The Oddities of Grand Marquis - Book 3: Elegant Armageddon 🪼✔️

Sixteenth

MAX

I couldn't believe my eyes. Was that really my mom? Was she... was she really in front of me? Dr. Bluewater said I had a fever and my dreams aren't exactly trustworthy sometimes... but...

"Mom?"

I tried to sit up but the pain in my arm was too much and I laid back down again. I smiled a little as she watched me for a second, but I could tell that she was conflicted.

"I... I know you think I'm a fake. How could I be real, right? I died; you buried me a year ago and now here I am..."

"How do I know that? Even if you aren't Max, you know just as well how they manipulated him. They made him believe so many times that he was home when he wasn't, that he was safe when he wasn't. How do I know that you aren't doing the same to us? My husband and I... we've suffered so much... We had to suffer his loss and then suffer his return and then you took him away from us permanently."

"Suffer my return?" I asked, confused by that statement.

"We had to watch as he came home impregnated with alien progeny, something that he never asked for. Of course, we loved our son and we didn't care how he came back to us, but he suffered and that meant that we suffered. Ridicule, pain, confusion, and horrible mind manipulation... We suffered through that with him, trying to understand so that we could help him... And then... then you sons of bitches stole him from us again! FOREVER!!! You killed him! You took him away from us and now you... and now you... Why are you staring at me?"

"Because I missed you..." I whispered.

Mom stared at me with such intensity that I thought she might hit me but god, it was so fucking good to see her. I missed her rants, I missed her anger, I missed her passion... I wanted to get up and hug her (without consent or not) and feel her touch, but I was so weak... this fever and my arm... I thought it was just a cut...

"This is preposterous. I should have known that this was nothing but a hoax to fuck with my mind!" she yelled, turning around and gripping her purse.

"Wait... please..."

"I have nothing else to say to you. My son is dead and I should have never come here. It was mistake to think otherwise."

She started to leave when the door opened and Dr. Bluewater came through.

"Whoa, where are you going, Genny?"

"I should have never come!"

"Hey! No! No..."

"Let her go, David..." I said softly. "I'm not going to force her."

"Force me to what?" she growled.

"Geneva, just... Why don't you be quiet for a second and let me do my job?" David said, a little frustrated.

Mom made a face. "Why are you getting mad at me? *You're the one helping this thing!"

"He's not a thing, Geneva!" David roared, surprising me and surprising my mom apparently.

My mom recovered from her surprise and pointed angrily at Dr. Bluewater. "You were there when my son was laying there with an alien child in his belly, impregnated like some storybook character in a teenage girl's fantasies! Then he was killed after fulfilling his duties to some fucking aliens in the sky! You and India pronounced him dead on arrival!!! How could you say that this isn't fake?!"

"If you didn't think there was even a little bit of a chance then you wouldn't have come here, would you?" Mom didn't answer him. "Geneva, we have been dealing with aliens from space. Did you ever think of that very simple fact?"