The Child Within

Chapter 2

Max slowly begins to come to, feeling as if he'd been asleep for an eternity. His head is throbbing and he feels a bit disoriented.

"What the hell happened?" Max quietly mutters. "This is either the worst hangover ever, or I got hit by a truck." He lets out a long, colossal stretch, and turns over to rest a bit longer.

Just as Max begins to nod off, a radio begins to blast nearby. It seems to be an alarm clock going off, a song is just finishing up on the station.

"That was "Crazy" by Aerosmith on your hit music station 101 the drive, with me "Rockin Randy." There's more music on the way after this!"

Commercials begin to blare as Max blindly reaches toward the earsplitting sound to find the snooze. After finding the clock, a couple pounds of his fist manage to get the job done and put an end to annoyingly loud ads.

After a few more moments of relaxation, Max slowly sits up in the bed and begins to pry his eyes open. The room is dark with a dash of light seeping through the curtain on the window. His eyes are still a bit blurry as he tries to rub the sleep out of them.

Max spots the alarm clock through his fuzzy vision and tries to make out the time. As his sight begins to clarify a bit he can make out the time of 6:17.

"Ughh," he murmurs to himself while rubbing his eyes again. "Why the hell did I set my alarm almost an hour early? That was a terrible idea."

Still a bit discombobulated and unable to remember much of anything, Max can't think of a reason why he would do this. He concludes that there must be a good reason, so he decides to get up.

From outside the room he can hear a young girl screaming. "I need to use the bathroom now!"

"Don't yell at your mother like that Sarah!" Max tries to scream, but it comes out as something closer to whimper.

His attempt is futile as the noise continues with the two girls arguing childishly over the bathroom.

Shifting his legs off the side of the bed, Max stands up onto the cold wood floor. He pauses for an instant, realizing something is off. Looking down he sees not the cream colored carpet of his bedroom, but a light oak floor.

"Hmmm," he says quietly to himself, "why the hell would Sandy have the carpet removed without telling me?"

Assuming she had this done yesterday while he was at work, Max heads for the bathroom to take care of some business. With head down and eyes only cracked open, he takes the usual path he's taken countless times before to reach his destination. A few steps later, instead of walking into the bathroom, he walks straight into a dresser and stubs his big toe. "Ahhhh!" he cries out, covering his mouth to muffle the cries of agony. He grabs his foot and begins hopping around like a jackrabbit, his face grimacing in pain. After a few moments the burning begins to subside, and the pulsating throbs slowly diminish.

Sitting back down on the bed, Max's vision has returned to its normal state. He begins to glance around the bedroom, but things don't seem to be as he remembers. With a quizzical look on his face he begins to realize that this is, in fact, not his bedroom. Not only is the carpet gone and a dresser sitting where his bathroom door would normally stand, but judging by the belongings in the room, it would seem to belong to someone much younger than himself.

Max begins to assess the situation. Looking at his surroundings he concludes to be in a younger boy's bedroom. The twin bed with baseballs and bats on the sheets was his first clue. Next to the dresser is a small desk with a Detroit Pistons jacket hanging on the back of a wooden desk chair. On the opposite wall are two posters, one is an old Metallica poster, the other of a young Cindy Crawford in a skimpy bikini. "Kids got good taste," he thinks to himself.