For @bullymagnetweek day one: Breaking & Entering. / Medium Traits. Also available here.
It’s the middle of the night. Mayview is never very quiet, this must be understood, whether it be cars on the street or the pitter patter of ghost feet walking along the insulation of the interior walls, but it is the middle of the night. Max has been dozing off for some time, awakened by bodily functions every so often, but now he’s awake-awake. And his awakefulness keeps him aware of a knocking on the store door.
The glass store door.
The inviting, glass store door, with the grocery items in full view even in the dark. Mayview is safe, Max remembers his dad saying. Mostly. We don’t need a padlock. Padlocks are for the distrusting, you know, Max. And we’re all very trusting. Trust Mayview, Max.
Maaaaxx….
“I’m checking it out, and you’re coming, PK,” Max tells to no one except the kerfuffle of ghosts in his bedroom, and his trusty aluminum bat he’s used for a handful of fights. It bursts alight with energy, which isn’t unusual, but it makes his room look like a void instead of having the normal passing light of car headlights running over his walls. His bat always looks and feels like that creature he saw, reacting to every noise and move, coiling to strike. “I’m gonna need you if there’s a house-store intruder.”
The bat says nothing because it’s a bat, of course.
“Good talk,” he says. It’s a force of habit.
He hears it again: Maaaaaxxxx… It’s not his internal faux-dad’s monologue, it’s an actual voice coming from downstairs. The bat’s energy flicks like a tongue, moving in his peripheral. He holds it tight, creaking open the door, and dodging the floorboards that’ll awaken his dad or sister. Creeping individual toe by individual toe, he opens the door where the stairwell ends just a fraction and peeks to the glass door.
It’s Johnny.
It’s Johnny.
“Maaaaxxx…” Johnny says, leaning against the door, cheek squished and mournful. He’s saying it loud enough to be heard by every neighbor. He’s saying it loud enough that Max could hear him from his room. In the dark, Johnny’s eyes are visible, like visible. Isaac levels of bright. They’re orange beacons situated on his face.
Max considers leaving, but it’s Johnny. Johnny. His school bully facade is the most important thing to the guy—to break that archetype and go to Max’s house goes into stalkery bully that Johnny wouldn’t even consider touching if it was genuine. Johnny’s here because he needs something.
Probably.
..Right?
Max creeps out of the stairwell, putting his bat on the table. It protests, sticking a ramekin full of keychain pieces to it as an argument. He grabs the keys in the cabinet, and unlocks the door. “What do you want? It’s the middle of the ding-dang night, Johnny. And you’re creeping on my porch.”
“Max!” Johnny says, visibly returning to his old self, rather than a kicked cat Max has left on the porch, in the rain, during the Fourth of July. “I saw somethin’ weird out, and I know weird’s the name of your club. So you should come w’me. You like that sorta thing, don’t you?”
“Johnny, what do you think our club is called?”
“Weird Activity Club,” Johnny answers. He’s been invited. He knows what the name is. Max squints at him, even though it only worsens his eyesight. Again: middle of the night. Everything is dark.
Johnny squints back.
“I need my bat,” Max says, turning around inside. Johnny whoots outside, but waits patiently. He doesn’t even enter. “You’re not coming in?” Max asks. “You come to my house at, at—” he checks the wall clock. “At three-fourteen AM, you cajole out my name for several minutes, and then you don’t even…? You’re weird, Johnny. Weirder than even you know.”
“Isn’t this your house or somethin’? You slip in the freezer and sleep like a squirrel?”
Max turns around, bat with ramekin of little toys and all, and says: “You think I sleep in the store? Are you asking me if I hibernate?”
“Yeah,” Johnny says. “You hibernate?”
“Why would I—why would I… no, nope, we’re not gonna get into it. Just show me where it’s weird, and drop the hibernation thing.”
“Yah, whatever you want.” Johnny looks at him. As Max passes through the threshold of the door, Johnny becomes very close. He’s extremely warm to the touch, even warping the air a half-inch or so from his skin. And his eyes are unreal; they’re the kind of thing where you look at him and go right, this guy’s possessed.
Max used to think that his common black energy was a blessing, but Johnny’s simmering orange glow is like a poison dart frog. Danger, danger, it screams. And he barely even knows it. The duality of Johnny’s intensity as he faces the world versus his spirit’s energy bleeding into Johnny as a person—Max stops for a second in front of him, pulled into Johnny’s orbit.
“Y’good?” Johnny asks. But he doesn’t look away. He never does.
“M’good,” Max says, noncommittally. “You got a place in mind?”
“Yeah, but you were lookin’ funky, like you got something in yer eye,” Johnny says, not looking away or moving. They stand there for who knows how long—just drawn into each other.
“Can we go, or..” Max says. He purses his lips, tucking them out of the way. “This is kinda..” Not bad, it’s just—new. Middle school new. Max is beginning to feel frantic to escape, but refuses to look away first.
Johnny’s the bigger person when he looks away from Max. “S’in the forest. Looks like a house.”
Max exhales through his nose. “Right, we love houses in forests here in Mayview.”
The trip to the forest feels longer in the stretch of the night that they’re in. It reminds Max so much of the Ghost Train that he keeps looking over his shoulder, expecting a hazy orange light to pierce through the trees—or a hissing horn just outside of his peripheral. Johnny trucks on with no mind of the spirits nearby. Max sometimes wonders if he actually does see them, or got lucky a few times being asked what he saw.
“Do you actually..” Max starts, suddenly feeling like he’s actually following a bully into a dark corner of Mayview with no witnesses. The longer they go, the more uneasy Max feels. But what else could be the answer? Johnny’s eyes glow.
“Do y’know you glow black when you’re uneasy?” Johnny says, looking back at him. There’s this—sincerity to his face. He looks like he’s always looking at Max for the first time each time. That intensity again. “Like, I’unno, anti-glow… it goes all black. I can’t even see the trees behind you.”
“Oh,” Max says. He feels his energy recede, like a cat’s fur going down. “It’s that bad?”
“Like a fart,” Johnny says, smoothly. And then he’s on the trail again, Max following closely behind.
xx
By the time Johnny stops moving, Max is wishing he’d stayed in bed at least pretending to be asleep than walking through the forest with Johnny in the middle of the night. Just as he imagines himself in his bed, Johnny stops moving and forces them to collide. Max smells smoke from Johnny’s shirt. “That’s it,” Johnny says. Max looks up, looking at the slanted, fungi-infested house in front of them.
In the dark, it’s icky creepy, all yellowed walls and a nauseating tilt. Max’s mind races in an attempt to remember where in the heck he’s seen this place before, blinking at the house with no words coming out of his mouth. It’s definitely a fit-for-the-genre of the forest house; the windows are perfectly maintained but there’s creeping ivy pouring out of the bottom of the house and so many mushrooms it feels like a forager’s dream.
Brain: Stuck in sleep mode. Max: stalling like an engine. Johnny: About to start chewing the door to get in.
“Isn’t it weird?” Johnny asks, turning to Max. He reads his face for a second, then eventually says, “y’seen it before?”
“..Yes? I think so? It looks—weird and bad at night, honestly. Like it’s trying to creep me out on purpose.” Even so, Max creeps toward the window, Johnny in tow. He smushes his cheek against the glass and hides the moonlight with his hand, peering into the house.
In there, he sees the Doorman’s coat in the background as he—it—wanders.
Max’s heart drops. His energy flicks like a tongue, exploring the air. His bat grows interested. “I have—yup. This place is actually a secret, though, so we must—go… Johnny?”
Johnny is steaming straight Fanta, a candle-lit beacon standing beside Max’s form. “So what?” He asks. His spirit’s energy whips and wags, moving like unsteady flame. “Y’really not gonna help me break down this door, bully-style?”
Max feels a wry smile creep onto his face. “Am I a trope to you? Is this identity politics between bully and bullee?”
Johnny has the audacity to pull his body away from Max’s magnetism. He looks even offended. “I wanna see what’s in it, tho. Y’already saw it, so that don’t count. Y’didn’t see it w’me.”
“Oh,” Max says, feeling a little out of place. Yeah, of course he would—and if Max just pretends that he doesn’t know the doorman—that’s still keeping a secret..right? As long as he doesn’t tell Johnny what the doorman’s deal is, that’s keeping the secret. Max also reminds himself he never promised the doorman anything, but it’s the principle of the thing.
“If you put it like that, I guess,” Max says, readjusting his grip on his bat. Johnny’s face changes to one of fulfilled delight. “I don’t actually know how to get in.. but—”
Johnny is a moving comet through the dark: he’s standing beside Max one minute and then he’s standing against the door, trying to push it open. Max watches him try to grip the doorknob but he fails; it jiggles but doesn’t turn like it’s locked. He pushes on the door, and when it doesn’t move, pulls hard on the doorknob like it’ll lodge it out of place. “Bat?” Johnny asks, looking at him, gesturing to his bat. “Bat.”
“Bat? Bat, right, I have the breaking down doors weapon.” He pads the air around the door, shooing Johnny back. He does so dutifully while Max prepares a homerun shot at the door, hoping to crack it high enough that they can unlock it from the other side.
Black energy plumes around his body, both from his bat and his body as he prepares himself for the hit. Guilt eats at him for disturbing the doorman after Isaac already got so much from him for showing Max anyway, but brotherly shame always makes the next punch hit harder.
The bat’s energy licks the air, ready to be back in line of sight with another spirit. That’s the thing with his eccentric little weapon is that it’s much like Johnny—always ready to prove itself.
“Do it, Max!” Johnny yells, and it spurs Max on to hit the door as hard as he can. KA-CRRNCH goes the door as the bat makes contact with it; huge strides of black energy like bat wings streaming from the tool as it lays there in contact with the door. Max gingerly plucks it out of the hole, staring at the successful break-in.
Johnny whoots, throwing his arms into the air. Max grins, too, feeling alight with exhaustion as it begins to transform into euphoria.
And then two little red eyes appear, and the door is not fixed, but the door is shoved in with new planks and what sounds like duct tape as the hole is filled.
“What was’at?” Johnny asks. “Some kinda MacGuffin we’re s’posed to know its name or something? A black herring? That’s not cool.”
“I don’t know what it was,” Max says quietly. “I don’t remember seeing one of those last I visited.”
“Plan B, then. Plan better late than bnever.” Johnny says it so smoothly and cordially that it takes Max a second to think about what he’s—they’re—doing. He looks behind him just in time to see Johnny’s soaring frame, alight with orange energy, jumping through the manse’s window.
The glass crashes around him before Max even has the wherewithal to scream his name. As reflex occurs as quickly as a cat’s, Max jumps through the window straight after, hackles already up.
“It smells like gran’ma,” Johnny says, nose positively pressed into the floorboards, Max on top.
“You—you!!! You, you, stinky, you’re—I knew you were trouble!” The red-eyed creature hisses from several directions, its eyes only visible like a deer in infrared headlights. “I remember you—and you stink.”
“Gee,” Max murmurs into Johnny’s back. He reluctantly peels himself off of his back, staring at the creature in the rafters. “And here I thought we were best friends. That look of undeniable fury you gave me through the door was basically platonic courtship.”
“I was not—oooh, you infuriate me. You’re making me mad on purpose, you clown.”
“Me?” Max asks, still sitting on the dip of Johnny’s spine. “I’m more of a jester, thanks. Clowns are creepy, and I’m practically cute. Don’t insult me, or clowns, by insinuating we are even remotely alike. Your makeup, however…”
“Max,” Johnny says, which sounds a lot like mhhx, as Johnny is still pressed against the floorboards. He pushes his face to the side so his cheek is against the floor rather than his mouth. His face is flushed.
“Want me to get off?” Max asks. He’s still sitting on him, and as the apparent situation begins to take hold, Max’s face also flushes. Johnny doesn’t reply, which is mortifying in itself, and then it’s Max scurrying off of his body without thinking too hard about it.
Johnny looks at him from the floor, pluming orange energy like giant peacock feathers flying in the wind, and Max looks at him for only a second before tearing his eyes off of Johnny’s face. “That was cool. Was that a friendship fusion?” Max says, trying to get his face to cool off, or his heart stop racing.
As Johnny peels himself off of the floor to an upright position, he says, “Nah, a fusion is our souls connectin’, our situationship makes it inappropriate for the time an’ place. Fusion ain’t for the weak-hearted, Max.” Max makes a face like what the
Anyway, Johnny doesn’t seem to notice or mind. He seems seriously in thought about what exactly would be a proper situation for friendship fusion with Max.
As he thinks on it, Max looks up just in time to see the Doorman come into view. Back to Plan A: AHH.
“A spirit!” Max shouts, feigning ignorance, just as the Doorman points to his door, guided by Nin: “The Manse’s integrity!”
Johnny springs up like a dog awoken by the mailman. “Your door was in our way to comin’ in! ..What’s the place, anyway?”
Max springs up beside Johnny and grabs him by the back of his shirt. Johnny responds immediately, one hand behind him to hold onto Max’s arm, defensive positioning. Max feels suddenly very warm, and that’s not even where Johnny is touching Max.
“The Slanted Manse is not for you,” the Doorman says, sweeping his eyes through the space. He lands on Max, who is pantomiming decapitating himself over and over. “E—Either of you ne’er-do-wells! Leave at once!”
“You can’t tell me what t’do—ain’t that right, Max?” Johnny’s nerves are disappearing into righteous light, making him show off his energy like peacock feathers. The Doorman’s body language shifts into one of shock.
Max suddenly feels uneasy. “Nope, I’m getting bad vibes! Out the window, with you! He’s gonna get scary, and I haven’t slept!”
Max hears indistinct whispering and then the Doorman shouts: “That is correct, spectral trespassers! My door opens to hell!”
Johnny looks like he totally believes it. He must have forgotten that Max has been here before in the performance between the Doorman and himself.
Eyes wide, he shoves Max out first, and then follows, and then they’re off—scampering into the woods, making a race out of escaping the Doorman. At some point in the marathon, Johnny starts laughing. Max joins him not long after, shoving each other back the way to Max’s house and bedroom.
