Author's Preface
A pair of arms folded under her back and legs, air coasting through her hair, a pair of butterfly wings that were half the size of a sail, and a veil of striking blue hair framing a perfect face also brandishing to the breath of the passing sky; all these ingredients, Max could photograph only through the lens of her half-lidded eyes.
"Chloe..." She could only moan through her chapped lips, but it was enough for Chloe to heed her.
"Yes, keep saying my name!" Cooed the butterfly girl. "Say it as many times as you want! I'll never get tired of it!"
Her response was rather loud for Max in the state she was in, but she didn't mind, because whether this Chloe was real or just another fragment of her tortured mind, she would enjoy her for as much little time as whatever she had left.
Max leaned her head into Chloe's shoulder and breathed in her scent as shut her eyes to rest some more; it was hers, without the stench of smoke and alcohol, and she wanted it forever.
Her best friend and lover reacted to this by holding her even closer and did just the same to her, collecting the scent of her purity and innocence.
"I wanna make love to you, hella bad." She blurted quietly, prompting a small snicker from the smaller girl.
"You're... such a dork."
Back in the hospital, everyone who gathered outside the entrance to Max's hospital room to gawk at the miraculous wonder of the two girls still wrapped around each other while bending the fabric of time within their area scampered, whether to rush home in fear, pace through the building in madness, or call some expert.
The only people who stayed were the two sickly worried parents, reluctant to stand by, but more so to leave them like that, to something they can't grasp.
Despite the overwhelming brightness, Vanessa and Ryan especially could not take their eyes off their daughter's resting face; though she seemed outwardly peaceful, they were more concerned with what could be occurring internally .
By this point, David noticed how the window in that room no longer projected the warm yellow glow from outside; instead, it was washed over in grey again.
Could that be another storm?
That became the least of their worries when Vanessa, with her sharp eyes, squinted further to notice blood trailing out of her child's nose again.
Joyce and David froze up once they saw this too, recognizing it as an omen.
"Max? Max, come on. Stay with me, okay?"
Chloe and Rachel now had Max spread-eagled on a glass surface, the former patting her face gently to keep her conscious.
"We're gonna help you." She made sure to soften her voice with her.
In truth, however, her momentary relief from finding her was getting washed off by a leakage of trepidation. She could neither stomach the sight of her withered tainted body, nor could she take her gaze off; her ribcage was easily traceable, her bellybutton resting on her spine, and cuts, scratches, and bruises all over her cold skin.
What happened to you? What did you have to go through?
"I want it... to end."
Max ignored Chloe's reaction to the words she just grunted out as she peered above her to see a peculiar sight that neither the others truly noticed before; a circular plane far beyond and coated in snow, sparsely adorned with miniscule houses, most notably the tower she was just taken from.
She also took note of the spherical glass border bridging that ground to where they were, to which she then realized that they were all inside a giant snow globe, resting on the inside of the top.
Chloe finally looked away from Max to Rachel as she rematerialized into her human form.
"What now?" She asked in her straightforward tone.
Rachel turned to both of them with somberness written on her face, darker than what she usually pulled off before, and withheld a response.
Chloe sensed her hesitation. "Rachel? Do you know what we're doing?"
Still, she didn't get an answer.
"Rachel!" She yelled.
"Kill me..." Max choked out. "You... promised ."
Chloe threw her head back down, disbelieving the words she just heard out of her friend's mouth. Fresh tears were staining her pained face.
With creeping suspicion, Chloe raised her eyes back up to Rachel, glowering at her with razors. " What is she talking about?"
Rachel swallowed a lump, afraid to release it with the answer.
Max raised her limp wrist to shift the attention back to her. "I... asked Rachel... to end my life... if I became too... dangerous... to everyone."
"W—What?" Chloe's heart clenched like a ball of paper.
"I... I'm suffering, Chloe. I just want it to end ." Max's voice was quiet, yet was louder than anything else in this space they occupied. "I'm tired of waiting for the end. I'm tired... of this guilt. All those lives I destroyed." She shuddered upon a deep intake of air. "I deserve to pay... with my life ."
"No!" Chloe began to sob. "Don't say that! Don't say that shit to me! You saved many others! What about Kate? What about me ?"
"You have so much to offer..." Max reached up to try and wipe her tears away, but Chloe brushed it away it, allowing them to fall.
"Don't try and make this about my life! I've done that myself too many times already! What about your life!? You just wanna throw it away!?" Chloe was close to hyperventilating, fear, anger, and grief strangling her like a viper.
"All I have ever done is make things worse, Chloe."
"You stop this crap!" By this point, Chloe felt like beating the shit out of her best friend. She turned to Rachel, who just stood by watching them. "Say something!"
Rachel only turned away shamefully. "I've already tried."
"Chloe." Max continued. "Seeing you here... is the best farewell gift I could have asked for, but I can't go on! All those memories we shared... they will always be ours."
"SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU SELFISH BITCH!" Chloe gave up any composure she had left and let loose.
When her peripheral sensed Rachel taking a step closer towards them, Chloe subconsciously sprawled her wings protectively, her eyes flashing like a bolt of lightning as she stared her down to keep back.
Backing off, Rachel looked up to see fades of snow sinking their way, a change in weight perhaps.
Chloe ignored this change to continue her tirade. "I came all this way through your acid trip Bahamas just for you to tell it was for nothing!? FUCK YOU!"
Max tried to speak again, only to have Chloe press her fingers hard into her lips before they could part fully.
"No! You don't speak! You LISTEN!" Chloe removed her finger, and Max decided to shut up. "Ever since you came back into my life, you not only saved my life, but you saved my family, you saved Kate, and you saved Rachel ."
Rachel nodded to what Chloe said, though Max raised an eyebrow, not quite understanding the last point.
"You helped solve the mystery of my friend's disappearance and freed her! You saved my family from being torn apart!" Chloe took a deep breath and leaned closer to Max, their noses almost touching. "But most importantly, you helped make me into more than I ever was. You inspired me to be better. You held me together when I was about to fall apart. You made me realize my dream, which is to do art." She stroked her cheek. "Plus... you taught me how to love again."
Rachel felt like joining in to add how she gave hope to many others surrounding her life but decided to hold her tongue, not wanting to intrude in this moment they were sharing.
"You... and many things... are my ikigai ." With that closing sentence, Chloe released the weight of her head, allowing her lips to fall comfortably against Max's. Despite her weak state, Max widened her mouth to deepen their kiss.
Rachel looked on, grinning for them for a moment before it soured into sadness again.
"You complete me, Max." Chloe breathed to her when they separated again, resting her forehead on hers.
Max managed to curl up a corner of her mouth into a small lopsided smile as tears began sparkling in her eyes.
"Rachel's my angel. You're the love of my life. You make me whole."
Those last three statements did it for the youngest girl as she broke out into sobs that echoed through the entire glass chamber.
Chloe could only scoop her up and hold her face against her illuminating chest.
"Y—You're... so corny !" She half-chuckled.
"I know, nerd." Joining in the giggles, Chloe rubs their noses together playfully.
In the meantime, Rachel kept her wariness on their surroundings to find the snow building up in a whirling swarm, along with a new chill of rushing air.
"Uh... guys?" Rachel tried waving to get the others' attention.
Just then, a piercing squeak jolted the trio to look up and away around them to find huge cracks scribbling a spider web all around their transparent confines; their glass ball was about to shatter, which also meant...
Outside the hospital, lightning rampaged all over the exterior, sprouting like wildfire from the ceiling of deathly clouds that were as dark as crows.
The press at the entrance finally cleared away back into their respective news vans and other transports just to take shelter from the imminent storm.
Inside the halls, Joyce and Vanessa clung to their respective husbands while getting bumped by the staff zooming by to try and deal with this chaos.
The lights also began to flicker, the monitors and screens snowing and short-circuiting; the entire facility was under threat of a blackout, which could endanger everybody inside, especially the patients.
As for the parents, the peak of their fears had nothing to do with those environmental hazards; they could only watch in horror behind the time barrier as Max's bleeding leaked down her bed to form a puddle, now the size of a round canvas; it was getting everywhere like it was going to flood the whole place.
"Oh my God! Maxine!" Vanessa wanted to claw her face off from the distress.
Ryan released her only to attempt to charge his weight through this aggravating barricade that kept everyone from reaching his daughter. He tried knocking it down with his shoulder as though it was another door.
"Ryan, no!" Vanessa shrieked, her apprehension shifting over to him.
David, always quick to act, seized the other man and pried him away before anything more serious could be dealt.
"Let me go!" Shouted Max's father. "I can't just stand out here any longer and watch my daughter suffer like this!"
Rachel dashed over to a panicking Chloe to not only see that Max was not only crying blood out of her nose, but they were leaking from her eyes, her ears, and even her lower region.
"H—HELP ME! IT HURTS! I CAN'T TAKE IT!" She screeched, as if being forced into a boiling pot.
Worse than that, her skin began to wrinkle and sink further into her skeleton, and her hair began to rumple and grey from her hairline until she resembled the old homeless lady who always sat at the back of the Two Whales; dishevelled and stripped of all youth, reduced to a shivering old lady.
Chloe's voice left her. Her mouth was split open to its widest, yet nothing could come out except shallow gags of air; her worst fear was that her childhood friend, her best friend, and her lover, would rot away in her arms, leaving only her bones.
"Ma—Ma... M—Max..." She choked out.
Lost in desperation, she whipped her head back to Rachel, eyes round as billiard balls, hoping she had an answer; from her blank narrowness that shaded her eyes, even the entity didn't look like she knew what they were doing anymore either.
Without warning, the whole glass interior jerked and quaked, sending all three spiralling off into the middle of the globe with no control whatsoever. The glitters of snow were all kicked around them, fluttering in all directions and obscuring their view from one another.
"MAX!"
"RACHEL!"
"CHLOE!"
As they screamed each other's names, Max's voice sounding distinctly strangled, Chloe made haste to regain control over the confusion by altering her wings until she found some semblance of balance once the motion settled.
When the snow settled, Chloe found Rachel floating motionlessly next to a fetal Max as if gravity left them entirely; more blood that leaked out of Max drifted up and about like red beads.
"MAX!"
Working out that Rachel had been rendered unconscious, Chloe thrust herself to cradle Max once more and then moved to try and shake the other girl awake.
"Rachel? Come on, wake up!" She tightened her hold and shook harder. "I need you!"
Despite her aggressiveness, Rachel wouldn't stir, leaving Chloe on her own and out of options.
Right then, the shape of a colossal head cast itself over the sphere, bathing everything within in its shadow.
" Hello , girls."
To that smooth but profane voice, Chloe froze up and forced herself to look up. There, through all the cracks distorting the outside view, she could make out a square pale face, a fang-pointed chin, slits for eyes, and a pair of glasses trying to mask the devil behind.
When the elderly Max looked up as well to meet the face of evil and torment, she threw her head back and screamed her soul out through her lungs.
Up there, Chloe realized, was the twisted alteration of Jefferson, holding them in the palm of his hand.
"Come on, Max." He said softly but with that perverse grin . "You didn't really think you were rid of me, did you?"