Where the Wild Things Are II: The Return of Max

Max put on his wolf costume and stomped around the house.

"I'm the King of the Wild Things!" he roared.

"Keep it quiet in there," his mother called from the other room, "I have a migraine."

"The King of the Wild Things answers to no one!" Max roared, leaping from the couch like some sort of wolfskin-cloaked ninja.

"I'm warning you," said his mother, an edge of threat creeping into her voice.

"No, I'm warning you!" Max shouted. "The King of the Wild Things will eat. you. UP!" Max roared in triumph.

"I don't need this shit right now," said Max's mother. "Just go to your room until the pizza guy gets here."

So Max went to his room and sat plaintively on his bed. He folded his arms across his chest. He sneered at the door. The King of the Wild Things pouted.

"She's so mean," he said to the wall. "She doesn't appreciate me." A look of wonder crept into his eyes. "Not like...they do!"

So Max climbed into his boat and sailed across the sea, in and out of a year, until he came to where the Wild Things lived. He quickly climbed the beach and up over the hills of sand until he came to where the Wild Things were.

He saw them, huddled and shivering around a wan fire. They were quiet and despondent. Max positioned himself strategically upon a little knoll, so that he could overlook all of them and they could see him.

"Your King has returned!" he announced loudly. Suddenly, all eyes were focused on him. Max was happy. He growled in an attempt to reassert himself as the alpha wolf.

"Let the wild rumpus begin!" he shouted and began to dance there upon his knoll of return and victory.

"Wild rumpus?" said the Wild Thing with the orange and brown stripes and chainmail-like legs. "We don't have time for a wild rumpus!"

Max stopped dancing. He stared out over the Wild Things, who all stared at him with their huge, golden eyes. Shadows from the flames flickered and danced across their features.

"Where the hell have you been?" demanded the Wild Thing with the orange and brown stripes and chainmail legs. "Things went to shit after you left. The economy has completely collapsed. Unemployment is hovering around 45%, inflation is running rampant, and a bunch of barons have started holing themselves up, fighting petty squabbles over small tracts of land to increase their meager hegemony and inflate their massive egos while the rest of us starve out here. We've been dealing with a drought for the past five years, and a famine for the last three. And just this year, we've been hit with a severe case of the Wild Thing Flu. People are dropping like flies. And without a king to protect us, barbarians have become emboldened and are now crossing our goddamned borders. And the best you can offer us is a wild rumpus? Get your scrawny ass back to the castle and start leading us, oh King of the Wild Things."

"Wild...rumpus?" offered Max weakly. He knew not what else to say.

"Didn't you hear a word I just said?" crowed the Wild Thing with the orange and brown stripes and chainmail legs. "Listen, you scrawny little French bastard, we are not in the mood for a wild rumpus. What we need now is more leadership, less rumpassing. Oh, you know what? Screw this and screw you. We don't need a king anyway."

"But...the wild rumpus..." Max said. An unshed tear stood in his eye.

"Come on, guys," the Wild Thing with the orange and brown stripes and chainmail legs said. "Let's get out of here."

"What should we do with the king?" asked the Wild Thing that looked suspiciously like Sweetums the Muppet, but with horns.

"Let's eat him!" said the Wild Thing with the eagle's head inexplicably mounted on the mammal's body.

"Yeah, let's eat him!" consented the rest of the Wild Things.

And so they did.

"You know," said the Wild Thing with the orange and brown stripes and chainmail legs, "he wasn't so bad for a king. I mean, he did focus a little too much on his own desires to lead a wild rumpus, but after that he was kind of nice. He wasn't too cruel." He leaned back against a log, crossing one leg over his knee and picking at his teeth with a twig. At this side, the Wild Thing that looked suspiciously like Sweetums the Muppet, but with horns, played a harmonica.

"So, now what should we do?" asked the Wild Thing with a goat's head and the human's body.

"I dunno," said the Wild Thing with the orange and brown stripes and chainmail legs, "all this feasting has kind of killed my desire to be part of an angry mob."

There was a rabble of general consensus around the fire.

"Tastes like chicken," said the Wild Thing with the eagle's head mounted inexplicably on a mammal's body as it worried that last bits of food from a bone.

"Dude," said the Wild Thing with the orange and brown stripes and chainmail legs, "that's just wrong on so many levels."