insisted they take. That place always gave him the willies, and the two or three times he’d been before, he’d left in an incredibly bad mood. This time was no different, except that he hadn’t been able to calm down afterward. Things bothered him more than usual – which was saying a lot, since things bothered him all the time. When Brad Callahan had come to him on Monday with news that Micro-Peter Spankoffski was stepping outside of his station to hang out with Stephanie Lauter, Max was annoyed, yes; but he was annoyed at both Spankoffski, and Callahan, which had never happened before. Instead of being happy that one of his friends had so readily given him information for him to act on, he’d been upset that Callahan had been in the library in the first place without knocking a few heads around. He’d been annoyed that Callahan hadn’t made his presence known to the nerds then and there when he’d heard their plans to meet with Steph. It was for that reason that he’d taken the time to beat Brad’s face in just before going to do the same to Spankoffski.
No one crossed Max Jagerman.
He’d been annoyed at Grace rebuffing his advances, even though it happened all the time. It was part of the chase. He knew it, she knew it. He aggressively flirted with her, she played hard to get. It was their thing. It was fun. But yesterday, watching her walk away had left him more irritated than usual. How dare she turn him down? The game only went so far, Gracie, it wasn’t funny anymore.
That irritation had dampened to more manageable levels when he remembered it was Grace he was talking about, and he actually liked Grace, so he needed to calm down.
On Tuesday, the flood gates broke, and Max couldn’t hold his anger anymore.
It started at lunch. Max had met up with his boys in the lunch room as usual, to eat and cause trouble. Same thing, different day. The thing about Max was that he knew he’d never amount to anything after high school. He was barely passing his classes – most of that was because his teachers more or less had to give him a passing grade for him to stay on the football team – and he had no prospects for college. He’d been visited by scouts, but no one was going to drag a football star out of some backwater tiny island city just because he was good at football. He also needed to be kind of smart for college, and he was anything but that. So, when he graduated at the end of this school year, he’d be stuck in Hatchetfield, and that would be it. He’d be done.
The students of Hatchetfield High understood that his word was law. Most of them bowed to his will. The teachers, meanwhile, held an annoying amount of power over him. They were adults, they were in charge, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Sure, they were willing to give him a passing grade to ensure the Nighthawks won their games, but they weren’t willing to let him get away with treating them the way he treated his fellow students. They were, at best, passive watchers to Max’s antics. At worst, they were in the way of them.
It had always annoyed Max how much power the teachers held over him. He was never outright disrespectful – his father would smother him in his sleep with a pillow if he found out Max had ever back-talked a teacher – but he didn’t exactly make it easy for them either. The most annoying thing teachers told him was that he had a “bright future;” it simply wasn’t true. Max Jagerman was an idiot who was going to peak in high school. Everyone knew that.
People just didn’t often say it out loud.
It was this frustration toward the teachers that reared its ugly head late Tuesday morning in the lunch room, when Max put his feet up on the table, and the math teacher, Mr. Franklin, told him to “get your feet off the table, Mr. Jagerman, you weren’t raised in a barn.”
And just like that, Max snapped.
He’d lunged at Mr. Franklin before he’d fully recognized why he was even angry, and by the time he’d thrown four punches into the small man’s face, he no longer cared. Chaos had erupted in the lunchroom, with students and teachers alike trying to actively kill each other, and those not affected immediately simply trying to get away from it all. Max had rallied the angry ones. The ones with glowing eyes like his own. The ones who wanted a place to direct their anger. He rallied them on the front steps of the school, where Max used them to begin his campaign to take over Hatchetfield High for good.
He was their god. Their leader. Their King.
And he would remain that way as long as he could. Even after graduation.
Rallying the students had been easy, but keeping them under his thumb after Mr. Houston and Jason broke out with a group of nerds was much harder. Jason had seemed eager to follow Max through the chaos, if a little quiet about the whole thing. He’d taken up residence at the back of the group, only really speaking when directly spoken to. Max supposed his hesitation to capture people as they came out the front doors made sense now – he wasn’t like the rest of them. He’d simply been following along to preserve his own skin. Max wasn’t sure if he was more angry or impressed by the cowardice.
The main problem now was that Mr. Houston’s arrival and subsequent defiance of Max had caused mass chaos to break out among the possessed teens on the school’s front lawn. What little self control they’d been showing under Max’s direct leadership was gone, and they were all simply trying to kill one another. No matter how much yelling Max did, no matter how much punching he enacted, they wouldn’t calm down enough to listen to him again. He’d lost control, which only fueled that angry fire burning under his skin.
He’d thought it couldn’t get any worse. The uncomfortable sensation of anger that wouldn’t quite go away no matter what he did to sate it had been irritating. But when he watched Kyle slinking through the chaos back to the front doors of the school, hand in hand with Brenda, of all people, Max suddenly knew what true blind rage was.
Jason had chosen their damn coach over him. Kyle was choosing Brenda. Fucking Callahan wasn’t even here. His boys were betraying him, one by one, and he was done standing for it.
With an actual, literal roar of anger, Max pushed past the angry throngs of fighting students and headed up the stairs after Kyle and Brenda.
The front lawn had been chaotic, a hellscape of noise and violence. Inside the school, however, whatever fighting had broken out seemed to be quieting down. There was a far off scream down some random hallway, a bloodied teacher ran by, yelping when she saw Max before she took off as quickly as she could on a bad leg. A body hung over the edge of the front counter, face down against the wood. The overhead intercom crackled and fizzled, but no voice came through. There was the muffled din of fighting back in the direction of the cafeteria, where the students who hadn’t fallen under Max’s control chose to remain. The air smelled slightly of smoke; someone had started a fire.
And Kyle and Brenda were disappearing around the corner down a far hallway, Kyle looking over his shoulder to meet Max’s eyes with a terrified expression.
“KYLE!” Max bellowed as he took off toward them, “Get your ass back here, you dickhole!”
Max hadn’t been expecting an answer, but the fact that there wasn’t one still enraged him.
Hatchetfield High was not a maze, not by a longshot. The only people who really got lost were new students trying to make their way around for the first time; the classrooms were numbered oddly, so anyone trying to navigate by room number alone would often find themselves at the opposite end of the school from where they actually wanted to be. Freshmen were constantly late to classes for the first week of school because of this. But upper classmen knew the school well – nerds often found roundabout ways to get to class to avoid their bullies, burnouts knew ways around that would help them more easily skip class, and everyone else just utilized swift shortcuts to make it to class before the bell rang (it was widely agreed upon by all students that five minutes was not enough time between classes to get where they needed to be before that bell). Still, in his rage-filled haze, Max found it extremely hard to navigate the school well enough to track down Kyle and Brenda. There was a tiny part, way at the back of his mind, that kept screaming that it wasn’t worth it. That he could always beat Kyle’s ass later to assert dominance, but the bigger part of him didn’t just want Kyle back under his control.
It wanted Kyle dead.
See, that was the part that scared Max the most. He was a nasty bully who would torment, taunt, and tease his victims mercilessly. He enjoyed the chase when nerds ran away. He loved the feel of his fists against soft flesh. Not enough to kill or cause permanent damage, but enough to bruise. Those bruises were his mark of power. A nerd walking around with a black eye was free advertising for the fact that Max Jagerman was in control. He always knew when to stop – a talent unfortunately not possessed by Brad Callahan and some of the others – and he never, ever, wanted to kill.
As a child, before his parents’ divorce, Max had found a fallen nest full of baby birds. It was nearing nightfall, the temperatures dropping dangerously low for such tiny creatures, and they were calling out for help. Max, being all of six years old, had decided to help them. Unfortunately, he’d underestimated just how fragile the tiny beings were, and he’d accidentally crushed two of them before he’d managed to bring the nest back to his house. The rest died shortly after, due to exposure. He’d been upset, pleading with his mom to bring them back, to make them okay again – she was a nurse, she’d made people better all the time – but as she dried his tears, she explained that she couldn’t fix this.
Death was permanent.
That lesson had stuck with Max his entire life.
So, yeah. He never wanted to kill. Because death is permanent. And he refused to let something like that be at his hands again.
Kyle had been his best friend since the fourth grade. He’d been there for him through his parents’ extremely contentious divorce. They’d played football together since they were kids. As Max rose through the team ranks, he always made sure to bring Kyle with him. When they’d reached 8th grade, Jason joined the crew. They were the Three Musketeers, or whatever those dorky fuckers were called. Max had been surprised at how badly he’d wanted to hurt Jason when Jason took off with those nerds, but now that he wanted to straight up kill Kyle he knew something was wrong with him. He’d always been aggressive and angry. His mother had tried to get him into therapy for it, but his father had always insisted anger was a natural male feeling. It was okay to be angry, because he was a man, and men got angry. But he’d never been this aggressive and angry. Not enough to want to kill someone.
God, he wanted to kill someone so badly.
He let out another rage-filled scream when he realized he’d lost track of where Kyle and Brenda had run off to, and punched the nearest locker he could find. His fist easily dented the metal and the lock popped free from the pressure of the hit, the door swinging open slightly. At the forefront of his mind, he thought that made sense. He was strong, he was tough, he was god. Of course he’d break a locker with a single punch. But the part of him at the back of his mind thought maybe...he should’ve broken his hand? He’d punched lockers hard enough to dent before, but never that badly. And that shit always hurt. A lot. He’d come away with bloodied knuckles once.
“Max?”
Max turned to face whoever was speaking with an angry huff, snarling in the direction of the voice. Brad Callahan stood there, hunched over, rubbing at the back of his head with one hand. He blinked, eyes widening a bit upon noticing Max’s glowing eyes and the broken locker.
“What’s up, dude?” he asked, his voice surprisingly nonchalant, if a little pained.
Max huffed through his nostrils, eyes narrowing, “Where’s Kyle?”
“I dunno, man, I haven’t seen him.”
“He ran right through here,” Max said, motioning with one finger, “Brenda was with him.”
Brad’s eyebrows shot up with realization and he nodded, “Ohhhh, gotcha. Need me to help you find ‘em?”
“I don’t need your help with anything,” Max scowled through gritted teeth, “I need you to tell me where they went.”
Brad snorted, examining his hand for any signs of having run it across blood when he’d touched the back of his head, and shrugged, “Well, that’s hard to do, since I haven’t seen ‘em.”
With a growl, Max lunged at Brad, taking the front of the boy’s shirt up into both hands as he slammed him backward against the lockers at the opposite side of the hall. Brad’s eyes widened, his hands tightening around Max’s wrists.
“Jesus, dude, what’s the matter with you?”
“Where the hell have you been?” Max snarled, “You disappeared from the fucking cafeteria, I really could’ve used you back there, bro.”
“I went to deal with something,” Brad said, his eyes flashing purple momentarily, “And I was dealing with it, until your little girlfriend got involved.”
Max loosened his grip on Brad’s shirt, brow furrowing, “Wait, what? Who…?”
“Chastity Belt,” Brad snarled, “The little bitch hit me with something hard enough to take me out for a few minutes. I don’t know where she went off to, man, but I’m gonna find her, and I’m gonna-”
Without warning, Max threw a punch at Brad. A punch with the weight to break lockers, apparently. Had it connected, it more than likely would’ve broken Brad’s face. It didn’t connect, however. As if possessed by a speed the likes of which Max had never seen (where was that hustle during games??), Brad ducked out of the way of the punch; Max’s fist collided with the locker behind him, once more breaking the lock as he’d done before.
From his position crouched near the ground, Brad pounced at Max, taking the other boy around the waist and pushing him bodily back against the far wall. He threw a punch that found purchase against Max’s jaw, but Max dodged the second one, throwing his head to one side to avoid taking it to the face. Brad’s hand collided with the locker behind Max’s head, and evidently whatever super strength Max possessed, Brad did not, because he let out a pained yelp when his knuckles dented the metal slightly.
Max punched Brad in the gut and kicked the other boy away from him. Brad hit the ground in a heap, Max towering over him, and rolled to the side to avoid taking a kick to the ribs. The purple flashed to life in his eyes as he found his footing on the tile floor and clenched his fists at his side.
“Oh, you wanna go?” he snarled through bared teeth, “Let’s fuckin’ go.”
For too long, Brad had tried everything he could to get into Max’s good graces. He’d done anything asked of him. He’d chased down nerds, he’d beaten up anyone necessary, he’d tattled and snitched, he’d cowered and begged. And all it had netted him was a punch to the face, and several mean words. He’d thought Max would’ve been happy to receive the news about Spankoffski meeting up with Lauter. He’d thought Max would’ve jumped in to stop it ASAP. Instead, Max had wasted time chastising him for being at the fucking library, and by the time they’d caught up with Micro-Peter, the little meeting had already finished.
But God forbid Brad fucking study for once, right?
Max fancied himself the King of Hatchetfield High, and Brad was his little jester. Well no more. If Brad had his way today, the King was about to be dethroned. Permanently.
The problem with Brad’s plan, however, was that even when fueled by pure hatred and rage, Max was just overall stronger than he was. He punched harder, he moved faster, and he fought dirtier. While Brad landed a few actually decent hits, Max was just better at dodging most of what he could do.
He’d managed to clock Max across the jaw well enough to stagger him, which gave Brad an opening to...well, run away. Was it a bitch move? Sure. But even in his infected state, Brad knew this wasn’t a fight he was going to win. Not straight up 1v1 like this. If he was going to take over Max’s spot as top dog, Brad needed to prove he could, even if it meant cheating a bit. He needed something to give him an advantage. He needed a weapon.
Watching Brad run off like a fucking nerd he was trying to taunt set off a new fire in Max and he took off after him. No one tried to beat him up and then ran away like that. Fuck that. Even Spankoffski had more balls than that. He’d taken his beating like a fucking man, at least.
“Get back here, Callahan!” Brad roared as he took off after the other boy. His desire to kill Kyle had taken a back seat for now. Now he wanted to kill Brad. It wasn’t like the school would be worse off for it, either. If it weren’t for Max reining Brad in, the nerds of this school would have a much tougher time of it. Where Max knew when enough was enough, Brad had a bad habit of pushing his luck until he went too far. Everything Max had done to the nerds of this school, all of the bullying, all of the taunting, all of the teasing, he’d never once been suspended. Detention? Sure, he got that all the time. But suspension? Nope. Because he knew when to stop.
Maybe being the school’s star football player had a bit to do with that, but he had enough pride in himself to recognize that that wasn’t the only reason.
Brad, meanwhile, had been suspended twice, and had only narrowly avoided straight up expulsion at one point.
He watched as Brad disappeared into a classroom a little farther down the hall, the sound of the door slamming behind him echoing through the emptiness. Max let out a half annoyed, half amused chuckle and slowed his pace to a marching walk, stomping against the tile floor with enough force to make sure Brad knew just how close he was getting.
“Brad,” Max said, drawing the name out in a sing-song tone, “Braaaaaad!”
Stopping in front of the door, Max put his hand on the door handle and jiggled it. He was just fucking with Brad now, but holy shit was it ever fun to hear that little panicked scuffle from inside the room as Brad moved around in there.
“I’m comin’ for ya, Brad!”
He swung open the door.
Before he had time to process that Brad was right there next to the door, or what it was he was holding in his hands, a heavy blow to the stomach drove him backward out into the hallway. He let out a huff, doubling over, and just barely had a moment to register that Brad was clinging onto a fire extinguisher before he brought said extinguisher down against Max’s head. Max fell face first down against the cold tile floor, reeling while stars danced in his eyes, and let out a cough. He went to push himself up, but was forced back down again by another blow to the head.
With pain now coursing through his head and neck, the rage within Max had subsided, and the part of him that had been trapped at the back of his mind fighting for control was forced to the forefront. The angry voice that had been telling him to subjugate everyone around him and take true control of the school was gone, and the only thing Max was left with was abject terror.
Brad Callahan didn’t know when to stop.
And he’d made it perfectly clear he would no longer be listening to Max.
As Max lay on the floor, softly groaning in pain, Brad moved out into the hallway to stand over him, quirking a brow. He clenched the fire extinguisher in both hands, looking it over as though admiring it, and let out a soft chuckle.
“I did say I was ready to fuckin’ go, dude.”
“Callahan...” Max muttered as he rolled over to get a better view of Brad. He held one hand out toward him, a futile attempt at a truce of sorts, “Stop.”
“You don’t give me orders anymore, asshole,” Brad said. He squatted down next to Max, balancing the extinguisher on one knee, his eyes sparking with that same deep purple Max knew meant trouble. Max was in more pain than he’d ever felt in his entire short life, but there was one thing people somehow often forgot about him.
He was stubborn.
He simply refused to die, and he certainly wasn’t going to die by Brad fucking Callahan’s hand of all people. Fuck that. So, as Brad loomed over him, ignoring his attempt at a handshake and help to his feet, Max let out a resigned huff. Brad had made the mistake of putting his face close enough for Max to reach, and Max would take full advantage of that. If Brad wanted to play this game, Max would play. And when Max played games, he won.
The rage wasn’t there driving him anymore. The voice wasn’t egging him into terrible violence. But he’d never needed that voice before, right?
He narrowed his eyes, let out a wet sounding chuckle, and did his best to grin, “You’re an idiot, Callahan.”
Then, before Brad had time to contemplate those words, Max threw his palm upward into Brad’s face, catching him in the nose and snapping the bone there in one fell swoop. It had been a self defense tactic he’d learned as a kid watching his mom’s favorite movie, Miss Congeniality. It was a movie that had become one of his favorites, as well.
Yeah, he liked chick flicks. So fuckin’ what?
Brad reeled back with a yelp as blood flowed from his newly broken nose, landing firmly on his butt on the tile. Max let out a groan as he pushed himself to his knees and lunged forward to try to wrench the fire extinguisher from Brad’s hands. Brad held firm to the tool, shoving hard against Max’s grip as he jammed the extinguisher forward against the other boy. The blow hit Max hard in the chest and he gasped, leaning over to grab hold of the wall to keep from falling prone again.
Before he could regain his balance enough to try again, Brad released the pin on the extinguisher and sprayed the substance inside directly into Max’s face. Between the pressure of the flow, and whatever chemical this shit was made of, Max was forced further backward away from Brad. He reached up to cover his face with his hands, determined to keep even more of the stuff from getting into his eyes, nose, and mouth. He let out a choked gasp, trying to dislodge whatever had gone down his throat. Brad emptied the entire extinguisher into Max’s face, excitement rushing into his expression when he realized Max seemed to be having a difficult time breathing past the stuff, and then gleefully brought the empty extinguisher back down on Max’s head once more.
As Max slumped to the ground, choking and gasping for air, Brad kicked him twice in the ribs. He managed to lunge out with one leg and land a lucky blow against Brad’s knee, but all that seemed to do was enrage him further; he used the fire extinguisher this time, and Max was fairly certain he heard a crack as the metal collided hard with his side.
He wasn’t sure how long Brad stood there just...hitting him, but at a certain point he almost wished he would just pass out so he wouldn’t have to feel it anymore. He wondered if this was what the nerds felt when he beat the shit out of them – fear eventually melting away to an acceptance that it wasn’t going to stop anytime soon, and he may as well just take it. He couldn’t get up, couldn’t find an opening to attack back. The chemical from the fire extinguisher stung his eyes, making it difficult to see, and he could barely breathe. Sounds became muffled, and he just...lost the will to fight back. He stopped trying to catch Brad’s feet with each kick. He stopped trying to block the blows from the extinguisher. He physically couldn’t move fast enough in that moment to stop it.
And Brad Callahan didn’t know how to stop.
As darkness encroached on his vision, Max was only marginally aware of Brad’s breath against his ear – it was hard to feel around the warm blood trickling from one of the head wounds he’d inflicted. There was malice dripping from each word as Brad spoke in a voice just above a whisper.
“Long live the King.”
And then Max heard and felt nothing else as he succumbed to the darkness.