Max walked away from the house of screams and whispers, moving like a sleepwalker through the sleeping city. The night air, thick and humid, did nothing to clear the strange fog in his head. He didn't feel elation or triumph. The roaring fire of his rage had consumed the family, the house, the warmth, and then it had consumed itself, leaving behind nothing but cold, gray ash.
Back in the hotel room, the blast of conditioned air felt like a slap. He stripped off the new clothes, dropping them on the floor. They seemed tainted now, not by blood, but by the lingering scent of the family's simple dinner. He stood under the shower again, the water scalding hot, but he couldn't get clean. The filth wasn't on his skin. It was inside him, a deep, internal stain he had painted there himself.
He stared at his reflection in the fogged-up mirror. The same hollow cheeks, the same unremarkable face. He had expected to see something different. A monster. A god. But there was only Max. Empty.
The murders replayed in his mind, not as a highlight reel of power, but as a series of disjointed, meaningless acts. The wet thud of the knife. The snap of the woman's arm. The look in her eyes as the wooden spear pinned her to the wall. He had destroyed them. He had held their lives in his invisible hands and crushed them. And for what? The silence in the room was his answer. It was a perfect, sterile, and suffocating void. He had traded their vibrant, loving noise for this. It was a terrible bargain.
Lying on the bed, staring at the featureless white ceiling, he understood. Destruction was easy. It was an ending. But he didn't want an ending. He wanted a beginning. He wanted to feel what they felt. That warmth. That infuriating, beautiful contentment. Smashing the snow globe hadn't transferred its magic to him; it had just left him with broken glass.
He had been going about it all wrong.
His mind drifted back, away from the blood and the screaming, to the moment that had started it all. Not the discovery of his power, but the first true surge of his mania. The beautiful girl. Angela. That was her name, he'd heard the pot-bellied man say it. Angela.
Her smile. The affection in her eyes as she looked at that unworthy creature. That was the source. That was the power he truly coveted. Not the ability to move things, but the ability to inspire that look. The ability to be the center of someone's warm, happy world.
The man, Rico, was gone. Max had removed the obstacle. Now she was adrift. Grieving, probably. But the source of her light, her capacity for that warmth, was still there. It was inside her.
A new obsession began to crystallize in the sterile silence of the hotel room, sharper and more potent than the blind rage that had driven him before. He didn't need to destroy happiness. He needed to possess it. He needed to own its source.
He would find her. He would study her. He would understand the mechanics of her joy. And then, he would become its sole object. She would look at him that way. He wouldn't have to steal warmth from the walls of a stranger's house. He would have his own sun to bask in. He would make her his.
The emptiness in his chest didn't disappear, but it now had a shape. It was a hollow mold, and her name was Angela.