The two men took Max back down to the basement and shoved him inside his kennel. When Cali and Maggie returned, they found him walking in circles in his confined space.
“What’s wrong, Max? What happened?” Cali asked once they were alone.
“Oh man. I fucked up really bad. I was with this asshole tonight. Man, he was brutal. He kept hitting me with a club, and then he started strangling me with a chain. I…I don’t know what happened to me. I just fuckin’ lost it and started beating the shit out of the guy,” Max explained. “You know I’m gonna pay for this. Who knows what John William will do to me?”
“Jesus, Max,” Maggie said. “Are you hurt? What happened to the man?”
“I don’t know. Shit, I could’ve killed him for all I know. I just kept hitting him. I wanted him to die. I really did. When John William came into the room, the guy was lying on the floor. There was a lot of blood everywhere.”
“I hope you did kill him,” Cali said.
Max abruptly stopped walking in circles. “I hear ya, Cali. But it doesn’t matter if he’s dead or alive. I’m gonna be punished for this.”
Cali and Maggie watched Max. He started mindlessly rubbing his own arms, as if to warm himself from the cold. He knew he would be facing the hardest time of his imprisonment. His mind betrayed him as he thought of the different ways they would torture him. Then, as if someone threw cold water on him, he realized that he had fought back for the first time. A small smile jumped onto his face.
“What the hell are you smiling about?” Cali asked.
“I was just thinking. I finally bit back. I mean, it felt so good. I wanted to bash that bastard’s brains in. For once in my life, I took a stand. I know I’m gonna pay, but once the punishment is all over, I’ll have tonight to hold on to. Maybe they’ll get the message that we aren’t going to keep taking this shit. We might just bust out of this shit hole. They need to worry about us. You guys hear me? They need to fuckin’ worry about us!”
Max’s false bravado was snuffed out an hour later when John William came down to the basement carrying a baseball bat. Maggie and Cali immediately stood up in their kennels. Even Shana managed to move over to the door of her small prison. Seth crouched in the corner of his own kennel, fearful that John William was coming for him. Max began talking incoherently when he noticed how dead John William’s eyes were.
“I’m sorry, John William. I don’t know what happened. One minute everything was fine, and the next, I just don’t know what happened. It won’t happen again. I’m sure it won’t happen again…” Max said with remorse.
Without uttering a single word, John William unlocked the door to Max’s kennel, strode over to the boy, and began hitting him with the bat. “You killed the fucking guy,” he yelled, as he continued to hit him.
Max covered his head with hands, letting his forearms shield his face. But when John William broke the boy’s right leg with the bat, Max fell to the floor and began to tremble. Irritated beyond belief, John William shoved the bat into Max’s ribs in hopes of breaking a couple. The bat slipped, hitting Max under his left ribs instead. Intense pain burned through Max’s side and shoulder. His piercing screams finally made John William retreat and leave the boy to think about what he had done to Marsh that evening.
Max stayed on the floor of his kennel, screaming in pain. The others could see that his leg was broken, but Maggie was more worried about the way Max was holding his left side. She hoped that what she thought might have happened to him, hadn’t.