Put That Kid Down

Chapter Ten

...Yeah, Max didn't really believe that but he was angry and...

And there was this one picture of him alone.

It was at an angle, so the viewer could just barely see the calm expression on Max's face and the easel in front of him. He had a brush in his hand as he finished up a messy painting of the inevitability of death, with a barely recognizable Grim Reaper tapping a watch. This picture was from this weekend, from the day before David lied to him. Max could almost imagine David grinning and snapping a picture of Max participating, holding back gleeful tears with a force of will to avoid Max turning and noticing the shot.

It looked like the kind of picture an excited parent might take of their kid and plaster over social media with captions on how talented their little boy had become.

When he noticed his own eyes burning a little, the fury flared and roared up from where it had been sitting dormant while he'd examined the picture. It was all a lie, anyway. David wasn't very smart and he was flaky as all get out. He was always abandoning the campers to Gwen's supervision to- well, to run around killing people like the murderer he was. Even if he was doing it to protect them, it was still wrong. Couldn't David have just knocked them out like he did that Cedar Scout? Then he could have called the cops and gotten the attackers arrested.

Max pushed down the memory of exactly how unreasonable the attackers had become at just the sight of him with gritted teeth.

David's leaving all the time was a choice, just like lying to Max had been a choice. A poor choice. The anger licking his insides made Max's eyes narrow on the phone; he may not have had any proof of David's real misdeeds just then, but there was still something he could do to get his revenge.

A mean smirk curled his lips, and he ignored how empty it felt.

David would finally show Max his true colors.

.

There hadn't been an attack in a little over a week and David was close to losing his mind. At first, he'd been relieved and tentatively hopeful. If this was the end, it would mean he'd never have to fear for the campers' lives again. Sure, he'd probably be jumping at shadows until the end of time, but he could handle that!

It turned out that having the paranoia without the physical threat on which he could take out his stress made for a slow winding of David's nerves until he was barely getting one hour of sleep a night, much less four! He knew the kids were starting to pick up on it, and the other day he'd nearly snapped at poor Nurf when he'd found him playing an innocent prank on little Dolph. After he'd untangled the situation and warned Nurf against it, he'd had to go lean on a pine and breathe himself down from the shaky irritation that gripped him. It made him itch to cover his hands in blood and let the warm slickness of the liquid soothe away the anxiety, but no threat appeared on the horizon, no attacker lurched from the shadows.

David had always been very good at not thinking about what would happen to him when it all stopped.

He was gnawing his fingernails, pacing at night until Gwen threw him out of the cabin, and Max was avoiding him on top of it. He couldn't understand what he might have done to make the boy work so hard to keep away, and it was scratching a line across the inside of his skull as he ran over the last discussion they'd had again and again.

It wasn't getting him anywhere.

Could the boy have finally decided that he did feel he wasn't safe with David? His heart faltered in his chest at the thought. Maybe he shouldn't have hugged Max, at all. Maybe he'd really only given permission for David to act normally towards him again out of pragmatism. David was unused to seeking hidden motives in his campers in general, but he often found himself fumbling in the dark when it came to Max.