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guy said, handing Max some money. He took a long gulp of coffee. “Lucky I didn’t black out in a gutter somewhere. Anyway, cheers.” He held up his cup in thanks and exited the store.
    Max examined his hand. He licked his thumb and rubbed it against his skin, but no matter how hard he tried to wipe off the mark, it wouldn’t go away.
    Â 
    When his watch alarm went off at the end of his shift, Max slammed his pen and crossword book onto the counter and pumped his fists into the air.
    â€œI win at LIFE!” he shouted, enjoying for a moment the delusion that completing twenty-five crossword puzzles in fourteen hours meant he’d won at anything at all.
    Stavroula’s grumpy face poked out from behind the Funyuns. “Why you yell?”
    â€œOh, sorry,” Max said, lowering his arms. “I just—” But talking about his victory would make it sound even sadder. “Nothing.”
    She looked at her watch. “Okay, ten o’clock. You go home now.”
    He took off his vest, threw out the wrapper from his Hot Pocket dinner, and stuffed his crossword book into his bag. “Thanks, Stav.”
    â€œAnd tell your mom I say feel better.”
    The sting of the earlier lie prickled in his stomach. He nodded gravely. “I will.”
    He biked home under a moonlit sky. Bracing for the worst as he opened the mailbox, he was relieved to find nothing more than a Home Depot catalog. That, he could handle. They made good shovels.
    On his way to the back kitchen door, he assessed the house. Dark, except for the flicker of television visible through his mother’s bedroom window and the rectangle of light coming from the basement. The leaves of his mom’s beloved ficus tree inside blocked the view of the small den down there, but judging by the guttural noises and whistle blows coming from within, Audie was well into her
Madden
conquest.
    After dumping his stuff onto the kitchen table and wondering why Ruckus hadn’t greeted him with a friendly claw to the face, neck, and torso, Max grabbed a granola bar and headed to the basement. Sporty football music hit his ears as he descended the stairs. “This was my plan all along,” he sang down to Audie. “You wear your thumbs down with hours of playing and then I swoop in to kick your ass.” He unzipped his hoodie as he neared the bottom of the steps. “Jesus, Aud, it’s like a hundred degrees down here—”
    He stopped.
    The granola bar fell to the floor.
    Perched on the edge of the plaid 1970s-era couch, where Max had fully expected to find Audie, was a man in a teal-blue velour tracksuit. His beard was rust colored and shaggy, as was his hair, out of which poked two white, jagged horns. And though he was currently dumping the remains of a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos into his mouth with a cheese-dusted hand, the coloring didn’t end at the edges of his fingertips.
    Every visible inch of his skin was red.
    He shook the controller at the television with his other hand and flashed Max a garish grin, food globs flying out of his mouth as he spoke.
    â€œThis shit is awesome.”

Demolish, Variation
    â€œAAAAAAAH!” MAX SCREAMED, then added another “Aaaaaa-AAAAAaaaaah!” for good measure.
    He spun around and bolted up to his mother’s bedroom, pounding the door open so forcefully she nearly fell out of bed in surprise.
    â€œMax!” she shouted, fumbling with her covers. “Jesus Christ, what’s wrong?”
    He blinked several times, terrified that he’d just ruptured her aorta. “Are you okay?”
    â€œYes! Why are you so freaked out?”
    Max swallowed. He wanted to tell her, but shocking her into cardiac arrest was not optimal. “I’m . . . not,” he said slowly, trying to force blood back into his cheeks. “I just—I heard ambulance sirens on my way home, and I worried.”
    The tension washed out of her face,