Sparkle Pirate: Max and the Multiverse Shorts, #3 by Zachry Wheeler

Author:Zachry Wheeler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: max and the multiverse, zachry wheeler, sparkle pirate
Publisher: Mayhematic Press
Published: 2019-12-13T07:00:00+00:00

MAX AND THE MULTIVERSE

Book One, Chapter One

Max stared at a dingy basement wall, tracing the grout lines of bare cinder blocks. He stood motionless in the center of the room, wary and waiting. His eyes shifted towards every faint sound. A thump here, a muffle there, then footsteps. Floorboards creaked overhead, then down the hall, then nowhere. A door slammed. A car rumbled to life and faded into the distance. Max closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then pumped his fists and shouted “Spring break!”

Max’s parents had departed for Hawaii, leaving him to fend for himself in the dusty suburbs of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Not that he minded. As an only child with social anxiety and a deep distaste for the outdoors, he welcomed a quiet week in a dank basement. He enjoyed it, preferred it even. Spring break to most teens meant travel to exotic locales, or at the very least, anywhere but home. Max had no interest in such things. Spring break to him meant one thing: gaming. Lots and lots of gaming. An endless romp of caffeinated carnage without curfews or prying parents.

And so, it began.

His closest friends inhabited pixels on a computer, the avatars of fleshy cohorts all around the world. They escaped their real-life dungeons by slaughtering monsters in virtual ones. It gave them a sense of pride and accomplishment, all while dismantling their basic social faculties.

Two days into an epic bender, Max’s cat found him facedown and drooling on the keyboard.

“Oi, Max. Time to get up.”

“Huh?” Max stirred at his desk.

“Arise, you lazy sod. I’m hungry.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll—wait, what?”

Max opened his eyes to find a chubby orange tabby with green eyes and puffy jowls sitting on the desk beside him, part one of a reliable morning routine. However, the usual crop of impatient meows had been replaced by the King’s English, complete with a disarming British accent.

“Morning,” Ross said.

Max yelped and jerked backwards, tumbling out of the chair. His body thumped the floor and rolled into the couch. The chair clanked and clattered before landing on its side. Max grunted in distress, then whipped a frightened gaze to the feline.

“That looked painful,” Ross said.

Max flinched.

Ross raised an eyebrow while maintaining a ninja-like stillness, conveying the least possible amount of concern. “You okay there, mate?”

“You can talk. You’re talking.”

“Yeah, so?”

“But how? You don’t, um, I mean ...” Max’s sputtering mind sifted through a deluge of questions before settling on the most impractical one. “Do all cats talk?”

“What, do you mean figuratively?”

Max started to respond, then stopped, then started and stopped again. His brain and mouth refused to cooperate, sounding like a faulty video stream.

“Ooookay then, moving on. You’re awake. I’m hungry. Get off the damn floor, get your head on straight, and meet me in the kitchen.” Ross dropped from the desk and trotted towards the stairs.

Max shook his head and blinked several times, trying to offload the hallucination. He untangled himself and leaned back against the couch. After a scowl and shoulder roll, he pressed a finger to his neck to check his pulse, explaining a grand total of nothing.

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