Eddie screamed. His feet flailed as if to start running, but his back was on the floor of the trailer. He grabbed something metal, tried to pull himself up. It toppled over and took him to the ground. Eddie kept his grip on the thing–a chair–and pushed, levering his weight high enough to get his feet under him, high enough so he could reach the door. Something thudded onto to the floor behind him, the shock of it vibrating through the trailer. He didn't look, just turned the handle and leaned forward, let gravity take him down the stairs. Keys were in his hand somehow. He couldn't think, he only knew he had to go - go now. Now he was in his van, now he was driving, how was any of this possible? It didn't matter as long as he was getting the hell away from whatever was in his trailer.

Chrissy is in the trailer.

He didn't stop driving. Didn't turn around. Useless. He had to go faster. Was he even on the road? Didn't matter. He pushed the pedal to the floor over and over as the engine moaned in protest. The van wasn't going fast enough.

"Jesus CHRIST!" He screamed at the windshield and feared he might be wetting himself like a child. He couldn't stop moving. It wasn't safe. Nothing would be safe ever again. All he could do was keep driving. There were no other cars on the road. He was alone. Was everyone else gone? Maybe they were dead. Chrissy was dead. Killed. Something killed her. Eddie accelerated into the darkness.

For a dizzy while he saw nothing but trees and road, but then the lake came into view. He thought, wildly, of driving into it, of plowing into the water and sinking into the dark. No. The van would fill with pressure. It would crush him. No. He'd lost sight of the road. Time to get out. Eddie stomped on the brakes and opened the door at the same time, tumbled out before he put it in park. The van was still rolling as he started running. Had he even killed the engine or grabbed the keys? Who cares. His feet were on the ground and he was sprinting. He pushed himself, faster, legs pumping, head down, couldn't get enough speed. Every second he expected it–the hook to his back, the noose around his neck–he didn't know what it would be. Like one of those toy cranes with the claw that grabbed cheap toys in an arcade game, something was going to snatch him up. Any moment now his feet would leave the ground and he would go flying into the air, but there was no roof here to stop him. How high would it pull him? Above the trees? Into the clouds? A wave of vertigo rushed through him and the ground turned sideways. He flung out his arms to catch himself, but there was nothing to grab. For one hideous moment he thought he was flying upwards, but then his shoulder hit the earth with a thud that knocked his teeth together. He lay where he landed on the wet leaves, dug his fingers into the dirt, clutched at roots to hold himself in place.

Do you ever feel like you're losing your mind?

Eddie felt more than he heard a noise squeezing out of his throat, a rasping scream he tried to muffle with his arm pressed against his mouth. He curled inward, trying to hide. A bug without a shell.

It had finally happened. He'd actually gone insane. It always seemed like a real possibility, and now here he was. Out of his mind. Unless- He bit down on his tongue, hard, until his eyes watered and he tasted metal. He spat and swore, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He wasn't dreaming. This wasn't a nightmare. It couldn't be a trip, could it? A really awful trip? Maybe Rick's product had been laced with something bad. Is that why he'd finally landed in prison? Eddie had heard of stuff like that happening - poisons and toxins and who knows what shit mixed in where it shouldn't be. But had he even taken anything? He shifted position so he could breathe better, think better, and tried to remember exactly when he might have ingested something.

He hadn't toked before Hellfire, never did. It was too important for him to stay on top of everything, remember every storyline, count every roll quickly. He drank caffeinated sodas to keep sharp. Maybe smoked a joint afterwards, to relax and wind down, but not today. He had agreed to meet Chrissy after the game and there wasn't time to get distracted. He hadn't touched anything while he drove, either, not even the cigarette he craved. Chrissy perched on the passenger's seat of his littered van like a beautiful little bird in a dirty cage. She seemed too nervous and distracted to care if he smoked, but he didn't want any ash to get on her white sweater or in her glossy hair. Poor thing looked like a bundle of nerves, he thought. She had made some small talk when she got in, but it sounded forced, and she had given up quickly. He didn't bother trying to talk either, had turned up the music instead to drown out the awkwardness and tension. Whenever he took a corner, Chrissy grabbed the edges of the seat. He should have slowed down with her in the car, but he couldn't. He'd always had a lead foot. The roads were mostly empty, anyway, and he got them home without incident. There wasn't anything unusual about the trailer park when they got out of the van. No odd fumes or lurking strangers. The only thing out of the ordinary there was Chrissy. He unlocked the door and held it open for her, watching as she stepped past him into his trailer. A sight for sore eyes if ever there was one.

What happened next? Maybe he found the ketamine right away in the first place he looked, and brought it over to her. They could have sat on the couch, side by side, to snort it. Maybe he took a hit to show her how it's done, and then she'd copied him. It would have kicked in quickly, like he promised. Chrissy might have turned her blissed out face to his and smiled at him, content because he had given her what she wanted. He would have been feeling it too, and been pleased with himself for pleasing her. They would have sat there together, high and happy as two kites in a breeze. He could have put his arm around her shoulders as she leaned against him, and they would have held on to each other as they floated peacefully away. Then what? The poison laced into the ketamine must have hit their systems, took effect, and the hallucinations started. Some noxious chemical sparked the wires in his brain, made him think that he saw Chrissy fly up to the ceiling and start snapping into pieces. The vision scared him so much that he ran away for real, and left Chrissy in his trailer with her own visions. If that was what happened, he should go back. She was probably freaking out right now, just as scared as he was. He shouldn't have left her alone. He should go back and help her, tell her that it was all a bad trip. Whatever she was seeing, none of it was real. Maybe he should take her to the hospital. A doctor might know how to get the poison out of her system. There could still be time to help her, if that's what happened.

Eddie didn't even try to get up off the ground. He knew that wasn't what happened. He didn't find the ketamine right away. He had gone into his room to look for it, hurrying without comment down the hall and through the door to avoid any suggestion that he wanted Chrissy to follow him. He couldn't bear for her think it was his plan to get her into his bedroom, that he had set some kind of trap, even though she had been the one to suggest going to his place.

Earlier that afternoon, when she had asked for something stronger at the picnic table, he'd hesitated. Looked hard into her face, tried to figure out what the hell was going on with her. Came up empty. Nothing about her request made sense to him, and he couldn't see his way to the right answer.

"Anything stronger is going to be in a different price range," he drawled, stalling.

"I can pay," she leaned forward. "I've been saving my allowance for a long time."

"For this?"

"No, just," she shrugged one shoulder, "for a rainy day, I guess."

Eddie hadn't realized it could rain so much on her side of the street. She was making him feel nervous, uneasy. Something weird was going on, and he considered pulling the plug on the whole thing. Her eyes, though, were looking desperately into his. He thought he should say no, but he didn't. Greed won out in the end. Not just for the money, although that was part of it. He wanted more of her attention, more time alone with her, wanted to prove that he was the one who could give her what she wanted. He had something that bonehead jock didn't have, and Chrissy knew it. Eddie couldn't stop himself from grinning at the thought.

"Alright, then," he said, snapping closed the metal lid of his lunchbox. "I don't usually carry that stuff around, but I'll bring some tomorrow-"

"No," she interrupted. "I can't wait until tomorrow."

Again, Eddie felt a warning urge to walk away. Again, her pleading eyes kept him in place. He wanted to give her anything she asked for, even if it worried him.

"Really, it's not on me." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "I keep stuff like that at home."

"You have a car, don't you," she pressed, "a van?"

"What? I mean, yeah, I do."

"Can I come over tonight? It would have to be after the game, and I would need a ride home, but not right way. My parents won't expect me back until late. Is that okay?" When Eddie didn't reply, she added, "I can pay extra for the ride home."

"Sure," he finally said, though his head was shaking no. "We can go pick it up at my place tonight, and I'll drive you home after. No charge," he added with an uncomfortable laugh.

"Thank you, Eddie," she said, the words rushing out of her like a sigh of relief. "I gotta go, but I'll see you tonight. I'll meet you by your van after the game, okay?"

"Okay," he replied as he watched her swing her legs over the bench and stand up.

She pulled the straps of her backpack over her shoulders and turned in a circle, like she was lost or looking for something in the woods.

"The path is that way," he pointed in the right direction.

She smiled at him, a tight, nervous smile, then turned and started walking toward the field.

Eddie stayed put for a minute, knee bouncing under the table and rings tapping an irregular rhythm onto its surface as he tried to make sense of the last five minutes. He couldn't. He didn't know how it had happened, but he was going take Chrissy Cunningham home with him that night. It didn't seem real.

It still didn't seem real hours later when he was rummaging around the piles of mess in his bedroom looking for an illegal substance with Chrissy less than ten steps away. When he did find the ketamine, he didn't open it. Instead, he went down the hall and found her standing in the middle of the room, already checked out. He hadn't taken anything, he was sure of that, but maybe she had. That didn't make sense, though. Chrissy maybe being high didn't explain why Eddie saw what he did. He was sober. So either something had pulled her up and - no no no - or he had imagined it. Which meant that he was insane. Who else but a raving lunatic would imagine something like that?

But I didn't, Eddie seemed to tell and hear himself at the same time. I couldn't have imagined it. I would never have thought of hurting Chrissy like that, not at all, not ever. But, if he were actually crazy, could he be sure about that? What the hell did he know, anyway, about psychology or psychiatry or whatever? Nothing. Eddie wasn't smart enough to understand how human brains worked, or about what happened to people who ended up in mental hospitals. He didn't know anything. Could he have somehow visualized what happened to her? Eddie was no stranger to imaginary violence. How many beheadings and eviscerations had he described in gleeful detail for his campaigns, relishing the expressions of disgust on the faces of his players? Maybe he could have imagined it. And if that were true – was it possible – could he have done something like that without realizing it?

No.

For the first time since he had fled the trailer, maybe even since before then, Eddie's mind fixed on a single, unmoving point. He would not have hurt Chrissy. Not in a million years. Not for anything. Maybe that wasn't saying much, but it was certain. Eddie felt the solid ground against his side. The damp was seeping through his clothes. He smelled dirt and dead leaves and that fishy stink that hung around the lake. He was shivering with cold. He rolled onto his back and stared into the dark canopy of trees. He was alive, he was awake. Holding his hands in front of his face, he counted ten fingers, rubbed at his guitar-string callouses, touched the familiar shape of each ring. He was real, he was himself, and what happened to Chrissy had not come from him. Not his mind, not his actions. Whatever killed her had been something else, an other, invisible thing. Which meant it was still out there.

Eddie thought maybe he should go to the plant and find Wayne - to warn him or to ask for help? And say what? "Hey, Uncle, I definitely haven't killed anyone, aren't you proud? But, uh oh, there is an invisible monster on the loose ripping people apart." No way. And what if the thing was following him, and attacked Wayne next? He had to find somewhere far away from everyone else. A hole to hide in.

Eddie slowly got to his feet, leaning on a tree for support. He started to close his eyes, tried to concentrate, but Chrissy's face flashed into his mind - her face right at the end, when she - the scream started at the back of this throat again. He swallowed it down. No more thinking. Just go. Eddie put his head down, and ran.

A/N: Thank you for reading! If you are enjoying this, and are hoping to see my version of a particular moment from Eddie's story or past, please leave a review and let me know what it is. I have the next two chapters generally mapped out, but I am also open to suggestions, and hope to take this all the way through season 4 (because I am not ready to let go yet)!