Who was Maxwell Malt?
Oh, everyone had heard of him, of course. You weren’t much of anybody in Eastport if you’d never heard of Maxwell Malt. Some called him a magician, others the superhero of the day, and still others the “people’s hero”, whatever that meant. He had done amazing things. He had saved the city and its surrounding area from bizarre villains countless times, including, once, an army of giant animate teddy bears. Everyone knew it. Most people had witnessed his heroism firsthand. And yet the question still circulated the streets daily.
Who was Maxwell Malt?
No one had really seen him anywhere, apart from the averted crises.
Who was Maxwell Malt?
A few people had managed to catch a glimpse of him during his many escapades, but even then, the only detail that was certain was that he had black hair. Maybe.
Who was Maxwell Malt?
There were countless reporters circling throughout Eastport, interviewing whoever they encountered for any information relevant to the mysterious small-town superpower (which most of them thought was a catchy phrase).
Who was Maxwell Malt?
The unanswerable question was currently repeating itself, with no sign of stopping any time soon, in the head of reporter Wilfred Jenkins as he wandered through Eastport’s streets like many journalists before him. He was trying to think of anything he could do, anyone he hadn’t interviewed, to get to the bottom of this Maxwell Malt mystery. It wasn’t just a matter of journalistic pride anymore; it was almost an obsession. And anyway—
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry…”
“No! No! Don’t apologize…my fault entirely…”
Anyway, Wilfred wasn’t just in it for the potential newspaper article with his name on it, as such. So far he’d only ever gotten a few very minor assignments. The way he saw it, the Maxwell Malt story was his last chance to make a good impression on Editor-in-Chief Dawson before he was condemned as a talentless wretch for the rest of his li—wait a minute…
Wilfred spun around, scanning the sidewalk for any sign of the man he’d run into while lost in thought. He hadn’t recognized the man, so presumably he was an as-yet-uninterviewed Eastporter who might possibly know something of the elusive Malt—but alas, there was no sign of him. (Wilfred liked to think words like “alas”, in case Dawson
Come to think of it, Wilfred couldn’t really remember the face of the stranger who had so hurriedly taken the blame for the collision. He had a vague impression that the man’s hair had been dark, but that was all. How curious.
Oh, well. It was probably just because Wilfred had been so deep in thought, and he hadn’t been getting much sleep lately, anyway.
With a last, regretful glance behind him, Wilfred continued in search of solutions to his mystery.
Max looked around the corner of a shelf in the bookstore he’d ducked into, badly startling a six-year-old girl. After a few moments’ assessment to ensure he hadn’t been followed, he considered his options and returned to crouching behind the bookshelf.
He’d never meant to become so mysterious, he really hadn’t. But he’d worked so fast, those first few times, and no one had really seen him properly. Then he’d gotten into the habit of hiding his identity, once the newspapers had printed their lack of understanding, because nothing was more fun than messing around with journalists’ minds. He had let it become a…a game. And it had been fine then.
But then there had been the cultist and his bears, and news had somehow gotten to the non-local papers, and now he was always having to hide from nosy reporters. Because if the mystery surrounding him was waved away, he wouldn’t be the people’s hero anymore; the game would end. And while he knew it was a selfish thought, a little, he had other motives for concealing his identity. People needed heroes; if you took them away, what was there?
By now, the reader will probably have reasoned out the identity of our friend Max. So let us take a look at the people’s hero Maxwell Malt; knowing him, we may not get another chance.
Max does indeed have black hair; the witnesses were correct in that, at least. He’s a little on the tall side, maybe, although this is exaggerated by his tendency to walk on his toes. His face is unremarkable, eyes perhaps a little large, nose a little pointed—oh, and rather pale at the moment, but we can forgive him that, considering his narrow escape. At the time our story begins he has three broken ribs, courtesy of the cultist-and-bears incident, which are healing more slowly than they ought to because of his unfortunate wall-climbing habit. And that, in brief, is the mysterious Maxwell Malt, at least on the outside (mainly).
Now he sighed and closed his eyes, inadvertently bringing back memories of his eighth birthday, when he’d closed his eyes to become invisible and sneak extra cake. He’d been caught, of course, although there was no real punishment, just a chiding.
And now he was all but invisible in the normal course of his life, just another faceless figure passing by in the street. Unknown and unmemorable, even as his name was spoken daily all over Eastport.
When he had calmed down reasonably from his encounter with the journalist, Max got up and slowly, carefully made his way out to the sidewalk. If he was lucky enough not to run into any more nosy reporters, weasels who tried to be sly while their occupation was written all over them, he might be at work on time for once.
He tried to run inconspicuously. It worked, mostly because there were at least fifty other people trying to avoid being late for whatever it was they did all day.
Max was the stockboy at Morris and Morrison, which was not so much a general store as a vague one, because the job kept him out of sight and he didn’t have to wear a uniform. Eastport was not a large town, but Morris and Morrison hadn’t had much business in the past twenty or so years, because the owners had never decided on anything specific to sell, the way everyone else had. They also didn’t ask a lot of questions, which was why Max could work there; all they knew was that he was called Max and would only take his pay in cash.
After a great deal of trying to run through large crowds of people going the other way, which he had never been very good at, Max came to a halt outside Morris and Morrison. Even the building was vague; it seemed to blend into the apartment buildings on either side of it, and the way it sat between them appeared almost designed to keep it unnoticed. Its only distinguishing feature was the sign, with a space left for the store’s specialty, assuming the owners ever decided on one.
Max barely noticed the sign by this time; he knew the exact distance to the store from just about every part of the town after working there for five years. A bell dinged when the door opened, but it wasn’t actually over the door. Instead it hung over the counter, connected to the door by a complicated system of ropes and pulleys attached to the ceiling, dangling over Dennis the cashier’s desk. Dennis had assembled this mechanism for the sheer joy of watching customers stare up in confusion at the ringing of an unseen bell.
Max often wondered why Dennis lived in Eastport and not, say, a mental institution.
As he passed the counter on his way to the back room, Dennis called after him, “Since when are you ever on time? Are you trying to make me look bad or something?”
Max just smiled and spent a moment standing in the darkness of the back room, waiting for his vision to adjust. Then he started moving the previous night’s shipments so he would be able to find them when he needed to. It was a monotonous task, and, at the moment, slightly painful, but he enjoyed his work. It allowed him, for just a little while, to forget who he was.
No comments:
Post a Comment