#maddox provoneaux

[deanofwhumpuniversity]

Chambers Authority: Becoming

This is the first of this verse I’ve posted here, and it’s pretty gross. A real Dead Dove, Do Not Eat. Nearly 4k words of...whatever the hell this is.

CW: Self-mutilation, amputation, cannibalism, medical whump, intubation, choking, acid, guns, blood, gore, human sacrifice, murder, death, immortal whumpee of a sort. 

It started last October, on a night so quiet and comfortably cool I should have known it wouldn’t last. I was sitting in the passenger seat, finishing a granola bar when the radio chirped to life with a no-nonsense message from dispatch. “Ambulance requested at 1002 Pike St.”

We didn’t have to speak; my partner was already putting the truck in gear while I picked up the CB. “Team Sierra Hotel responding, we’re on the north side. Details?”

There was an uncharacteristic pause before the dispatcher came back. “It was...a strange call. We’ve also reached out to PD.”

A spike of anxiety shot through me. It’s never pleasant, rushing to some horrible scene, mentally preparing while physically you just can’t do anything until you get there. All that adrenaline with nowhere to go might just be the worst part of the job. Aside from, y’know, everything else. But this was a new kind of harrowing: situation in progress, bracing for nothing and everything. My brain dredged up every sort of first response procedure I knew, like I was cramming for EMT exams all over again. It was overwhelming and useless, and I shook my head to clear my thoughts, when the radio clicked back to life one final time. “They just said that someone’s going to die.”

Our siren was blaring outside and the road was flying past, and I hoped I had misunderstood; but Roman shot a concerned look at the radio and then at me, and I knew he’d heard it too.

“Come back, dispatch? I did not copy.” The radio only played a low whine, almost more the whirr of magnetic tape than any of the familiar fuzzy sounds the CB usually made. After a few more moments I gave up, switching the machine to police frequency. “This is SH 176 emergency medical, who’s responding to the call on Pike?” My only answer was that same low mechanical rasp. No voices came back over the radio, to me or anyone else. The constant chatter characteristic of the police band was simply...gone.

The silence stretched as I stared at the dashboard radio, microphone sitting useless in my hand. 

WHAM! I startled back to awareness as Roman thumped the side of his fist into the radio, trying to jostle it to life. I shot him a look as I hung up the mic and took a deep breath to settle my nerves; he kept his eyes on the road and we began to slow. I realized we were on Pike Street, our destination coming up on the left. The area was all nondescript commercial buildings, small warehouses with vague signs that gave no indication what sort of business they did.

We came to a stop on the wrong side of the street, lights and sirens granting us permission to ignore the rules of the road. It seemed we’d gotten here first. There were no other emergency vehicles, no police, no one coordinating the scene. “What do we even take in?” It was part genuine question, part musing aloud. With no hint of what we’d find inside, I had no idea what our potential patient -- or patients -- might need.

Roman didn’t answer, staring out into the night with a look of consternation furrowing his brow. He leaned forward and flicked a switch, killing our siren but leaving the lights flashing. The silence was so sudden I could feel a ghostly echo of the blare bouncing off my eardrums. I popped my ears and craned in my seat, but I didn’t see any lights but ours bouncing off the glass storefronts; there were no distant wails of sirens coming to join us.

My partner opened his door and hopped out. “I guess it’s on us.” Of course it was fine for us to respond first; that was the job and we didn’t need the police here to get to work. But something in the stillness, thrown into ghoulish contrast by the flashing red and blue, seemed...different from our usual calls.

“What if this isn’t the place?” What if I had heard the dispatcher wrong? If we somehow both had? I knew it wasn’t likely, but the look Roman gave me showed he had doubts too. He leaned back into the cab and switched through the frequencies on the radio. Dispatch, police, back again. Then to a random band. All silent. There wasn’t even a momentary shock of static as the frequencies changed. He shrugged, grabbed a trauma kit, and started off toward the building, leaving his door hanging open. 

I pulled my own first responder kit from behind my seat and followed after him, telling myself it was purely professionalism that hastened my step -- the ability to do my job without need for direction -- and not an expanding discomfort at the thought of being alone in that garishly lighted stillness.

I surveyed the building for side doors and open windows as we approached, inwardly cringing at the idea of breaking the glass front door only to discover we were, in fact, in the wrong place. But Roman gripped the handle and the door swung open soundlessly, as though it were perfectly natural and the place was open for business at whatever ungodly hour of the morning. This seemed to give him pause, and he stood holding the door open for just a moment before continuing on into an unlit lobby.

We looked around for a moment, at the magazine-laden tables and a desk with its darkened computer; a hallway led further into the building, with lights on toward the end, our only obvious choice to proceed. Heading that way I began to hear a voice, muffled by distance but clear enough, and I realized it was the first speech I’d heard for many minutes. I was almost comforted by the normalcy of hearing other people before I began to process what the voice was saying.

“No! No. You’re crazy! This is crazy, why are you doing this?”

Roman and I picked up our pace, hustling toward the sound. We rounded a corner and came to a set of propped-open double doors. The room beyond was large and cluttered with equipment, but my trained eye was drawn immediately to the carnage at its center.

A young man -- maybe a teen, but it was hard to tell -- sat strapped to something like a modified dentist’s chair. His face and shirt were spattered with blood; I couldn’t immediately tell if it was his, or if it was all coming from the slab of gore being held to his mouth. A darker, silver-haired man stood before him, offering up a piece of bleeding meat with his right hand. The man’s left arm was...gone. His dress shirt had been tied off above the elbow, a rubber tourniquet knotted over the bloody sleeve. A table beside them was strewn with irregular chunks of flesh, unrecognizable except for a hand.

The man’s voice was quiet, almost pleading, despite his clear control over the scene. “There isn’t time for squeamishness, Mads.” His head was cocked and brows were knit with worry, as though he was pressing some much-needed medication on the boy and not some raw remnant of his own mutilated body. “We have to hurry! Just do as you’re meant to and everything will be alright.”

The boy in the chair let out a muffled grunt, struggling in his restraints but unwilling to open his mouth to cry out. He tossed back and forth against a leather strap across his chest, cycling his knees up and down in the mere inch of give that the ankle cuffs afforded him. As we watched, frozen, one of the straps gave way and he kicked out, barely glancing the man but knocking the table and its grotesque bounty to the floor.

The man let out a frustrated growl and stepped back. A black-robed figure I hadn’t noticed before rushed forward and grabbed the boy’s leg, wrestling it back into place.

Suddenly I was shoved hard to the side, barely catching myself against the wall of the hallway before I struck my head. I turned to see Roman, ducking to the other side of the hall and taking a position in the sliver of protected space behind the mostly-open door. As I regained my senses I took in more of the room, seeing now that some dozen black clad people ringed the space, standing nearly unmoving in the shadows. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my partner signalling at me; I turned to look as he pointed his thumb back the way we’d come, then held his hand up to his mouth like a phone. I nodded, yes, the radio, then turned back to the grisly scene playing out in the room. What could I do for this kid? We needed the police. 

The older man, though, clearly required medical attention; his sleeve was soaking through over the stump of his arm, the cloth saturated enough now to begin dripping freely. A morbidly hilarious image ran through my mind -- of me simply walking in and offering the aggressor first aid. Would he leave the kid be and let me staunch the wound? Somehow I doubted it.

The figure at the boy’s feet gave up on the broken restraint, sitting back on their heels and simply holding the kid’s leg in place. The man had righted the table and was gathering up the wet meat that had fallen to the floor. He sighed heavily, and his voice took on a disappointed tone. “Alright, Maddox, have it your way. Just...remember, it didn’t have to be like this.”

He strode away, to the poorly-lit edge of the room, and the boy -- Maddox, it seemed -- took the opportunity to shout in earnest, alternating “Help!” and “Stop, please!” and “Let me go!” as he rocked forward and back against a leather strap buckled across his chest. The shadowed figures held their silent vigil, unmoved by his outbursts.

When the man stepped back into the light, he held a jumble of supplies bundled in the crook of his remaining arm.  He dumped them onto the table, letting them slop into the bloody mess, and I heard a metal clank among the soft, wet noises. 

Maddox stopped mid-shout, leaning back and raising his hands as far as the restraints would let him, in a half-warding, half-placating gesture. “Let’s just talk about this, ok? Just...just don’t--” 

The silver-haired man selected an implement from the pile, and stepped well into the boy’s space, looming over him. He pushed what I could see was a speculum toward Maddox’s mouth, and the stump of his left arm moved -- as though he was trying to hold his victim steady and he’d forgotten his new amputee status. He fixed his gaze on one of the robed figures and nodded, and they rushed forward, grabbing the boy’s head and pulling it sharply back. They grasped his chin, and Maddox’s eyes screwed shut with effort as he clenched his jaw. With two people scrabbling at his mouth, he couldn’t resist long.

He gave one last sobbing cry -- “Don’t, please don’t do this! Dad! --” before the speculum wedged into his mouth, holding his tongue down and distorting his cries. My heart leapt into my throat as I watched the man reach for a spool of plastic tubing.

Movement to my right alerted me to Roman’s return, and I hissed as loudly as I dared, “Did you get anyone on the radio? Are the cops here?” When I got no response I dragged my eyes away from the horrifying display. Across the hall, behind the other door, was a man I’d never seen before White shirt and jeans, with an obvious underarm holster. He was braced against the wall, holding a handgun in ready position, his attention firmly on the boy in the chair. Plain-clothes cop. Oh thank God.

The officer didn’t acknowledge me before he ducked into the room, keeping to the wall and quickly disappearing from my view around the corner. A loud, sickeningly wet choking caught my attention, but the man had positioned himself up on the chair, kneeling over the seated boy and blocking his face from view. All I could see were Maddox’s fingers flexing and digging into the armrests, and his legs tossing side to side as far as they could, movements no longer controlled but instinctive, animal struggles to survive.

The man stepped back down onto the floor and grabbed a chunk of flesh from the table, then stuffed it into a funnel I could see had been crudely jammed into the top of the thick tubing. It shouldn’t have fit -- couldn’t possibly have fit -- but I heard a thick sloshing, and saw as a white froth started to stream from the boy’s mouth around the intruding tube. The foam quickly began to turn pink, and thick rivulets of blood ran from the corners of his mouth to meet under his upturned chin.

“Oh holy Jesus!” Roman’s voice came from right beside me and I spun toward him; I grabbed his shoulders to steady myself as my stomach reeled. He took hold of my upper arms, clearly seeing I needed the help. “The cops are here!” He began to pull me away from the doorway and back down the hall. 

“I know!” I whispered back, but he cocked his head in confusion. Before I could tell him about the officer, a shot rang out from the room. We both ducked reflexively, and my partner started pulling me back to the lobby. He’d already brought the gurney -- somehow I hadn’t heard him dragging in the heavy equipment, and I caught myself feeling bad I’d been too distracted to come and help him. When he shot me a concerned look, I realized I had let out a maddened giggle at the ridiculous thought.

Outside on the street, lights and sirens blared. The chaos of uniformed figures bustling to and fro beyond the glass doors lent a morbid sort of normalcy to this horrific night. But none of them rushed in to back up their comrade; more shots rang out from the back and I saw the gathered police ducking behind the vehicles pulled up out front. But my fear and confusion took a backseat to instinct as Roman began to pull the gurney further into the building, and I took position behind it, matching his hurried but careful pace.

A new scene of carnage greeted us in the back room. Several of the robed figures lay in spreading pools of blood, unmoving; but the one-armed man and the plain-clothes officer were nowhere to be seen. Maddox, still strapped to the chair, seemed to be fully seizing, lurching purposelessly in his restraints, the unsupported tube in his mouth hanging down and dragging his head forward. 

We parked the gurney and Roman set about undoing the straps, while I assessed how best to safely remove the tubing from the boy’s throat. I gripped his chin and turned his head up, and I met his eyes -- terrified, suffering...and aware. Despite his body’s violent convulsions, he held my gaze. A gurgling whimper left his lips. I pulled as gently as I could on the tube, and felt none of the sort of rough resistance I expected; instead it felt as though it was dragging through thick mud. Liquid gore began to absolutely pour out of the boy’s mouth, and I was struck by a noxious, almost chemical smell.

“Oh fuck, Roman, I don’t -- ! Acid. I think it’s acid.”

“Just keep moving, Elke. We have to keep trying.” He was in full EMT mode, voice full of urgency but detached. I tried to push my panic down and let training take over. Roman had freed the boy’s limbs and was bundling up his legs. I pushed my arm under his shoulder and supported his head, preparing to move him to the gurney. “One, two, three, lift!”

We lay him down and his whines became a tortured keening; the boy squeezed his eyes shut and tears streamed down the sides of his face. I could feel the tube jerking in my hand as his body shuddered with sobs, but I couldn’t make much sense of the bottom of his face through all the blood. After a few more wracking coughs he seemed to run out of air, and drew in a long, rattling breath that started harsh and quickly became grotesquely wet, as though he was aspirating his own liquified throat. His eyes shot open and he shrieked; he began to claw at his chest and neck, arching up off the gurney in agony.

“Leave the tube, maybe we can get him some oxygen!” Roman was pulling the gurney now, heading back to the ambulance as though there were some miraculous treatment there, as though if we somehow got the kid to the hospital we’d be able to put his ravaged organs back together. 

A wave of dizziness flowed over me from head to toes as I could feel myself giving up; but the boy was still looking at me, eyes bright and clear and desperate. So I just kept moving.

We burst out the front door and beelined for the back of the ambulance. The police outside went from barking at each other, to shouting questions at us -- but the few who came close enough to see the patient backed off quickly. Once the gurney was secure in the cabin, Roman hopped behind the wheel and flipped the siren back on. I pulled one of the rear doors closed; as I grabbed the other a hand shot out of the dark and held it open. I jumped back in surprise, and the plain-clothes cop from inside hoisted himself up into the ambulance. 

“Hey! I’m sorry, but, you can’t --” He pulled the door shut behind him and slid onto the bench opposite me. I didn’t have time to argue. Maddox didn’t have time. “We’re clear!” I called to my partner, and he pulled out onto the thankfully empty nighttime streets.

I went for an oxygen bag and began peeling it from it’s sterile package, when I realized the officer was speaking. “Provoneaux got away, but not all is lost, yeah? There’s still time.” He wasn’t speaking to me; his eyes were fixed on Maddox’s. He stood up, hunched from the low clearance, and reached toward the boy’s face. Before I could register what he was doing, he took hold of the tracheal tube, and yanked.

Thick blood sprayed across the roof of the ambulance, spattering hot and sticky on my face and painting the man’s rumpled white shirt. Muffled whimpers became an agonized howl as what was left of the boy’s mouth was freed. The cop set his large hand against the Maddox’s gore-streaked chin, forcing his mouth shut and covering his nose. I grabbed the man’s wrist and tried to push him away, but he was slick with blood and freakishly strong. “Roman!” I cried out in a panic, unsure if I wanted him to stop and help, or just drive faster.

Instead, he yanked the wheel to the side, tossing us about and jostling the gurney. I felt the man’s grip falter, before he climbed fully over Maddox’s prone body, and pressed his whole weight down over the dying boy’s face. I shoved at him, punched his shoulder to no effect, then my eye lighted on an oxygen tank hooked to the wall. Pulling it down quickly, I put my whole weight into my swing, bashing it into the side of the man’s head. He tumbled to the floor, bringing up his arms to block any further blows.

“You don’t understand!” He was speaking to me for the first time, and I found myself hesitating. I held the oxygen tank ready for another swing, but I didn’t have an easy shot with Maddox between us. The man looked up at me over his raised arms. “If the sacrifice dies, the ritual will complete.”

“If...WHAT?” That was probably the last thing I’d expected to hear, and I simply could not imagine what I was supposed to say to that.

“He has to die some other way.” The man was panting with exertion, but his voice was strangely calm. “Do you really think you can save him? Do you?”

I looked down at the kid, whose eyes flicked back and forth between me and the officer, wide with fear and pain. His chest was hitching with short, failing breaths; what I could see of his face seemed to hold a pleading expression. A treasonous thought ran through my mind, that all I could do for him now was ease his suffering, but I would not give it voice. I would not tell him I was giving up on him. 

I tossed the oxygen tank onto the man, and saw his eyes widen before he covered his head and ducked flat to the floor. I heard it connect, heard his grunt of pain, but I turned my attention to the manual oxygen bag I’d been opening. Tossing the packaging aside, I leaned over the boy and pressed the bag to his face. I tried in vain to force air into his destroyed body, but I could tell now he was making short, sharp exhales, not taking in any breaths. Helplessly clutching the apparatus, I reached my other hand up and brushed the boy’s dark, wavy hair from his forehead. “It’s ok, Maddox,” I lied. “Shh, it’ll be ok.” His shoulders settled back, and his gasps began to gentle. He held my gaze, and I watched as his eyes went still and dark. 

I stood at his side for a moment, an eternity, choking down the sobs that wanted to claw up from my chest. The ambulance bounced over a rough patch of road and I slumped back on the bench, suddenly feeling weak and small as the adrenaline seemed to drain from me. I turned to the man now sitting on the floor opposite me; he looked as spent as I felt.

“Elke?” Roman called from the front. I could see his eyes in the rear-view mirror, probably trying to puzzle out just what on earth was happening back here.

“Roman, stop.” My voice was barely more than a whisper. I almost couldn’t hear it myself over that useless, pointless siren. “Stop it! Turn it off!” The shout hitched in my throat, but we coasted to a stop and I heard my partner open his door and climb out.

“You’re not a cop.” That one shout was all I’d had, my voice quiet again. I kept my gaze on the boy’s body, not wanting to look at the man, the would-be murderer. “Who are you?”

“I’m...Will.” He paused, the way that addicts do when they don’t want to tell the EMTs who they are or what they took. 

“Sure. Will.”

“I’m with the Chambers Authority.” He laughed dryly. “Not that that...means anything. I’m the one who called you, but I was too late. No one is more sorry about that than me, I assure you.”

It was my turn to laugh. There was no humor in it. 

The back doors swung open and Roman surveyed the scene with concern. “What did you do?” he asked, his tone strangely light.

“This psycho, I -- I tried to stop him, but -- !” I couldn’t sustain my anger for more than a few words. “I don’t think there’s anything that would have mattered.”

“No,” Roman replied, “what did you do?” How did you do it?”

I followed his gaze to the body of the young man on the stretcher. His chest was still, and he was deathly silent. But his hands were flexing, and his eyes began to blink. And then he sat up.

[deanofwhumpuniversity]

△ Maddox | What's the worst injury you've sustained and how did it feel? Who did it?

Last week this would have been a 2/10 but now it’s a 9/10. He’s coming to terms with the fact that it happened but it’s just so fucking weird to talk about.

“So there was this kid in high school, Brian, who just hated me, y’know? I have no idea what I ever did to him but he always had this serious stinkface when I was around. And then one time I was just fucking around in the hall and I bumped into him, and he seriously like, brushed himself off? Like I’d got something gross on him? Asshole.

“Anyway, I was having a good day and I wasn’t gonna let him ruin it with his shitty attitude. I figured we’d just get everything out on the table, maybe bury whatever hatchet or, I don’t even know.

“So I asked him what his problem was, but not like, chest thumping or anything. I tried to sound lighthearted, like maybe it was a joke or a misunderstanding? But he was frowning and not really looking at me, so I stepped into his space and put my hand on his shoulder and...he just flipped.

“His eyes got HUGE, not even angry, but...I don’t know. I’ve never seen someone look like that again. He grabbed my hand and I thought he was just gonna toss it away from his shoulder, but he held onto my wrist. Then, out of nowhere, he ducked down and swept up my legs with his other arm! Like, what’s it called, a bridal carry or something? And he fucking threw me! Like a log or something. Do people throw logs? Whatever, seems right.

“All I knew was that I was flying through the air and I tried to twist and put out my hand before I hit the wall. It worked, I guess, but turned out to be a bad plan. My palm connected with the wall of lockers and it jarred my arm so bad I kind of whited out; I don’t remember hitting the floor or anything else until a few people were leaning over me and lots of folks were yelling.

“My elbow was sort of at a stupid angle, and there was an inch or so of bone sticking out from the skin. It was...really confusing actually. It ached, but I remember it ached a lot in my teeth, like the pain was too much for me to properly appreciate it all in my arm, and I was rerouting some of it to my jaw. It was a throbbing, rushing sort of pain, like it was spiking along with my heartbeat. I think the pain was disorienting me, because I remember being more confused than upset. Like whoa, is that a bone? Is that mine? Like, who else’s bone was gonna be hanging out of my arm?

“I got it set at the hospital; the doctors wanted to put pins in my arm but my parents said I was young and I’d heal up fine. I guess they got some physical therapy handouts or something, we went over some arm exercises at home for a while and it did turn out just fine, there’s not even a scar! So that’s pretty gnarly, I guess.”

“Anyway, that’s not what you came for, is it? You want to know about...the other thing.

“Getting a tube run down my throat fucking sucked. I figured out really quick that sort of, swallowing it? Helped it not feel so bad. I was sort of mad at myself doing that too, like I was helping, but I just didn’t want it to hurt so fucking bad. I had no idea. 

“So it turns out if you swallow bleach or whatever, what they treat you for is burns. I googled it. And I tell you, I don’t know what it’s like to burn, to be on fire or get chemical burns or whatever, but I know there is a sort of pain that I would describe as burning.

“My throat burned. My stomach burned. And when I tried to speak, tried to breathe, it was like I was sucking bleach into my lungs and they fucking burned. Whenever the tube moved it felt like it was stirring me; I was sure my insides were jelly, that there was nothing left and I was just going to melt. After a while I wished I would.

“That’s all weird to talk about now. But I don’t know how to say...I don’t know...OK. The things is, there wasn’t any bleach. There wasn’t drano or whatever else they looked for after. Dad took that funnel and he...brought it to his own mouth, like a wine glass almost? He set the funnel against the corners of his mouth and pushed it up into his palate and leaned over it and...something thin and pale and watery started to run out of him. I couldn’t see from the weird angle and to be honest I still don’t know what I was seeing, but I could tell when that liquid hit the bottom of the funnel, because that was when it started to burn.”

[deanofwhumpuniversity]

Apropos of nothing, have a Maddox

[deanofwhumpuniversity]

🖊 for Maddox? I'm super into what happened in Becoming

Maddox’s family moved to America from Haiti before he was born, and any weirdness they displayed over the years was just cultural differences, totally not the signs of fringe religious beliefs

He grew up alone, and sometimes his dad would talk sadly in French about the “children left behind” and he was surely talking about poor kids and orphans back in Haiti. Maddox doesn’t have any siblings, of course. His father’s wife is definitely his mom.

He’s generally goofy, a bit of a class clown, and he’s been accused sometimes of not caring enough; he just can’t bring himself to take life too seriously. He knows his dad wanted him to go into some sort of serious field of study, the man is paying for him to go to college after all. Maddox realizes how lucky he is -- when he meets some trust fund kids, some real Old Money kids -- that his old man never told him he couldn’t study art history or tried to control his educational path.

Maddox used to think his parents were overbearing. They hovered a little, and whenever he got hurt, scraped his knees as a child or any such thing, they would swoop in and patch him up in a way that was purely concern and not at all a curious study of his injuries. He’s never, ever had reason to fear his family. If other people found them odd, that was just a misunderstanding. They’re awesome; they just want the best for him.

He’s a student of art, mainly the hard tangible history behind it and not the emotional pieces themselves, with a focus on giving attention to artists who aren’t just dead white guys with sordid shitty backgrounds. I know I call him “kid” or “the boy” but that’s all relative in the eyes of the professional adults we meet him through. He’s 21 in Baltimore the first time he dies.