Max Payne: Story by BurnSide

[BurnSide]

This one i started about 9 months ago but got distracted during the first draft.

It's based on both videogames by ROCKSTAR called 'Max Payne' and is a dark and twisted tale of an ex-NYPD man framed for the murder of his wife and child on the run from his friends in the NYPD and the villians who framed him, trying to clear his name and stay alive. Narrated in first person, at the moment it's rather brief and un-edited.

Well, that's my note about it. I wanted to get opinions before deciding weather or not i will continue the story after i finish the Silent Hill Novel.

And without further ado... enjoy the story.

********************************************************************

Max Payne

December 16th, 2004

They were all dead. All of those b*******. It was over. The final gunshot ringing from my hand was like an exclamation point to everything that had led up to now. I released my finger from the trigger, and then it was over. But the riddles were still there, my aching head still screamed for answers that in my quest i did not recieve. To make any sense of all that had happened, I had to go back a few months to the night when all the pain had begun. The pain that infinite pills could not cure. I was still on the force back then. On the NYPD. Manhattan, Midtown, North Precinct. Hell's ****ing kitchen. There was a bullet-shaped hole in my brain where the answers to the riddles where hiding. Maybe if a started from the beginning i could make sense of it all. I needed to pluck out the bullet, let my head spew forth the answers in a stream of red.

August 21st, 2004

"I want you undercover Max". Martin's rusty voice was almost as bad as a bullet in the brain. I would have prefered that than going back out there, to work in some hellhole.

"You'd put me to work in some stinking back alley hellhole. Sorry Martin, Joanna and the baby come first, you know that. See this? My last smoke. It's bad for the baby otherwise." I meant it too. Seven years i carried this burden, and now my daughter was born, it was time to give it all up. I was through. I butted out that cigarette, watched it's life extinguish in a cloud of chemicals.

"That's you alright Max. Regular boyscout. Still on for poker wednesday?"

"Like taking candy from a baby." These fat pencil pushers on the force couldn't win a dount eating competition. Life was good. The sun was setting on the clear blue sky of another sweet summer day. The scent of freshly-mowed lawns was in the air as i stepped out of the car into the world of safe suburbia. Children playing and laughing each direction i looked. A house across the river on the New Jersey side. A beautiful model wife, a darling baby girl. I had nothing short of the American Dream come to life. Nothing to gain. Everything to lose.

"I'm home!"

But dreams as perfect as these have a nasty habit of going sour when you're not looking. The sun was suddenly no where to be seen. Twilight erupted across the land, laden with foreboding.

"Jo, honey, anyone home?"

I didn't like the way this show was going, and i was sitting at the best seat in the house, with nothing to do but keep on watching. The windows were smashed. The chairs flung sideways. The only thing that heard me on the other end of the phone was silence, i was on my own, and already to late. There was arguing upstairs. The angelic voice i married, and the demons voice, offering his temptations, giving no choices. I ran up the stairs. The baby was crying. Something falls over. My legs feel like they're caught in a spiders web. The spider laughs at me barring sinister teeth.

"Joanna!?"

Nothing can describe the sound of the woman you love, you married, you had a child with, screaming your name with blood in her throat in the so called privacy of your very own bedroom.

"Please..." Her last gurgled plea for life, for me to save her before it was too late.

Nothing can describe the sound of gunshots going off in your own home.

I slam the door open. The punk looks up. He was hired, just doing a job, i saw it in his eyes. Then my own trailed to the blood-stained cradle that once housed and nutured a growing life, one that I had created.

Nothing can describe seeing your baby daughter splatted with the blood of her mother. Your baby daughter who would never take a breath past her first birthday.

"The flesh of fallen angels" that son of a b*tch said. I shot him. I pounded his head into mush on the carpet. I punched and i punched. Nothing would ease it, nothing ever will. That was just three months ago. Everything i had ripped apart like a newspaper in a New York minute.

November 27st, 2004

I woke up feeling smaller than the cockroaches infesting my dank apartment. Tiny. An ink stain on a piece of paper that was the threatening world around me. A photo lay on my heavy chest. It was her. The D.O.A. file photo smiled at me, a silent testament to my failure to protect her. The TV wouldn't turn off. I clicked it several times but it blared at me. It narrated each of my steps. Each of my thoughts, each of the words written on the paper i was an ink stain on. The door swung open but there was no one there. The corridors reached out like the arms of a skeleton, beconing me to hug it. As i stepped out, she said my name. The skeleton grinned.

I was in a hospital. A morgue. She said my name again, a sweet voice of agonizing pain. The room was closed off to the rest of the piece of paper, the world could not enter. The doors on the freezer swung open, her body rolled out to greet me. She was dead. She said my name.

I turned around to face her. She sat on the operating table, legs crossed, red lips puckered. The sirens in my head grew louder. They were coming for me, had picked up my trail.

I looked at her for a long time. It was like looking down into the grave of a loved one, throwing the first piece of dirt on the coffin. No words are never needed. They're useless. I kissed her.

It was like kissing the barrel of a cocked gun, the bullet waiting to dart into the back of your head, to blow your brain across the room. She was dead. She whispered my name.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I woke up feeling smaller than the cockroaches infesting my dank apartment. A tiny ink stain on the white piece of paper that was the world around me. The TV blared static noise at me, and shut off with a click from the remote. Everyday passes like a dream you can't quite remember. You try to hold onto the images but before your eyes they vanish like water in the sun. Gone before you even knew they were there. That's how i've lived since she was ripped from me.

I live 40 fathoms inside the depths of my brain. Like a mental patient in a white room, banging on the padded walls with his head, screaming to be set free. The walls were my skull. If that guy bangs to hard with his head, it might just explode.

I grabbed my coat off the floor brushing last weeks TV dinner from it. The flakes of food fell to the rusty stained carpet, reminding me of confetti on my wedding day a few years before to the woman dreams were made off. At least, dreams used to be made of her. Now there were only nightmares. Funny how chucks of rotten food can remind you of days long past. Days where you were happy.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A dark winter storm hits me as I step out into the darkness like a thought being pushed into the back of your mind. The night has gilded the skyscrapers in silver. Every brick wall is covered with graffiti, angry smiles and nausiating tags. Pushed over the edge, i find myself in the cold no-mans land between right and wrong, with no road signs to guide me. The NYPD was trailing me by the dotted line of empty shell casings i was leaving behind on the winter snow. A man on the run, out of options, nothing to lose. I was seeking answers to the riddles in my head, but every gunshot was a hole with more answers leaking out, forming a labyrinth of tunnels to find the end of, a pool of blood spreading on the snow mixed with the blue and red and the sirens of constant death at my feet.

In the backseat of a moving taxi cab, I am cut loose from the city. It watches me with neon-sharp eyes as it passes in a blur of cold darkness. The painkillers lie to me. Instead of shielding the hurt they force reality in my shattered face. I can't run from the reality. Who can? It started only a few months ago in my bedroom, but i haven't left that room since. The killer dead at my feet, his head bashed to mush by yours truely. Joanna lying on the bed, bullet holes like sparkling rubies on her chest, my daughters cries cut short in an instant, the silence heavy in the air. My darling baby daughter. The gun fused to my hand that day, that room inside me where ever I go. I can't escape it. The cops on their way to arrest me for their death.

A couple of months ago. It had all come crashing down. The bad things came, like a winter storm. I was on a crash-course with the Mafia, the b******* who had framed me for the murder of my wife and daughter. Now the NYPD trailed me, the Mafia trailed me, death himself was on my heels like someone had slapped bacon on my boots and let the dogs loose. The car stops at the traffic lights. Outside, the light paints snow red, like the whole city was in flames. But inside, in the shadows of the car, it's all done in blues. I know I'm lying to myself. No amount of painkillers can keep this ache away. I try to say it'll end out alright, but each shell that hits the snow from my smoking gun is only a testament to what has happened to me, it wont bring her back. The city presses down close to the windows of the car, its monstous heartbeat under the tires. My squinted eyes in the rearview mirror watching for the sign that it would all end. My hands numb and held awkwardly in my lap. Where was i even going? It didn't matter. Everything that came after that room is a hopelessmess, a chaotic swirl, rising nausea that tastes like rust in my mouth.

Edited October 15, 2004 by BurnSide

[Kryso]

Well, well, well… Mr. Burnside!

I said I would read this, and I have. And trust me I’m glad I did. With the exception on Snuffy (who has completely different techniques) you are possibly one of the best writers I have read on this forum. Your ability to craft and build on the words, to create an image in the readers mind is nothing short of staggering.

Of course there’s always the BUT… but in your case it’s almost so insignificant it’s not worth mentioning, and that’s because it’s to do with grammar and so forth. But a writer writes; the grammar and punctuation, etcetera, comes down to the editors who will work on your book – and trust me ROCKSTAR/'Max Payne' should be falling over themselves to sign you up.

If I was you I would finish a few chapters, and create a synopsis and get in contact with them. Don’t rush it, take you time and everything works out in the end. And even if they say no, simply change a few things around and continue writing it in your own fashion. Because trust me, I could and would ask my publisher to represent your work.

[Daughter of the Nine Moons]

Very groovy indeed Burnsy!

[snuffypuffer]

I do dig this Burnsy, you should heed the advice of Kryso

[Tillghast]

Love it!

[BurnSide]

Thank you all for reading it and posting your opinions.

Kryso, you made my day. I do plan on doing alot of editing myself to this, as this is only a first draft but i will definately follow your advice and write a few more chapters on this. That is, after i've worked some more on my main project, another videogame novel 'Silent Hill' (link is in my sig!).

The other step of course is getting intouch with Rockstar games and talking.

[ChrisC098]

Burnside you can totaly tell thats max payne. I love it.

[BurnSide]

Thanks man.

If Rockstar wont grant me publishing, then i'll just change it enough so they can't tell with a few similarities and look for a publisher anyway.

But that's a LONG way off. I have to finish it first.

[BurnSide]

Several long and detailed edits done to the story. Added alot more to the end and changed the timeline around abit.