Well, after a too long a while, I've finally got around to submitting something fresh and new on here. I felt like doing something along the same lines of 'ave maria' or 'adoration of she', a Silent Hill fic that focused more the dysfunctional characters that inhabit the world of Silent Hill rather than the more f.u.b.a.r'ed elements. Eddie, though not a character I particularly like, was the first to jump to mind and I for one feel as though he's a pretty under-appreciated guy considering how messed up he was…
…and I'll just shut up and get on with the story before everyone realises what a pretentious twit I am.
From Down Here, It Ain't So Funny
Even before the gun's scream died away, Eddie Dombrowski knew he was fucked.
In the space of a lone instant, that all-natural high that had set his nerves a buzzing turned into something thick and sick and heavy that clogged up his veins, leaving him wanting to puke it all up onto the gravel. The sounds of urban life that had floated on the air had turned to nothing but silence in the following quiet, as if everything from the brick wall lining the ally to the trash cans pilled up against it had turned their unblinking eyes onto the man, boring into him to see just where this was going as the centre of their attention took a weighted step back so he himself could get a better view of what he'd just gone and brought crashing down on his own thick head….Yes, yes, from back here he could see yet another of his cock up in all it's glory… But this one really was the mother-load.
The first thing that came into view was the little scrap of fuzzy, tawny dog; little due to the fact that everything past its third rib had turned into a tangled, oozing mess of gory, wet red. Its black puplis were encircled by a thin ring of manic white as its motionless eyes tried to comprehend where the majority of its body had gone. Its rubbery, disfigured lips drawn back to reveal a mouth full of teeth and lolling tongue which were going to do nothing more than dry out and eventually summon the flies forth from where they nested within the dark, rancid hollows of the aluminium bins. From here… it almost looked as though the dead mutt had laughed its ass off. Literally.
Eddie couldn't stop his own lip ride back, tugged up to reveal his blunter teeth by the poisonous hatred that coursed through very fibre of his being.
That smug little dip-shit… it was laughing at him. It was lying there in its own messy gore busting a gut, and all at Eddie's expense because it… it knew it had got one over him and got him in this whole damn mess in the first place. On paper, it was a simple plan but hey, we all know what they say about the best laid plans, eh? All he'd wanted on this ruddy skied Sunday afternoon was a little solace… a little bit of that respect which every one and their brother seemed to have a slice of.
… Except for Eddie Dombrowski. And then that stupid dog had to go screw up everything.
According to the plan, at exactly three-forty five, Eddie would be waiting, coiled up behind the dumpsters in the ally way behind the foot-ball pitch. The heavy magnum that had spent the best of its days being eyed up by the lumbering man like a piece of cheep eye candy as it gathered dust behind the display window of Harris Street's very own pawn shop would be gripped tightly in his sweaty mitt. Mr. Dooly, the pencil necked man who was most possibly the stingiest homosapien to ever been born into the world had eyed Eddie sharply as he pointed out the beefy fire-arm with a finger positively quivering with anticipation.
"You sure you know how to handle a thing like that, Dombrowski?" The grey-skin man had hacked away with that tobacco enriched voice of his. "I don't want to hear you're in the hospital with all your toes blown off any time soon, eh?" Eddie had said nothing as he handed over his hard earned cash to the man whose head had rocked back and wide mouth and gone and done just what everyone always did.
He laughed.
Something hot which burnt like acid has started its familiar bubbling in the depths of Eddie's gut, chewing up everything it touched with a malicious set of teeth. The man in the sad and grubby baseball cap let his free hand shoot out over the desk, snatching up that pencil-necked dweeb by his thin, wiry crop of hair and rammed his face into the counter with enough force to reduce his features to nothing but red and cracked bone-
Oh wait, no he didn't. Instead of beating the living daylights out of the clerk, Eddie merely gritted his teeth into a forced smile as he let the violent fantasy play over and over and over and over in his head like a duff LP that wanted to sing the same old bar of music until someone stopped the jiving of the skipping needle, just like every other time. But then today, Eddie was going to get his own back on this world that seemed to have nothing better to do that level its finger at the dumpy, over-weight, dead beat and kill itself laughing…
… which brings us back to the plan. With gun in hand, Eddie would bide his time until ten to four when the football practice would come to a timely close and all those dumb-jocks would saunter off home, hawking and gaffing like the brainless hulks of muscle they were. Only one of them, a Frankie Welch took this particular rout home, this quiet, secluded route that lead far away from prying eyes and burning ears. On passing the spot where Eddie had drenched himself in the shadows of littering, unwanted clutter, the latter would leap out, gun in hand and see if Welch still wanted to split his sides when he force fed him that cold barrel of steel. At seven minuets to four, Frankie would have dropped the tough guy-bravado having dissolved into a blubbering mess, pleading with Eddie not to blow of that pretty little head of his and decorate the quiet ally with its brainless content.
Sitting there amongst the stink of trashed furniture and last night's suppers, Eddie had been forced to cram a fist into his mouth to stifle the giggles that were rattling away in his throat. Oh, this was going to be good.
Sure, Welch wasn't the worst of his antagonists but he was up there with the best of them. Eddie had made his acquaintance pre-school and had never managed to escape him and the taunts and the jokes and the abuse for the rest of his academic life. There'd always be the snide remark as Welch purposely barged passed him in the hallway, always making the extra effort to shove Eddie with a hard shoulder that felt as though it was padded with iron.
Welch had always been one of those kids who was a winner. He didn't care if he didn't get the best grades of all time; they were good enough to keep his ass in school and anyways, he always had the coolest friends, the hottest chicks and the wildest parties to go to. The Dombrowski kid on the other hand, well, he was a loser and it was people like Frankie who never let the fat, dumb kid with the crazy, Polish father who earned peanuts cleaning out septic tanks forget it.
Even for a minuet.
The worst of it all had to be that time he'd tried out for the football team. Eddie loved football. Eddie loved football an awful lot. His father had never understood why his kid would spend hours in front of the TV, huddled up before it like a worshiper knelt before some revered alter, intoxicated by its holy magic while demi-gods danced across its screen. He'd told the boy it was stupid and he should spend all this time trying to get those stinking grades up or even speaking to the other children, that way he'd learn to fit in… but young Eddie didn't listen. No, he kept on kindling his dream that maybe, just maybe one day he could join his heroes and become one of those faultless deities that were loved by one and all. Needless to say, the boy was over the moon when he found out that he could kick and throw like the best of his peers and he was soaring so high off into space he gave his stalking inhibitions the slip and went to the football try outs.
Frankie and his mob of cronies had also decided that they were sports-man material and the moment they saw Eddie there positively buzzing with excitement they did the natural thing to do.
They laughed, oh how they laughed. The prospect of that lump of cross-eyed lard even thinking he could get his flabby ass onto the team was enough to floor one or two of them.
"Hey, Dombrowski!" They'd called. "Doesn't all that fat weigh you down when you try and kick the ball?"
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-"
"Can you even catch a ball with an IQ of ten?
"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH-"
"We wouldn't want you to lose your only brain cell in a tackle!"
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH-"
"Forget the brain cell, think about what the guy on the other end of that would look like! Flatter than a god damn pancake!"
And so on and so forth. Even the coach raised a smile when he glanced up to see what the ruckus was all about and that was enough to burry Eddie's one dream that he'd done his best to nurture six feet under. He'd slumped away from the foot ball pitch, trying to hold it together for long enough to get out of view before all that hate and hurt which had been building up finally trickled out from his clammy eyes. All the while as he dragged himself away, the sound of high laugher came skipping after him, it's sharp sound slashing his ears to ribbons.
Nothing had ever topped that day, not even when Lizzy Morgan let fly with the fact that Eddie couldn't get it up and, even though she'd been obscenely hammered at that party, she'd tried to spark it into life "Just because she felt sorry for a guy who was eighteen and probably didn't know what pussy was even if it went up and rubbed itself on his leg."
No one laughed at her for going down (or at least trying to) on Eddie since all that was, of course, reserved for the latter.
Of course, education doesn't last forever but some things stayed the same after graduation; Welch still kicked footballs, Eddie was still a hopeless nobody and everyone still laughed.
Well, today was going to be the day of retribution… or at least that had been the plan. You see, someone else had come trotting down the ally a little before Frankie Welch, and that someone was Mia. Mia was a small, red haired bitch who was the soul companion of Miss. Martha Jacobes and had little patients for anyone who wasn't the god-knows-how-old-crone who seemed to never fail to stink of over-boiled cabbage.
Mia was also a welsh corgi.
The little furry tube of fat and muscle came to a halt and it fixed its beady, black eyes on Eddie as he lay curled up amongst the garbage.
"Scram!" Eddie hissed at the dog while he strained his ears, desperately listening out for the sounds that signalled Welch was strutting along the back ally. "Go on, get outta here!"
Mia merely cocked her shaggy head at this, paying not the slightest bit of heed to the hand cannon the man amongst the trash was waving at her. She retorted with a yappy bark. Eddie jammed a finger to his puffy lips and shushed the dog, sure he could hear the far off sound of sneakers slapping the pavement, however, Mia clearly didn't see him as an authority figure so kept on pumping that dry yip out of her mouth. Eddie felt the sweat begin to ooze out of his pours as he tried again, now one hundred percent sure he could hear Welch coming.
"Go away, you'll ruin everything!" He croaked at the dog who was not complying with his plea for silence and suddenly something flared through him, yanking his arm up at the dog who still didn't shut up. She was still barking her stupid little bark as Eddie, without thinking, applied a little pressure to the trigger and the gun erupted, spitting metal faster than the human eye could follow. Mia was still going as her hind quarters disappeared in a cloud of harsh, crimson red and the dog tumbled back from the force of the shot, except now, as she lay their in the reniments of her guts and gore, she was screaming.
And screaming.
And screaming.
Despite the fact that the majority of his brain was hollering something along the lines of 'oh shit', there was a tiny fraction of his grey matter that sparked, fizzing with excitement at the sight of the splattered red and pink as clotting the writhing Mia's fur and slickly coating the tarmac that she was rolling about on as if her ever weakening efforts could put out the pain that had set her ablaze. Eddie stared at the dog as it bucked, slowly unfurling from his hiding place as he stooped nearer and took a closer look as the still-breathing mess. The rolling eyes, the flicks of spittle that came drooling and flying from her twisted mouth as she yipped and squealed like a stuck pig and, of course, that big hole that just wouldn't stop oozing; all of this Eddie's saucer-wide eyes drank in. He looked from the now sluggishly twitching two-thirds of a dog to the still smoking gun clasped by his thick fingers and back to Mia as he slowly began to put two and two together and got four. He, Eddie Dombrowski, had done this. He had levelled the gun and, for a split second, had held this sad creature's life in his hands.
He had taken it.
For a moment, Eddie had been god.
Mia gave one final rasp as her brain finally gave up trying to stay afloat of the agonising tide that had crashed over it and the stooped man found the corners of his mouth twitching upwards into a sadistic smile. He liked that though, he liked it very much and Eddie would probably carry on enjoying it if Welch hadn't brought him back down to earth by announcing his arrival on the scene by so eloquently verbalising his though.
"What the FUCK?"
Eddie turned, the moisture of his mouth seemingly evaporating as that sense of worth and pride which had budded so fruitfully rotted away and shrivelled up into something dry and rancid.
"It…it's not what it looks like…" Eddie was vaguely aware of a mouth that felt as though it was a mile away warbling those weak words as his eyes raced between the dog with its moist guts akimbo for all the world to see and a wide-eyed Welch who was taking full advantage of the gory attraction. Shock melted into disgust which was quickly shattered by something black and angry that punched through the features of the newcomer's face. For the first time since he'd rounded the corner and come across this grisly Frankie looked at Eddie, peeling his eyes away from the still warm rag of versica and matted crimson fur.
"Oh really?" Frankie's lips finally creaked into motion. As soon as the dust was shifted, the machinery started whirling at its old, familiar pace. "Because from here it looks like you've just gone and plugged one into that dog." That far away mouth that didn't really feel attached to him at all flopped open, but this time, Eddie couldn't hear it's distant sounds. Oh Jesus, he was in it now.
"God!" Frankie spat, watching the man fumble for words that just wouldn't come from the corner of a keenly slitted eye. "I knew you were a mess, Dombrowski, but I never, never imagined you were so screwed up!" The jock had begun to pace as the words came rolling out. Suddenly, his feet jammed and he rounded on his peer, jabbing a finger into his fleshy gut like a switch-blade. "Did it make you feel like a big man, huh? Is that why you did it, blowing some little, harmless mutt away with that god damn hand cannon? Were you trying to prove something?" Suddenly that ridged finger that was probing into Eddie's gut retraced into a hard fist that pumped into his stomach with enough force to send the air packing from his lungs in an ugly wheeze. Eddie was vaguely aware of his legs giving out under him as the gravel below surged up to meet him while he choked on nothing. Something exploded against his side, sending him sprawling as Welch fired of a kick that could send a football soaring directly into the downed man's rib cage. "I can't hear you, ya dumb shit!" Welch crooned as he drew his foot back, priming it for another kick.
"Pathetic"
Kick
"piece"
Kick
"of"
Kick
"Crap"
The foot drove home for a final time and this time something deep inside Eddie broke. Something thick and hot came pouring from the cracks and flooded into his system. Shakily, his lifted the hand holding the gun and trained it on Welch. The foot stayed where it was, firmly implanted in his side as his target froze, the grin smacked across his face slowly sagging at the edges as his eyes when wide.
But then he laughed. His head slumped back and he laughed.
"Oh god Eddie, you're too much!" Welch managed to get out in hitched breaths. "What the hell do you think you're going to do? Kill me? Jesus, you're already going down over that stupid dog so quite while your ahead."
The magnum had started to shake as Eddie's hand began to faultier. The venom running through him had worked its way to his eyes and was slowly starting to seep out. It wasn't meant to be this way… Frankie was supposed to be the one on the ground being crushed under-foot, not him. He'd failed as he always did and that burnt him, setting every cell in his body fizzing with violent furry. Eddie felt like he was going to exploded and rocketed to his feet.
"You don't have the balls, Dombrow-"
And that was when the gun went off a second time, which very neatly brings us back to where this all stated with that sense of hopelessness dawning on Eddie with all the clarity of a super-nova.
Welch fell back, hitting the ground with a soft whump as the blood blossomed from the gory hole that had once been his left knee cap. Eddie shambled to his feet in time to be hit full on by the twisted screams that were erupting from Frankie's gapping mouth as the man hollered for all his worth, his bone white face contorting as it retched its unintelligible ode to pain. Eddie put a hand to his head, the fingers groping madly at the hair as they wormed their way under his baseball cap and writhed their.
"Ohshitohshitohshitohshit"
He had to do something… anything to stop that noise. Someone by now would have heard the gun shot and screaming and alerted the cops and, oh god, once they got their hands on him…
"Shut up! I can't think with you making all that noise!" Eddie suddenly found himself shouting at the wailing heap that had not retreated into a foetal curl but it just wouldn't stop yowling and clawing at the dirt just like that god damn dog that had got him in this mess in the first place. The gun had trained itself on the pitiful form but from behind the barrel and through the tears that had misted up his vision, Eddie could see how much it was shaking.
Pathetic… it was all just so pathetic.
With a warbling sob, Eddie turned tail and ran as fast as his legs could carry him, away from the still screaming testament of what a failure he was. Already, he could hear the rising and falling sound of a siren somewhere far of in the distance link some inhumane bout of cruel laughter. As he bolted through the back streets, Eddie couldn't blame it for finding the situation so hilarious.
A/N- so there we go. I hope that was somewhat amusing and as always I must apologies for any funky spellings… oh and the fact that I've left 'where I end and you begin' hanging for about half a year. I wouldn't blame you for not believing me when I say I intend to carry on with that, it's just that I physically cannot type that story since it seems to become nothing but waffle so have resorted to writing it out on full on paper before sticking it up. However, I have been thinking of continuing this and turning it into a story about Eddie and anther SH2 character's interpretation of Silent Hill since that could be kinda fun but until then, t t f n.