Chapter 1: Eddy
"Dad, please no" pleaded the young boy as his father smacked him again and again with a heavy cane. "Please stop" the young boy begged as his father continued to lash at him cruelly. "No food for you tonight, you little jerk" bellowed his father as he put down the cane and grabbed the boy by the neck. The father carried him to the basement door, where he flung the boy down the stairs to the basement and left, after leaving the door securely locked.
The boy screamed as he fell to the ground with a mighty thump. His jaw was bruised and bleeding and his head felt as if it would burst. He could barely move a muscle on account of the sheer agony he felt and blood welled from his broken nose. Even his sight was blurry and he felt as if he was more dead than alive. Once again he had been cruelly beaten up by the drug addict he was forced to address as his father and he was in worse condition than ever this time.
Eddy was a unlucky person who always seemed to be at the wrong place at the wrong time through no fault of his own. He was born to a drug addicted father who had been a drug addict ever since the death of Eddy's mother, who Eddy's father thought meant everything to him. Eddy's mother died giving birth to Eddy, who was born prematurely and whose only way to live was if his mother died.
It was a sad situation where only mother or child could live, and Eddy's mother heroically decided that Eddy deserved a chance to live and be happy. Eddy's mother made the ultimate sacrifice, and Eddy felt that to commit suicide would shame the good name of his good mother. Eddy therefore saw it as his responsibility to endure his miserable life however unfair and pointless it was.
His father blamed Eddy for the death of his wife, had his wife not been so selfless and so desperate to bring Eddy into this world then he was sure she would still be living with him today. Eddy knew very little about his mother, but from what his father told him on his calmer days, Eddy could make a fairly good guess as to why his father loved his deceased mother so much.
From what Eddy overhead when his father was muttering furiously to himself, Eddy knew that his mother's facebook nickname was "Hotgirl46". Eddy overheard that his mother had beautiful blue eyes that glittered like sapphires and a innocent and carefree smile that would cheer up even the most depressed person
His mother's name, was Angel. At least, that was what Eddy overheard one day as his father grumbled to himself. Eddy knew that every time he listened in to his father's semi crazed rantings he risked death from his abusive father, but Eddy was itching to learn more about the adorable mother he would never meet unless he was to pass over to the other side.
Another time he managed to overhear that his mother was a surgeon. A surgeon so skilled that one time she was able to save the life of a man who came into hospital with fourteen bullet wounds in his body, and five of them in his brain. Both kind and clever, his mother really was the best chance any man had of staying alive. They called her "the life giver"and she never prioritized her own life or well being over the life of her patients.
Eddy understood why his father would regret his loss so badly and being the selfless child he was, Eddy tried his best not to hate his father.
But his father did horrible things to Eddy even though Eddy tried his very best to be a good boy who made no mistakes. Eddy did nearly all the chores in the house while his father spent his days slumped into a sofa watching sofa, completely negligent of his duties as a father who had promised to his wife that he would always take good care of their baby boy. That was what Eddy's father had promised to his mother on his deathbed.
Yet from the age of two, Eddy was forced to do all the chores around the house. Mowing the lawn, cleaning the floor, scrubbing the bathtub and repainting the porch were all his jobs. And despite the fact Eddy was as selfless as his mother and did it all without complaints and to the best of his ability, his father was still not pleased. "Faster you fat little shit" yelled his father when Eddy ran up and down the house trying to complete each chore to the best of his ability.
One time, Eddy accidentally broke a plate. He tried his best to be careful but alas, even the most careful of human beings made small mistakes. And though Eddy immediately set to work to clean the pieces up and apologized desperately to his father, his father flew into a hellish rage and began to cruelly smack him with a baseball bat which happened to be lying around. Eddy whimpered as he cringed under the blows, doing his best to defend himself.
Fortunately the baseball bat was old and so it broke somewhat more quickly than Eddy would have expected but by the end of the beating, the damage was done. Eddy's skull was mercifully spared but Eddy's arms were badly shattered from when he raised them to defend his skull. His legs were battered too, and walking was nigh impossible for him.
His furious father was finally exhausted and left the room, but not before giving Eddy another heavy blow to the nose, giving Eddy a severe nosebleed and a horrible drowsy sensation. It was with great effort that night, that Eddy managed to drag himself to his room and try his best to fall asleep on the hard wooden floor he had as a bed. If his father caught him sleeping on the sofa, there would be hell to pay.
The beating Eddy suffered that day when he was but three years of age was dehumanizing, to say the least. Yet that was not the only beating his father would give him. If you were to sit here listening while I gave you a complete narration of all the times Eddy was given severe beatings even worse than the one I already described to you then we would still be here when we were old and wrinkled. Suffice it to say, Eddy's childhood was a living hell.
"But dad, its not my fault" protested Eddy one day when he felt he could take no more of this inhumane treatment. Eddy wished he had not said that because the next second, Eddy's father ran to the kitchen and pulled out a large kitchen knife. "It is your fault, you little piece of shit" declared his father. furiously.
"It is" shouted the father of Eddy, his shouts getting louder and louder. "It is, it is, IT ISSSSS!". Eddy was forced to cover his ears to protect himself from the ear piercing noises that assaulted his poor ears and even then Eddy felt as if his shattered eardrums would never fully recover.
"She would still be alive if she wasn't so desperate to save you" explained Eddy's father "She would still be here, alive and well" "I told her not to do it" growled Eddy's father "I told her to just let it happen but she didn't listen. And now she's gone".
"Look at me" bellowed Eddy's father with a shout that shook the walls "Look at what I've become. Look at how I've become addicted to smoking and alcohol. Now I can't even go one day without a jab of heroine. I hate drugs but now I'm a drug addict. Do you know why?"
Eddy didn't trust himself to reply so he simply shrugged. "It's because she isn't here to help me anymore" shouted Eddy's father, putting the knife to Eddy's throat. Eddy gasped as he felt the cold and sharp metal against his neck. "She kept me away from my demons but now that she isn't here anymore, I can't stop myself anymore. God help me!" screamed Eddy's father painfully. It was clear Eddy's father was in terrible grief and sorrow and Eddy did feel a shade of pity for him despite the fact Eddy's life was now on the line because of his father.
"Dad" sobbed Eddy as he shuddered uncontrollably from fear "Please just let it go. What's happened has happened. Please don't kill me, it wasn't my fault. And you promised mom you would take care of me. If you kill me now you're breaking your promise. Does that mean nothing to you, dad?"
"Nothing whatsoever" replied his father, grinning maniacally "It was you're fault you're mother's dead. You killed her and now, you're gonna pay for what you did to me. I was too kind not doing this sooner but now I'm going to do it. I'm going to kill you so you can finally go and apologize to your poor mother for what you did to her"
"Dad" whispered Eddy "I'm sorry I have to do this". And he managed with supernatural speed to dart out of the way just as his father swung the cleaver. His father's reflexes were fortunately a bit poor in his intoxicated state and this bought Eddy the fraction of a second which he needed to escape the fatal wound his father would have inflicted on him. His father was off balance after such a powerful swing and Eddy ran, not daring to look back.
Eddy's father followed but so much consumption of alcohol and heroine had made him clumsy and he tripped. Eddy sprinted towards the backdoor, only to find it locked. Oh god, and his father would be upon him in seconds.
A shot of adrenaline surged through Eddy as he instead hurled himself through an open window. He fell through the gap in the window and onto the lawn, slightly dazed. Not daring to even glance back, Eddy clambered over the fence of his garden and dropped onto the street behind his house, it was no easy job considering he was but six years of age. "Come back here you little piece of crap" demanded his father but Eddy ignored the sound as best he could and desperately sprinted down the pavement.
HOmeless
Eddy had escaped with his life, but now he had nowhere to go. But at least here, he would not be subjected to inhumane mistreatment and perhaps if he were lucky he might even find someone who would finally give him the love he had wanted since he was a baby. But alas, our poor little boy was dead wrong.
The streets of America were no place for an inexperienced young hobo, and once again it was a case of wrong time and wrong place for poor Eddy. It was said that the rich should help the poor but in the dirty and rotten neighborhood Eddy lived in, such a rule did not apply. Eddy got no sympathy from anyone. Day after day he would knock on door after door pleading for someone to help him. "Go back to your mommy, creep" taunted one man as he slammed the door in Eddy's face.
"Get the hell out of here, you freak" commanded another man as he kicked Eddy hard in the shin before slamming the door.
"But I'm cold and hungry, my parent's threw me away" begged Eddy at another house. "Don't give a damn" replied the young woman standing in the doorway with her daughter. "Yeah, go away you fucker" jeered the daughter. Not waiting to be told again, Eddy ran away and spent the rest of the night in an alleyway unable to fall asleep lest some maniac ambush him in his sleep.
Eddy tried to get a job, but with no degrees and barely able to read or write, he had no chance. "Too young, go away" barked a farmer when Eddy begged him for a job.
"You stink, get lost. Go home to your mommy, you son of a bitch" sneered a pizza shop owner when Eddy asked politely whether the shop was looking to hire another employee after seeing a help wanted sign on the door. When Eddy once again begged the man for a job claiming he would die if he didn't eat soon, the man punched Eddy in the stomach and called the police and held Eddy in a headlock until the police came.
The police gave Eddy forty lashes with a whip and confiscated Eddy's jacket which was the only thing keeping Eddy warm from the freezing cold outside, before throwing Eddy out onto the snow-filled street and leaving Eddy to shiver in the freezing cold.
How Eddy met his two friends
Eddy was slowly but surely starving to death. At six years of age, Eddy was emaciated and incredibly thin. The only food Eddy had to live on, was leftovers that had been thrown into rubbish bins but even these were incredibly hard to come by. He drank from gutters and sometimes rivers , not able to question whether the water from them was safe or not. It was either that, or dehydration. Why he managed to go so long without getting cholera, no one knew.
People seemed to despise Eddy for no apparent reason, and poor Eddy never understood why. He tried to be as polite as possible to anyone he met, but they did not return the favor. They never did. And Eddy came to despise all grown ups, believing them to all be inconsiderate devils.
One winters night as Eddy lay outside a station, waiting for the end to come as he knew he would not live long in the freezing cold with no food and no blankets to keep him warm. He had explored the entire city he lived in, searching for a job of some sort. He was no better than when he began his search.
That was when he saw two other young men like him, clustered around a makeshift fire under a bridge not far from where he was . They appeared to be homeless like he was and about the same age as him.
Eddy had grown incredibly paranoid over the course of his life, and despite the fact they looked friendly enough he was reluctant to approach. Why would they be any different from the other unkind and evil people he had begged for help from. And yet as Eddy looked into the fire and envied the warmth it must be offering to the twp beggars who sat around it, he knew that it was his only chance. With that thought in mind he began to crawl desperately towards the fire but before he had even made it halfway, exhaustion overtook him and he collapsed. "H, help me" he pleaded with his last breath as freezing cold corrupted his lungs and he lost consciousness.
"This is it, I'm going to die" he thought as he drifted away into blackness.
He woke up around the fire, next to the two beggars he met earlier. Now he could see them more clearly. One of them wore a brown cardigan and wore a black ski hat which covered his hair. The other wore a green jacket and had short brown hair which had clearly been left uncombed for ages. They both wore blue jeans.
The two strangers introduced themselves as Edd(aka: double D) and Ed. Edd was the one who wore the ski hat, and Ed was the one who did not. They explained to Eddy that they found him lying on the ground unconscious and how they brought him to safety. Eddy looked and saw how they had wrapped a thick blanket around him for warmth.
Eddy nervously asked to be given some food and the two strangers gave him the last of their rations, a bag of crisps. Eddy devoured it greedily and after thanking the two other children for their kindness, asked if they could be friends or not. The two children happily agreed and for the first time in his life, Eddy had friends who cared about him.
The three friends lived together happily for some time. They took great pleasure from each others company, especially Eddy who finally had something like a family. They exchanged stories about how they had become homeless and when Eddy told his story, the others were shocked and absolutely gutted.
"But you're here with us now, and you know we'd never let anything happen to you, right Eddy" asked Edd. "Yeah, thank you" replied Eddy gratefully.
Eddy vowed to himself that one day, he would return the favor for the two friends that had saved his life. He crossed his heart.
Death.
It had been a fortnight since Eddy met his two new friends when Eddy woke up and was shocked to see his two friends coughing violently. They coughed up blood and seemed far too weak to get up. Eddy knew what this was, he saw it in a documentary once. This was tuberculosis and if his two friends did not get antibiotics soon, they would be dead within just 3 days.
There was a pharmacy store not far from the bridge where they slept and Eddy knew it held the drugs his friends so badly needed. Wasting no time, Eddy realized that though what he was about to do was somewhat immoral, leaving his two best friends to die when it was they who had saved his life, was far worse.
Eddy rushed to the pharmacist and was relieved to find it was still closed and that the shelves were lined with medicines. Quickly Eddy grabbed a large rock from the pavement and set to work. He smashed at the glass window until he had made a gap large enough for himself and he rushed in.
Eddy roared with delight as he grabbed a shopping basket and after he found the correct shelf, he loaded as many of the relevant antibiotics as he could. On another shelf he found several bottles of water and Eddy took a couple of these as well.
Then Eddy rushed out of the shop with the stolen medicine, eager to tell his friends the good news that they would not die anytime soon.
But that was when, they came. Two figures emerged from a nearby alleyway and tackled him to the ground.
"You can stop right there, you dork" snarled one figure. "Looks like we've got ourselves another hobo to harass, eh Rolf?"
"Ah yes Kevin, and this idiot certainly looks like he needs a good thrashing" replied the other figure gleefully.
"Who are you and what do you want?" demanded Eddy.
"I'm Kevin" stated one figure, a boy with a brown jacket and a red baseball cap on his head. "And I am Rolf, son of a shepherd" stated the other figure bluntly.
"Let me go" begged Eddy, "let me go, please".
"No way, dork" growled Kevin "Hobo dorks like you make me mad, You need to be taught a lesson". "But I haven't done anything" protested Eddy "I don't even know..."
Eddy was cut off as Kevin wrapped his arm around Eddy's neck, cutting off his wind. Kevin laughed maniacally as he strangled the poor Eddy.
"Rolf, call the police, this dork needs to go to prison for breaking and entering that shop" sneered Kevin.
"But my friends need this medicine" choked Eddy desperately "they'll die if they don't have it"
Kevin ignored him and held him tighter than ever while Rolf mercilessly dialed 911
Soon the police arrived and poor Eddy was taken to prison. On the way to prison, Eddy saw a blonde girl staring at him through sorrowful, apologetic eyes. "Help me" mouthed Eddy desperately, but the blonde female only dashed away, leaving Eddy alone as he went to jail.
Eddy was taken into a prison soon, where the police told him that he would get life without parole in jail. "Please, let me save my friends" begged Eddy "please don't let my friends die" but the police ignored him.
Eddy was not about to spend the rest of his life in jail when his friends still needed medical attention. He was their only hope.
Knowing this, just as he was about to be thrown into his cell, Eddy broke free of the policeman's grasp and tried desperately to flee.
But the police shot him before he had gone a yard. As Eddy died, he realized he had failed in his quest to save his two friends from death by tuberculosis. He had a brief glimpse of his two friends as they succumbed to the illness and fell asleep, never to wake again.
Then his thoughts turned to the blonde girl he saw just as the police were about to throw him into jail. He had seen her before that and his final thoughts as he died was, why didn't she help him if she truly felt sorry for him?
Aftermath
Eddy was unable to enter heaven when he died, on account of the fact he had committed robbery. It appeared that even God despised Eddy when he had not done anything wrong and though Eddy was not placed in hell, god did the second worst thing. He placed Eddy''s soul into purgatory where till this day, Eddy has remained.
Nowadays, when Eddy does try to get money from the other children sentenced to the purgatory, he wishes he could do it fairly but because even in purgatory Eddy is denied a job, he must do it by scams which constantly backfire at him. He only wants money because if he does not eat enough jawbreakers, then he will descend down to hell and so will his friends.
Jawbreakers keep Eddy from hell, and only when Eddy eats enough jawbreakers can he finally be atoned for his crimes and only then can he go to heaven. Jawbreakers also remind Eddy of the one good time he had in his life, the day when he ate a delicious jawbreaker.
That memory, is the only blissful thing Eddy remembers from his life of misery and sorrow and even in purgatory, he yearns to relish it just once more.