Waylon watches as Eddie enters his room. Waylon is safe up in a vent with his camera, and is about to move on when he notices something rather...odd happening. Suddenly Eddie isn't acting like a madman. Suddenly Eddie isn't humming that dreadful, creepy song. He sits on the edge of the dirty matress, the springs groaning with his weight. He buries his scarred face into trembling, calloused hands and just...stays. His shoulders are shaking, but still Eddie emits no noise. Nothing. Silence. Waylon is perplexed at his actions, and a part of him wants to stay and watch what happens. The other, more logical part of him tells him to get the fuck out of here, he's wasting time. But since when has Waylon listened to the logical part of himself recently?
So Waylon laid in the vents for about an hour, watching Eddie's every move. Then he heard a dripping sound, with the soft splat of water hitting the floor. At first he thought it was a leaky pipe, but then it dawned on him.
Eddie was crying.
Waylon knew what had happened to Eddie when he was young, how his Father and Uncle abused him and his Mother didn't care about him. Waylon knew Eddie hadn't always been insane, and wondered if even now he still cried over it.
It really was not Eddie's fault, was it? When Waylon thought about it, he hated Eddie. Even so, he pitied him. He was sick, and nobody ever tried to help him,did they? Being at Mount Massive had only made his illness worse, and now Eddie had no hope of ever coming back. Waylon was jostled from his thoughts as Eddie slowly stood up and knelt beside a wooden dresser near the bed, opening a drawer to pick up something gold and shiny. Waylon frowned. It was a golden locket. The beautiful piece of jewelry seemed so clean and out of place in this hell hole. Eddie gently pried it open to gaze inside of it. Waylon was too far away to see what was inside, and was becoming far too curious for his own good. Luckily, there was a loud crash outside the room. Eddie was quick to place the locket inside the drawer and shut it before walking out the door and down the hall. Waylon battled with the Pros and Cons of jumping into Eddie's lair again, but basically muttered 'what the hell' and jumped out of the vent and onto the dingy bed, shuffling over to the mini dresser and pulling the locket out of the drawer. Waylon opened it, and was only puzzled further by what he saw. A picture of Eddie, but with someone else. A girl, a really pretty girl, perhaps about 4 or 5 years older than his boys. And they were hugging. Eddie was smiling, not creepily but genuinely. And he looked different, handsome. His face was unscarred, his eyes not bloodshot. He had an arm around the girl's waist, her chocolate eyes bright and her long,dark, wavy hair falling on Eddie's chest. Was this Eddie's daughter? Waylon inspected their features closer. No, she looks too different from him. Girlfriend, perhaps? But Eddie killed all the girls who got close to him...not this one, apparently. He looked in the drawer for more clues, and immediately spotted a crumpled up piece of paper. Waylon gently unraveled it, and began to read the shaky handwriting.
Dear Eddie,
I'm so, so sorry... I didn't want this to happen...
Waylon recognized it as a suicide note. There was a falling feeling in Waylon's stomach. He'd seen many suicide notes before, but none of them had hit him like this. Maybe it was because the only person Eddie had ever really cared about killed herself, or maybe it was because she was so young. Either way, Waylon felt like an asshole. Did Eddie find her body? Oh, god... was she still alive when he got to her?
How could one man suffer alone through so much shit?
"Darling...what are you doing?"
Waylon felt his whole body
freeze at the familiar voice.
