Max (Part 1)

A boy had boots. They were rubber boots with smiley faces cut into the soles. The boy was eight & he answered to Max. Max was on the ground (he might have even been born there) beneath a rumbling sky. By way of gravity, the sky chucked innumerable apples at Max, but he was too busy, teaching his fingers to snap, to notice. All around him apples streaked toward the ground like blurry cartoon safes. They landed into the mush, embedding which ever corner that it lead with. Max finally noticed the goings on just as the puddles began to get hungry. He watched as they unhinged their sloppy jaws & swallowed whatever apples that landed within their reach. Suddenly a loud crack bolted from between Max’s parted fingers, quite by fluke mind you, & a brown puddle shifted, three feet over, to the right. The mud was moved, & it flashed Max a rhetorical, gummy smile. Max’s jaw fell chin-deep into his chest. He looked on as the fallen apples began to tumble inside nearby puddles: right three times, left once, right again, then once more to the left. One by one these apples were cracked wide open. Max looked inside the nearest apple & saw how it had prematurely browned. A terse clucking sound arose from the mud as Max lifted his left boot, & curiously, he found himself stomping one browned apple into sauce. The soles of Max’s boots neatly smoothed themselves over. They were no longer smiling.