A/N: i guess this is chapter two. i let this one get away from me. hope it's ok.
Chapter Two
As it turned out, the garage was incredibly cluttered. So cluttered, in fact, that it blocked the interior door from opening, and not even a few hits from Edgar's otherwise rock-hard shoulders could get it unstuck. Shelley stared up at him in exasperation and then slammed her tiny fists against the oak as if that would have made any difference. She scoffed and wordlessly strode down the hall to the front door.
He fidgeted awkwardly in the hallway, having been suddenly abandoned without any sort of purpose being there. His ears followed the sound of her stomping out around the front of the yard and a brief moment of quiet, cut short by a metallic clanging and soft grunts of effort from Shelley herself. After a few seconds of whatever it was she was doing, her footsteps pounded rapidly back to the front door.
It flung open, and she called his name, ragged and hoarse with frustration. Concerned, he followed her shouts and met her, red faced and disheveled.
"I can't get the door open!" She groaned, forcefully brushing a loose strand of hair behind her small, rounded ear. Edgar swallowed, suddenly reminded of his own appearance. Nevertheless, he responded.
"I'm sorry."
She blinked very deliberately and threw her head back a little, eyes suddenly wide and brows drawn. "Wh- fu- why? Did you jam the handle?"
"Well, no, but I thought it polite to offer some sympathy for your apparent struggle." He awkwardly fumbled with his hands, embarrassed, then silently resolved to jam them into the pockets of his slacks.
"Shut up with your sympathy and put your weird caveman strength to some use, okay? It can't all be pickle jars and bottle caps." She turned swiftly and strode down the front path, leaving him flushed with humiliation at the doorway, only making it halfway before she turned to look at him, rolled her eyes, and motioned for him to follow. He stared back, motionless, and she scoffed.
"Come on!"
"I-I can't! I'm not allowed, and- wh-what if someone sees? Dr. Parker will-,"
"Please, Edgar, no one's gonna see, and dad's not gonna find out unless you go and spill." She smiled reassuringly, feeling a little guilty for his current state of distress. "It'll only be, like, one second, anyway. Then you can go and hide in the mountain of garbage in there."
"A-alright, if you say so."
Tentatively, he followed after her, eyes darting up and down the empty street and across the line of trees that sat adjacent to the house. The Parkers lived in a fairly sparsely populated neighborhood, a good acre of trees spanning between each cookie-cutter farmhouse that peppered the small country highway. There were perhaps two other houses he was aware of on that road, one on either side and down a soft incline, and every so often he'd chance a peek out between the blinds and catch the judging eyes of the neighbors, driving by the house at a snail's pace, waiting for any possible chance to become outraged. However, there were no cars that he could see or hear, his ears usually able to pick up the distant sounds of tires peeling and engines rumbling, but all the wind carried was the chirping of birds and the rustling of leaves.
"Hurry up!" He averted his terrified stare and looked up, hastening his stride, and the two stood before the dingy entrance to the garage. Shelley pointed down at the rusted latch.
"I need you to like, drop the hammer on it or something to un-stick it. Just don't get tetanus or whatever." She grinned widely. He didn't understand the turn of phrase, but considering he wasn't carrying a hammer on him, he assumed she was speaking the same sort of nonsense slang she always did. So, he cracked his knuckles, rubbed his callused hands together, grasped the latch, and pulled.
It didn't really seem like he'd put that much weight into it, but the latch crackled loose, sending tiny flakes of rust fluttering about like petals. The garage door opened and flung upwards, earning him a suggestive eyebrow-raise from Shelley and a burning pain in the softer parts of his hand where the rust scraped abrasively, and he turned his head away from his petite companion to behold the sight the ascending door revealed.
Indeed, the garage was filled to the brim with junk. Cardboard boxes adorned with various labels scrawled across them in faded ink stacked mountainous into a dark infinity that he couldn't even fathom. This garage was impossibly huge, having been given no hints as to its size from neither the inside nor the outside of the house. All he could do was stare into the beyond as an immediate feeling of exhaustion washed over him like a riptide. Shelley, unphased, meandered into the cardboard wilderness, maneuvering daintily between towers of boxes and crates.
"I think there's a light switch somewhere in here…" She disappeared within the depths of the garage, and for a moment, Edgar feared he'd never see her again, for she had been lost to the void. But her voice sounded from within: "Augh! Ew! Oh my god, my dad's taxidermies are in here!"
Wonderful. Dead animals. An image of his head stuffed and mounted on the wall forcibly entered his mind. He acknowledged his fate with grim acceptance and a deep breath and he ventured into the unknown to regroup with his lost partner.
After what seemed like an eternal purgatory of things bumping his head or crashing down around him, he found Shelley perched on an old bicycle, reaching for a thin chain dangling from the ceiling. Her hands grasped around for it, despite it being within her reach, and he realized she couldn't see it.
"Hold on, I think I got it." She said, missing it for a fourth time. Watching her fumble around in the dark was painfully tedious, and he took it upon himself to reach around from behind her and pull the chain, just barely illuminating the space. She seemed surprised, jumping slightly and almost losing her balance from the precarious position she'd placed herself in, but managing to regain her composure in time to turn her head, her face inches from his. Just as the notion crossed his mind that the afternoon would take a different, more enjoyable direction, she huffed, smirked, swatted his bicep.
"Stop showing off! I had that!" He scowled slightly as she hopped off the dilapidated bicycle and flitted towards a huge open box of neatly filed papers. She leaned so as to read the label on the side, trying to make out the words, her eyebrows knitted together in confusion. She reached into the box and dislodged a single stack of papers before yelping with disgust and shoving it back into the box. "What the actual hell, dad. Why can't you be a normal person and collect, I dunno, Popular Science or TIME or Playboy or literally anything other than… this."
"What is it?"
Shelley regarded the box with a grimace. "Trash." She said matter-o-factly, taking a squat, fat permanent marker out of her front pocket and scrawling "TRASH" in thick, red letters on the front.
He rationalized that her decision was probably a good one, and if Dr. Parker truly wanted this box of unsavory articles, he wouldn't have left it in the garage. A dusty taxidermy owl looked upon him wisely from the top of a shelf against the wall, giving its own approval.
"Off to a good start then, ah, Shelley?" He said with a jaunty grin. She threw up her arms in a broad gesture.
"This is a nightmare! This isn't a good idea at all! This is just…" Her eyes drifted towards a stuffed deer head the peeked over the summit of a garbage mountain, then down towards the box of unmentionables. "Maybe if I show Mom all this stuff, she'll finally break it off with Dad."
He shifted his attention to a box labeled "Albums", trying to process her outburst. "I know Mrs. Parker is on poor terms with Dr. Parker, but I was under the impression that you were a bit closer to him."
Shelley kicked the TRASH box out of the way, hoisted up a box labeled "Autumn", dropped it on the floor, and began to sift through the contents. "It's not that I don't love my dad, but like, I don't trust my dad. Ya know?" She looked at him expectantly, but all he could do was give her a vacant, wide-eyed stare for lack of a better response. She sighed. "Dad's weird, not in a regular kinda stereotypical 'dad' sorta way, but in a creepy way. I dunno how to describe it. Unstable? He puts me off real bad sometimes, since he drinks and stuff and fights with Mom about, like, nothing. He's weird. I don't know why Mom puts up with it."
"For your sake, I should think."
"Yeah, but what's the point of staying with a guy who takes out his marriage frustrations by drinking and shooting things?" She held up a papier-mache Jack-o-lantern and mimicked the face before stuffing it back in the box, closing the flaps and writing "KEEP!" in huge letters across the top. She sighed again, this time, a little more melancholy. "Sometimes I get scared he's gonna hurt mom, like hit her or something. I can see it in her face sometimes, and I think she's pretty scared too. I don't get her."
Edgar stared into the open box before him, taking in the array of family photo albums within, considering the implications. "I wouldn't let him." He said, finally, closing the box and setting it aside.
A sort of bitter twinge twisted in his stomach, a hot, stabbing feeling of jealousy. How a volatile, mean-spirited man like Dr. Parker could find acceptance among his peers and have a wife and a family while someone such as himself was faced only with ire and prejudice made him feel sick.
"I don't think Dad is all bad." She conceded, gazing up at the ceiling. She was sitting on the floor of the garage, dust motes drifting lazily in the light that surrounded her, making her look ethereal. So much for cleaning the garage. "Maybe Mom leaving would be a wake-up. Like, stop being gross and terrible and be a husband and a dad! No one's gonna want to be around someone like that."
"Ah."
"Sorry, I didn't mean to get all heavy."
"I don't mind. I enjoy listening to you talk."
She waved her hand dismissively. "I don't remember sweet-talking being in your curriculum."
He shrugged, lolled his head to the side. "It's an acquired skill."
more later.