The Bar at the End of the Universe

(OOM: "All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.")

(Content Warning for this OOM include: mentions of domestic violence and drug use, guns, threats of violence, blood, and death.)

Max still felt a little unmoored and light-headed by the time Chloe dropped her off and she stepped back through the doors of Blackwell again. And she wasn't ashamed at the heady relief that flooded her upon seeing Milliways instead of her school. She shouldn't feel that glad about it, but the morning had been... rough. More than rough.

She could still feel remembered terror like a knot in her chest, tightening her throat and turning her stomach. She wanted to scream. She... she kind of needed to scream. If she didn't let it out, it would just sit there in her throat, choking her while she struggled to focus in Mr. Jefferson's class.

So it wasn't so much an executive decision as something Max just did, then, when she made a detour by the couch to snag one of the thickest throw pillows, and took it with her to the bathroom. It was probably best to have a solid door between her and the rest of the place, even with the thick, fluffy pillow to help muffle the sound.

It helps, screaming. It really does. Screaming doesn't solve anything, but it does something. It puts raw effort and sound into what one keeps bottled up, what one can't explain. And once the seal is broken, everything starts to come out, it pours out. Even after her throat was sore and she had run out of energy to scream, she cried into that pillow until she was out of tears.

Eventually, after a long while, Max emerged from the bathroom. She had washed her face and dried her eyes. Her throat hurt, her eyes burned, and her head felt squashy from crying so hard, but she no longer felt like she was about to explode from pent-up... whatever that was.

She couldn't think of anything to order at first, when she approached the counter, standing there quietly with the pillow. Kindly, the Bar manifested a napkin asking if the pillow needed washing. Max ducked her head, grateful, and set the much-cried-upon pillow on the counter to be... whisked away to be cleaned, presumably.

Max was thirsty, but... she didn't want to sit, either. Instead of ordering from the bar, she made her way into the kitchen to make herself a cup of the strongest tea she could find.

Max can still feel the lingering after-effects of her panic attack. And... Chloe is her best friend and confidant and it's amazing to have her back in her life, but she is also a lot to deal with. This morning has already been a lot on its own, and it has only just begun.

She isn't quite ready to go back and face early-morning Chloe's mercurial moods. Not when Max is still trying to get back on an even keel, herself.

So there is a quiet Max Caulfield sitting on a fallen log out by the edge of the forest, feeling her way through a song on her scratched but much-loved guitar. Music is a pleasant retreat from the sometimes overwhelming real world.

(OOM: "In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing.")


(Content Warning for drug use, domestic abuse, references to ptsd and drugged drinks.)

Max has been trying to get back into the habit of journaling, so she is making an effort today. Maybe writing it all down will help her keep track of everything going on. Chloe and Mr. Madsen and Nathan and Victoria and Kate and Rachel and Mr. Jefferson and all of it. So many moving parts.

It has felt like time between Milliways and her world is increasingly disconnected, so Max doesn't feel terrible having a cup of coffee during a Milliways morning despite it being a late night in Arcadia Bay.

She writes some, chronicling interactions experienced and choices made (and choices reconsidered), but eventually she ends up doodling in the margins. As usual.

So eventually a drawing of Chloe sits crosslegged in the corner of the journal's page, the teen's head lowered, blue hair shading her eyes, the hand holding what's left of a joint resting on her knee.

(OOM: "Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we're shown a photograph of it. In one version of its utility, the camera record incriminates... In another version of its utility, the camera record justifies.")

At some point this evening there is a small desk lamp on one of the booth tables, shining strong light on the camera Max Caulfield is carefully taking apart. A cloth roll of very tiny screwdrivers lies at her elbow, beside a cup of tea that has long gone cold. She thinks she might still be able to fix the spring-loaded flash apparatus - one side of it has slipped its hinge and won't be slipped back into place - if she can just get a few of the outer shell pieces out of the way.

Her eyes are dry and irritated from the strong light, and her mouth is set in a thin, determined line. It has been a very long day and she is exhausted, but this task will still have all of her concentration, just the same.

(OOM: "To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge - and, therefore, like power."

Or: Max Caulfield, Blackwell Ninja.)

In the corner of one of the couches, over by the fireplace, someone is telling a story. It's an odd story, more about concepts and symbolism, technology and history than about a coherent narrative, but the cats hardly seem to mind. Max is content to be pinned in her place on the couch by the small collection of cats that have gathered while she catches up on her assigned reading for photography class.

They aren't a bad audience. Well, the big one is certainly asleep, the tabby is imperiously insisting on ear scritches, but at least the white one seems content to just exist nearby.

She figures that counts as listening. Good enough, anyway.

"'The inventory started in 1839,'" she reads, her left hand rubbing the ears of the nearest cat, "'and since then just about everything has been photographed, or so it seems. This very insatiability of the photographing eye changes the terms of confinement in the cave, our world. In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing. Finally, the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads -- as an anthology of images.'"

Max isn't sure how long she's been in Milliways. It can't have been long, right? Hardly any time has passed. But she should be heading back soon. She feels a kind of mild anxiety to be back growing in her chest, even if she knows time is stopped on the other side of the door.

But she has time to take some photos before heading back, right?

There is always time for a quick snapshot.

Anyone in the bar looking particularly photogenic (or not - art is art) may find a tiny photog and her camera looking their way.