Thursday! 2-51: A Hiatus Week Story -- The Crossroads
V2, I51
The first thing you’ll likely notice about the newsletter this week is that it’s not quite the Red and Hosanna story I suggested last week. I’m sorry for that. I’ve been back on my heels, creatively, the past three weeks or so and I didn’t have nearly enough in me to write a brand-new story in just a couple of days. I did, however, make a very cool discovery that I hope will make up for the lack of backwoods monster hunting adventure1.
While rooting through my Google drive, I found a folder full of draft and unpublished stories — a dozen or so — about which I had completely forgotten. Half of them, I’d say, need a lot more work before they’re ready for me to do anything with them in public. A couple of them are ideas with a good bit of meat on them but no real connective tissue to make them dance and run around like good stories should2. Four of them go all the way back to the days of my first newsletter, when I planned to send out a couple original stories a month3. Those stories are complete and need only a light buffing to make them shiny and cool once more. The rest are…interesting.
None of the rest of the stories were done, even though I’d written them to the end. They needed fresh air in their vital areas, a bit of electricity through their neck bolts, a new part here and there. I pulled one of those out of the folder, gave it a good jolt or two, and now present it to you. It takes place in a crossroads and involves a deal, but I think I’ve given the old tropes a new and delicious little twist. You’ll have to tell me if you like what I’ve done. Ready? Good. Settle in.
The Crossroads
"I got some good news and some bad news for you, kid," said the man who looked like Christopher Walken. "Which one do you want first?"
Max Crank, who had been Jaden Garner a month ago, shrugged. "Whatever, dude. So long as we make the deal."
The man raised his eyebrows and shrugged his scarecrow-jagged shoulders in reply. The motion made his expensive light brown suit coat dance a dangly jig on his thin frame. He stood in the dead center of the crossroads, his noonday shadow pooled at his feet like a tar spill. He stood there for thirty seconds, looking the kid over. He knew all about kids just like Max Crank. He knew how they burned to be adored by people they had never met, how they couldn’t wait to fling the cushy life in which they had been raised right back in the faces of their parents, how they thought their feelings of rebellion were original and deep. Oh, he knew just what was in former-Jaden’s mind and he could barely contain his glee.
Max shuffled under the man’s gaze until he unslung the guitar case from his back, stood it in front of him, and leaned on it. It still bore the tag of the pawn shop from where he had gotten it – the second thing he had stolen before he made his cross-country trip to the crossroads. The first had been his father’s shiny red Ford pickup truck, but he had sold that for cheap to a guy who asked no questions at all and gave him a fat envelope of cash. It wouldn’t have mattered if he had asked. Max knew his father wouldn’t bother to report it. Too much trouble. Besides, he had two more a year newer in the garage. A breeze whispered up the road from behind, tousled his dirty blonde hair, and rattled the tag. He broke the man’s gaze long enough to look at it and to take a deep, focusing breath. He could do this. He had to.
"Alllllllllllllll right,' the man said, drawing out the first word like taffy. "Forget the good news, bad news approach. Let’s get down to business. Discuss our deal? Have a little...heart to heart, as they say. Or as close as we can get to one. Since...you know...I am who I am." He chuckled. It sounded like the cough of a mummy.
That got Max. He tried to keep the sharp twist of fear in his guts off his face. To cover his nerves, he tapped the guitar case with the fingers of his left hand two times. “This. I gave it all up for this. I’m ready to deal what I got left.”.
The man raised an eyebrow. “Oh, are you? Well, you seem to know my price, but,” the man paused, raised a finger to his lips, looked upwards as if a thought had suddenly occurred. When he lowered his finger, he pointed it at Max. “What do you say we negotiate a little? You seem pretty sharp, like you might be a good dancer. I’m always up for a little dance over the price before the deal."
"Nah. You got me wrong there. I’m not a good dancer. Always in the band. You know.”
The man lifted a shoulder in an oh well gesture. In the distance, a coyote yipped and a faint clap of thunder rolled across the flat plain.
When the man didn’t speak, Max jumped in. “Here’s my deal. You can have my soul. No haggling. I’m easy about that. I just want what you gave the others – all of it." His chin jutted forward defiantly and he realized he had said all that in a single breath. He took an intentionally-long breath and hoped the thin man wouldn’t notice.
"Ohhhhhhhh!" The man’s tight grin made him look like an old and wicked crow. "You want all of it! You, kid? You with the leather jacket still so new it creaks and the guitar you stole from a pawn shop? You with no history and no pain? Nothing but a young and tender soul, not even ripe? You want what I gave to the others?"
Max glared, his fear forgotten. "I'm here like I'm supposed to be. At the crossroads. And not at midnight, like the stories say, but at noon, because I know. I know who you are. You're the Angel of Light, not the Prince of Darkness. See? I did the work and I’m here with my soul. Just give me what I want." Max held his breath now, his heart pounding. His fingers tightened around the hard plastic of the guitar case and his heart tightened around the hopes and dreams he’d built so carefully the past three years.
The man sighed and said, "No."
Max gaped, then gasped in a breath. The man looked at him with a cocked eyebrow, daring him to reply. Max took the bait.
"N–no? But you can't refuse me! I offered your price. No haggling, even! A straight-up deal like you gave…I mean…you can’t!" His wail was primal, from a young heart barely acquainted with disappointment. It stopped abruptly as the man spoke again.
"I. Said. No."
The man never raised his voice but the words came with such force that Max felt his heart might stop. He couldn't breathe for what seemed like a full minute. The stop sign next to him trembled like it had been struck. Max – Jaden – gathered what strength he had for a single word.
"Why?"
The man gave him a smile that was almost kind. “Kid, I get your confusion. Really I do. I get a lot of offers and I don’t turn down many of them, but yours? Well, let me start at the beginning.
First, there’s only one Being who has the power to tell me what I can and can’t do. For now. And He isn’t part of our little palaver. But in our here and now, I say no because you haven't lived. Your soul is new and shiny. No wear, you dig? Those others? Those greats? They bled on their strings, shot themselves full of desire and alcohol and drugs, burned up the love of friends and family like rocket fuel just hoping to get out of the orbit of boring and average. What have you done? Tell me, Max…Crank." He filled the last name with so much disdain it almost croaked from his throat.
Max blinked slowly, then met the Devil’s gaze. “I’ll tell you what I’ve done. I’ve come to you first, before I went anywhere else. All those greats? The ones who burned themselves up and out? They lived hard but from where I stand they also lived stupid. They spent themselves cheap." He thumped the guitar case at the end of each sentence. The man hadn't moved, but Max thought he saw interest in the cornflower blue eyes. He kept on. "If they had come to you first, they could have had your deal for longer, for harder, for stronger. They could have had forty years instead of five or ten. They could have traded more for more, right? Sure, they came to you, but only after they had tried everything else – the drugs, the booze, whatever. I'm here now. Fresh. No wear on my soul, like you said. Because I respect the deal. I respect what you can do for me. That means something, doesn't it?"
The Devil who looked like Christopher Walken tilted his head, considering. After a moment, he nodded. "Yeah, kid. That does mean something. Tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to take your offer and give you what you want."
Max grinned and started to thank him, but he held up a hand.
"Ah, ah. I'm not finished. You impressed me, kid. You didn't beg. I took you for a beggar and...well...I like being wrong about you mortals sometimes. So I'm going to do a little bit better than usual. I'm not just going to make you the best in the world, but I'm going to make you a pioneer, an original legend. You ready for this, kid?"
Max's grin widened. He nodded, hard and fast.
"Open the case, kid. Take a look."
Max put the case fully on the ground, popped the latches, and opened the lid. His smile stopped, stiffened. His eyes grew wide and horrified.
"No. No, man. You can't...I didn't ask for...no."
"Like I said, you impressed me. You're going to be the greatest, kid. You'll change heavy metal music for decades...maybe longer. Who knows?" Satan chuckled and clapped his hands as Max pulled the instrument from the case.
Instead of the battered red pawn shop guitar, Max held a jet black ukulele, with bright chrome and faded blue flowers burned into the wood. His name -- MAX CRANK -- curled around the top edge in gothic font. Max stared, unblinking. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly.
A death-dry giggle escaped the Devil's lips as he turned and disappeared in a sudden whirl of dust. "Kid, you're going to invent Uke Metal. Better get used to sequins. You're going to wear a lot of them."
Max fell to his knees and wept as the Devil’s laugh echoed over the crossroads.
If my schedule works out well this coming week, I should give you a Red and Hosanna story next week, but I can’t promise I won’t pull another tasty treat from the Folder of Mad Creations.
What? Halloween is right around the corner.
That didn’t go vary far.