Member-only story
Maxine Takes a Joyride
A lot of bad things can happen on the open road.
(Excerpted from “Maxine Unleashes Doomsday,” a rural noir/dystopian thriller published Nov. 4 by Down and Out Books.)
The year Maxine turned fourteen, she found her true calling, at the cost of two lives.
Maxine spent her childhood mornings at the front window of the crumbling farmhouse where she lived with her brother, Brad, her mother, Joan, and her mother’s big bastard of a synthetic-heroin monkey, watching for cars on the road. Whenever one passed, she imagined herself behind its wheel, zooming out of her life with glorious speed, and her heart ached with need.
Maxine knew that, without her, life in the house would fall apart. She needed to feed and clean Brad, kill as many cockroaches and rats as possible, keep the phones powered, stop her mother from choking on her own vomit during the bad highs, and throw rocks at the junkies who lurked in the weedy driveway. That was a typical list of tasks before she left for school. Every two weeks or so, her uncle Preacher came down from the hills and, living his nickname to the fullest, spent hours yelling at her mother to clean up her act. Her mother would groan and shake her head and agree to go straight, only to break that promise once he disappeared back into hiding.
