He went to touch the pen to paper, but he found that starting his memoir today would be difficult. Not that he didn't have anything to write about; in fact the blood on his hands illustrated how many pages he needed to fill in the leather book. It was the dried, sticky blood between his fingers that made this difficult. He went to the bathroom and started scrubbing his hands, watching the red water slosh down the drain. Rinse, wash, repeat. Seven times. This was a practice that many had deemed anal, but this was how he did things. He had left a sticky note to his parents recommending that they put him in touch with a therapist, but they were so wrapped up in their own lives that they barely noticed when he tried to get their attention.He stood there in front of the bathroom mirror for a moment, drying his hands. He looked at himself closely and adjusted his cap. It was a hot day outside, but the cap needed to stay on. It was just the way things were. He never entertained the thought of taking it off, however the others did, time and time again. He had a certain way of doing things, and repeatedly the other kids in the cul de sac insisted on interrupting his best practices.
Not anymore.
The teasing, the maiming, all the bullshit over the years, it had gone on long enough. He had tried reasoning with them all, but it was to no avail. They would not listen to words, so brute force was all that remained. In the back of his mind he had forseen this coming, and spent the past few months studying ancient war tactics as well as present day urban combat. He returned to his bedroom, stepping over the piles of books and notes, and sorted through some papers on his desk. Although he had lived in this cul de sac for many years, he found it only fitting to his studies to have complete documents on all his enemies.
It had started out innocent at first, taking notes of his peers in the interest of later studies. However it quickly evolved into the strategies that he found inside of his military books. Know your enemy, understand your enemy. Learn where they live, sleep, learn, play. Know where they will go in the event of an emergency situation. Map everything. Obsess over every detail.
And he did all this.
He had a detailed map of the Cul De Sac and all the areas beyond the borders of the suburbia. The junkyard. The trailer park. It was the summer so he left the school out of his worries.
He flipped through the files of Nazz, Sarah, Jimmy, Eddy, Ed, Johnny, the Kanker Sisters and Ralph. He stopped on Kevin's, where he had put a big red X across the photograph. He reminded himself that Kevin was waiting for him in the basement. He closed the file and crossed the room to his closet where his supplies awaited him. Among his studies he had picked up different ways of torture, or the way the book defined them, "extracting information". He had to go to the internet to find out the gory details. Pepper spray, Toilet cleaner, pins and needles, hairspray, lighters, a whole closet that he had transformed into a room of war, devoting most of his post-study time to prepare himself. He pulled on a gas mask and leather gloves, and draped an apron over himself. If it was one thing he hated was to get blood on him. His hands were pruned from washing it off earlier. He looked over his treasury of supplies and grabbed a couple items off the shelf and exited his room.
He whistled lightly to himself.
Today was a good day.
He didn't remember the last time he was this happy, this bordered closely to the first day that he had made friends with the other Eds. He remembered how enthralled he was that other children wanted to play with him, rather than look on his disgust. His brow furrowed when he was reminded of all the teasing and maiming when he was younger. Some of it had carried into his teenage years, most of it embodied physically into the form of Kevin, the Cul De Sac jock.
Kevin, the Cul De Sac jock whom had repeatedly thrown him into the pavement and mocked him in front of his friends. Kevin, the one who threw him into the locker and left him in there for hours, all the while throwing his arm around Nazz, the girl that all the boys yearned for.
Kevin, who sat in a blood mess on a chair in his dimly lit basement, who looked up as Edd walked down the stairs. He had vomited earlier, Edd could see the stains on his shirt. His gas mask worked very well, so he didn't have as much difficulty breathing as much as Kevin did. He walked up to the propane tank next to Kevin's face and turned the valve shut.
"Do you like it?" Edd asked politely. "It's my own invention, you know. It's a combination of a bunch of different household cleaners...very basic, but irritating enough to your immune system that it will try to flush it out of your body any way it can. Looks like your body has tried that a couple times."
"fu...*crag* you." Kevin spat, his eyes swollen and blood running from his nose.
Edd grinned behind the mask and lowered himself to Kevin's eye sight, sitting on his haunches.
"You know," Edd replied. "I never liked you, Kevin. I really never have. I've always been a professional, you know, I've always tried to treat you as an equal-that's what you do in the professional world. But you insisted on making things miserable for me. So I guess you can say that I'm kind've returning the favor. Just be glad I'm not doing this in front of everybody," as he spoke he opened his toolbox, from which he pulled surgical tubing. "Which reminds me, open your mouth please," he tugged at the bottom of Kevin's chin, but the boy refused to open his mouth.
"Now I asked you politely. I have a lot of ways to make you open your mouth, I just thought asking would be easier." Kevin continued to resist until Edd hit him in the kneecap with a hammer. He fed the tubing into Kevin's mouth until the boy began to gag and duct-taped it shut around the mouth.
"As I was saying, where is the rest of the Cul De Sac holed up? I know I made quite an announcement the other day-mainly when I hit you with the baseball bat-but I didn't expect them to go running. So I'm wondering, where are they all holed up?"
Kevin tried to talk but the tube gagged his mouth. Edd pulled the tubing out slightly and removed a portion of the duct tape.
"Ho...how..should..I know, double..dweeb?" he panted quietly. Edd grinned.
"Oh, you shouldn't. I mean, you were hit with a bat! I just wanted to mess with you for a moment," he lightly tapped the large welt on the side of Kevin's head where the bat had connected.
"Now what I'm going to do," he explained. "Is dump this mixture of toilet bowl cleaner into your stomach-it's watered down and I added some other household ingredients to it so that it shouldn't kill you-at least not immediately, but it will give you horrendous cramps. That of which can only be relieved from defecating." He smiled at the thought of Kevin shitting his pants while tied to a chair. He almost wished he had time to witness the event. He fed the concoction into the tubing and watched the blue liquid drain into Kevin's mouth. Kevin's eyes watered as he gagged, his body lurching forward, struggling to vomit. Edd watched on in a strange fascination as Kevin's body took in the foreign liquid. Kevin began to vomit as Edd removed the duct tape, bits of digested food spewing out in the cracks between the tape's foiling.
"I'll see you later Kevin-that is, if you're still around. I'm going to go take care of the rest of the kids-who knows? maybe I'll bring down Nazz to keep you company, I know how much you like her."
"I'll kill you!" Kevin gurgled, his head swaying lazily back and forth. Edd knew he was just on the border of consciousness.
"Ta!" Edd waved his goodbye as he closed the basement door, making careful note to turn off the light behind him. That bastard didn't deserve the slightest bit of sympathy.
Edd returned to his room where he devised his war strategy. Odds are the kids were holed up in just one house; it only made sense. Strength in numbers. This would require him to be extra careful. He went over detailed maps of all the houses in the Cul De Sac and pinpointed Jimmy's house-it was the biggest on the block. It only made sense that there would be plenty of places to hide in a house that big.
It wasn't like it was a big deal if he were wrong. He had all the time in the world. All the parents spent most of their time in town anyway; the Cul De Sac was pretty secluded, with the exception of the trailer park and junk yard nearby. He would find them all eventually. He opened his closet and for a moment marveled over the wealth of gadgets and weapons he had stock piled over the years. The day of Jimmy's birthday party, a day that seemed so long ago now, where he had stocked all his spy equipment, would play a vital role in today's activities.
He had modified most of the equipment to be lethal, but in some cases only stunning. He may want some of them alive.
He undressed from his earlier attire and strapped on his armor-mostly made from sports equipment from which he had taken from Kevin's house, and modified to hold cartridges of ammunition and other tools of war. He pulled on a football helmet that had been reinforced with carbon fiber around the outside-he had spent most of the night welding the fiber into place. This reminded him on the lack of sleep he had. The past 48 hours had been very strenuous, and he hadn't noticed it until now. All the planning and execution had taken place right in the past two days, and everything had gone according to plan. Sleep was out of the question, as exhausted as his body was, it was nothing that few caffeine pills and some energy soda couldn't fix. He needed to be WIRED to accomplish the approaching task.
Finishing off his uniform with some leather gloves and combat boots (which he ordered online-he was very proud of these) he exited his room and proceeded to leave the house. Before exiting the front door he stopped to listen to the melodious sound of Kevin gagging in the basement. How beautiful those stomach lurching noises were to his ears. He stepped outside into the bright sun.
The Cul De Sac lay empty, a comic tumbleweed passing by. The kids had left their toys in the street, Jimmy's stray bike lay on its side with the front tire spinning in the wind. His house was about 5 doors down on the opposite side of the street. It wouldn't be long now. Edd noticed his hand shaking in a kind of nervous anticipation. He needed to calm down. The caffeine pills and the energy drink that he downed before he left the house had just now taken effect, and he could feel his heart racing. He took a deep breath and just stood in the street, taking in the moment.
As he stood there he reminiced the various times he had stood on this street next to Eddy, whom preached something or another from atop a soap box. The kids would just jeer and protest their interrupting of their play. All they wanted was jaw breakers. Edd ran his tongue over his lips. A jaw breaker sounded delicious right now. He made a mental note to reward himself with one after he was finished today. He waited another minute and then continued his path. He reviewed his plan in his head. Storm the front door. Sweep through the living room. Make his way in through the dining room, and from there sweep around the outer rim of the house, making his way into the center. Jimmy's house was oddly designed. From the living room, you could only reach the dining room, and once you passed through there, you had the choice of entering a hallway which seemed to wrap around the center of the house with bedroom connecting off of it, or you could enter a bedroom on the opposite side of the dining room where it met the hallway through a walk-in closet.
He would have to remember this.
As he approached the front door, he took a deep breath.
This was it. He could hardly contain his excitement.
It all required careful planning, detailed drawings and compulsive studying. And it all amounted to this.
"Hello?" Edd rapped his knuckles on the front door. "Jimmy, are you home? I'd like to have a word with you."
"Go away!" someone inside cried out. Edd grinned. They were hiding.
"I'm coming inside," Edd hissed. "And there's nothing you can do about it."
"We'll call the police!" they threatened.
How foolish they were. Edd took a minute to cast his gaze up and down the street. There were no police, there never would be. The phone lines didn't even reach beyond the neighborhood, so he didn't bother with cutting them.
Without another word, he pulled a small plastic explosive from his utility belt. A product of his own design; hand-marked with his own signature on it. He readied the charge on the door and took cover in the bushes. The charge blew the door off its hinges, but it still hung lazily in place.
Terrified screams erupted from inside the house.
Perfect.
He kicked the door in and pressed his back against the wall outside the house. Scooping up two small homemade smoke bombs he tossed them inside and assembled his stun gun as smoke filled the living room and billowed out the front door.
He took a moment as always to marvel over each piece of technology that he constructed. The stun gun was a modified Squirt gun, about the size of a rifle, that he had reinforced to shoot darts. The darts were just common playing darts, but had been laced with poison from his pet arachnid. He would miss his pet very much, but the spiders' sacrifice was well worth it. With a deep breath, he turned the corner and entered the house, squatting low to the ground with his rifle raised. The smoke had begun to clear, with his cover dissolving, but he'd rather have it this way. He wanted the kids confused and disoriented from the blast of the door.
His eyes swept around the living room. There were bags of chips and other junk food laying in a littered mess on the floor. Disgusting. He made a mental note to go through and clean the up later. Silently he crept into the dining room, where he saw a figure that darted down into the hallway.
"Oh my god! Sarah!"
It was Jimmy.
The coward ran to the end of the hallway, already sobbing profusely. Sarah appeared next to him, her face locked in a death stare. It didn't register with her that he had a gun, as she ran toward him, readying herself for the comical beating that would ensue.
"RARRR!" She screeched, her rage too engulfing for words. Edd crouched down and shot two darts into both her knees. The poison worked quickly, as her legs immediately gave out beneath her and she tumbled to the ground. Confused and hurt, she tried to push herself up. In a horrified scream Jimmy ran the opposite direction deeper into the house. Sarah's legs twitched as she struggled to move them, with no response from the muscles. She shrieked as
Edd approached her and began to sob uncontrollably.
"Double Dee! Don't! Please!" she begged, pulling herself down the hallway as he approached her. Edd strapped up his dart gun and holstered it behind his back, readying his night stick. A bat alone would've been difficult for him to swing around, his strength wouldn't allow it. He had taken a bat from Kevin's garage and shaved it down into a manageable size, slightly thicker at the end for maximum impact.
Sarah continued to plead and beg as she struggled to pull herself down the hallway. Edd stomped down on her left ankle, and the girl screamed. She couldn't feel it, but the grinding noise from beneath Edd's heel was a dead giveaway to a broken ankle.
Her pleads turned to anger as she stared up at him, watching his blank expression.
"You *crag*ing bastard! I'm going to kill you! did you hear me? I'm going to-"
A sickening crunch split her skull as Edd brought the modified night stick down on her head. The girl fell over, her body lifeless, a pool of blood forming beneath her head. A suiting end.
Edd readied his night stick and crept down the hallway. He didn't have to go far to hear the terrified whimpers of Jimmy, locked in his room.
"Jimmy," Edd rapped on the door gently. "Please open the door."
This only made the boy sob harder, and Edd added a little more firmness into his voice.
"Jimmy. Open this door right now."
There was silence.
Sighing lightly, Edd inspected the lock on the door. It was a very basic lock, in fact it wasn't even on the door all the way. There were a couple screws loose that held the knob in place. Some of these houses were very old. He wasn't sure if he was amused or angered by this; as much as he was savoring Jimmy's terror, he had a schedule to keep.
He set a small charge on the door's lock and activated it from a safe distance. The door blew wide open and Jimmy's scream was louder than that of anything he had ever heard before. Edd's shadow loomed over Jimmy's fetal position.
"You know," Edd said quietly, rapping his nightstick into the palm of his hand. "I've tried on several occasions to be nothing short of a gentleman to you."
Jimmy only whimpered in response. Edd was pretty sure the boy had pissed himself; the carpet around him was wet and Jimmy's khaki pants were soaked. He smiled warmly at this.
"However," he continued. "On almost every one of these occasions, you would sick your attack dog on me," his grin widened at the reference to Sarah. "Now, tell me, Jimmy, is that any way to treat somebody who tries to be your friend?"
Jimmy sobbed harder, refusing to look at Edd as he shook violently on the ground; his body a trembling mess of delicately manicured nails and hair.
"IS IT?" Edd yelled, his stare burning into Jimmy's pitiful form.
"NO!" Jimmy wailed. "I'm sorry, double dee! I'm sorry!"
"Get on your knees and bow before me, Jimmy. Beg for my forgiveness."
Jimmy slowly, unsurely, climbed into position before Edd and sat on his knees, laying his hands out in front of him in a sort of odd homage.
"Please forgi-"
Edd brought down the nightstick onto Jimmy's right hand, breaking his fingers.
The boy wailed as he immediately retracted his hand, grabbing onto the wrist and falling backward. Edd stood over him and beat him continuously with the nightstick, making careful note to keep the boy alive, but only as a bloodied mess of meat. Each swing of the nightstick was nothing short of orgasmic for Edd; he never realized the true thrill of assault. The years he had pondered why Kevin enjoyed beating him up so much, and this is what he must have felt. Bliss.
Jimmy was nothing short of a bloody hamburger by the time Edd was done with him. His whimpers had been reduced to quiet gasps for breath as his body shut down; barely clinging to life. In his studies Edd had spent several hours, among many other subjects, studying the amount of abuse a human body could take. He found the results to be quite exceptional. He had miscalculated slightly with Jimmy, however, as the boy was more of a girl than an actual boy, and any pain he suffered would be multiplied. Still, he was alive, exactly how Edd wanted him. He drug the boy back to his house, making sure to make plenty of noise as to alert the other kids in the neighborhood.
He threw Jimmy's body down the steps, watching his body tumble until it lay on the ground, twitching softly. Kevin's head lolled around, new vomit covering the front of his shirt. The basement stank to high heavens. He would have to clean this later. Right now there were other things to attend to; he had a schedule to keep. Pulling out his memoir, he marked off the names of Sarah and Jimmy. He put a little asteric next to Jimmy's name and closed the leather book. It was time to go to Nazz's house.
Out into the hot sun again and down the street.
Nazz's house was the last one on the block, and it made sense that the kids would want to put as much distance between themselves and Edd as possible. Her house was unlocked however, and Edd found this slightly puzzling. He entered the cool, air conditioned living room and looked around. Everything was neat and tidy; Nazz had not been in here since before the crisis arose.
He still went on to check all the rooms and found them all empty.
Now he had taken into account that he may be wrong in some of his calculations on the kids' locations, but regardless it made him angry. There was a schedule to keep, and this was breaking his schedule. Now he had to rearrange his line-up to make up for lost time. If only the other kids' understood what it meant to have things to do, and a time slot to do them in.
He exited the house and went into the backyard, hopping the fence and entered the thick woods. A change in the plans meant a change in attitude, and right now he was feeling something a little foreign to his normal attitude. He crept through the woods for no particular reason other than to hone his skills, keeping them sharp throughout the day was key. He popped another caffeine pill; the adrenaline from slaying Sarah and beating Jimmy having left his body several minutes ago. As he crept further into the woods, the trailer park came into view and he remained in the bushes as he watched May hang clothes on the line outside her trailer. He studied her pattern as she reached into the carton of clothes, pausing every few moments to pull out a comical thing such as a hotdog or a car part. Edd slipped off his backpack and removed a bow and arrow on the outside strap-another gift he had taken from Kevin's garage. He fitted the arrow into the bow and tested its weight in his hands, turning to the side to pull back on the string and release the tension slowly. He wished that he had allowed himself time to practice with this; honestly he preferred melee weapons. It just felt more personal.
But this was suiting. He watched as May continued to pull comical things out of the laundry basket, giggling to herself at the misfortune of having accidently placed a television in the wash. She tossed the items aside and continued to hang up clothes. Edd raised the bow in her direction and fitted the arrow into place, pulling back on the line. A single bead of sweat tickled his face as it ran down his cheek, the sheer excitement of the situation almost overwhelming him. He released the tension and let the arrow fly; it whizzed past May's right shoulder and pierced some of the clothes on the line. Confused, May turned around and looked into the woods. Edd's concealment in the bushes served him well, as May's gaze turned from left to right. A second arrow out of the woods hit its target as it pierced her right in the stomach, and for a moment, she stood silent, looking down at the thing that had just entered her body. She began to scream, and another arrow flew from the woods to hit her in the leg. She fell to the ground, another arrow flying over her body.
"MAY! SHUT UP!" one of the sisters howled from inside the trailer. May, still obedient in all her stupidity, screamed quieter. It was almost as if she were waiting for a punchline; Edd knew this was part of no script. He emerged from the woods, firing one last arrow into May's jugular. May's scream turned to a gurgle and she lay silent, blood seeping from her mouth and her wounds, her body twitching slightly. Her eyes watched Edd briefly before they rolled into the back of her head.
"That's more like it!" the sisters yelled from inside the trailer. Edd stepped over May's body and in one fluid motion, kicked the trailer's front door in and tossed a smoke grenade inside. The trailer erupted in a cloud of smoke and cries of confusion echoed inside. Edd entered the trailer with as much tenacity as that of a SWAT Team and overtook Lee almost instantly, shooting poison darts into both her legs and her arms. The terrified girl lay paralyzed on the ground as Edd approached Marie.
"Wha-wha..what the *crag*?" Marie cried, scrambling up against the wall on top of the trailer's cheap bed mattress.
"It's a temporary paralysis," Edd said, cocking his head in the direction of Lee. "She'll be fine."
"Double dee, what did you...?" Marie for the first time was lost for words. Subconsciously she brushed her blue hair out of her eyes, trying to make sense of the situation. Edd stood in front of her, some kind of make shift weapon in his hand, covered in what appeared to be military armor. Her sister lay on the floor, talking in jibberish, her body twitching with paralysis.
"What did...why..?"
She stood there in a stunned silence as Edd stepped up on the bed. He grabbed her by the waist and gave her a long kiss, breaking away momentarily to grab her again, in a way that made her gasp.
"I know what you want-that is, what you've always wanted from me," Edd said, slowly stripping off his armor. Her eyes followed his movements, her mind desperately trying to get a grasp on the situation. Edd taking control? Taking off his clothes? This was kind've hot...she found herself almost not caring that her sister laid in a twitching heap on the floor.
"I've taken the necessary precautions, done the research," he paused, thought for a moment. "And the stretching. I suppose it's only now that I've had the courage to do it. It's been quite a day."
"Edd, what...?" Marie brushed her hair out of her eyes again, her tongue running over her dry lips. As much as she wanted to say something, the change in character of what she had come to know as Edd was changing in front of her. The skinny, pale body in front of her was not that of a boy's; it belonged to a man's.
"You were never much for words," Edd continued, grabbing her again by the waist and giving her another long kiss. "That's why I think it's best I do all the talking."
He unbuckled his pants and slid them down to his ankles, making careful note to fold them after he slipped them off. Marie watched him in a stunned silence, her heart pounding inside her chest. She bit her lower lip as her hand grazed the side of his cheek, and slipped down to his chest, running her hands along his body. Edd watched her fingers dance along his skinny frame, her touch as cold as her icy blue eyes. He reached down for her pants and unbuckled them, watching her eyes brighten as he slid her pants down.
"Double dee..."
Edd grinned. Today was a good day.
Today was a day things were going to change.
Today was a day that HE was going to change.
Edd took the next hour off his schedule. On his timesheet he would go on to list it as, "administrative work". He ran a very tight ship. While this wasn't billable work, and in no relation to the rest of his schedule, he thought it was still very important that he explore, and ravage, every part of Marie's body. And so over the next 60 minutes Edward, Double Dee, was a different man. All the bottled up emotions he had been suffering from over the years spilled out in these long, loving minutes. He was merciless as thrust himself over and over into her, moving to the melodious beat of her screaming his name. She clung to the cheap bedsheets until her knuckles were white, gasping for breath as he continued his work upon her. She screamed in ecstasy while he howled in satisfaction. He held her body close to his as their bodies reached their peak, and he felt this, the sweat cascading down her back turning cold as she shuddered, too exhausted to make another noise. She collapsed against him, her body limp. Her eyes fluttered and she looked at him in a way that she never had before. There was something more serious in her eyes this time, something different about her.
"Double dee.." she whispered, when all was said and done. "I...that...that was...fan...tastic..."
Edd grinned his toothy grin, holding her nude body against his, a single bedsheet covering their thin frames from the afternoon breeze. The whole time Lee had been coming slowly out of her paralysis, but had been uncharacteristically quiet the whole time, listening to the sound of her sister losing her virginity to the awkward, inventor boy who lived down the street from them. She laid there, pretending to be asleep as Edd slowly stood up and gathered his things. She didn't know if she wanted to hug him or strangle him; she was really indifferent to the whole situation. She was almost jealous that Edd had given her sister so much affection that she had missed from Eddy.
Edd kissed Marie softly and exited the trailer, taking inventory of his backpack as he stepped out into the dropping evening sun. He felt relaxed, alert, and more motivated than ever.
Despite all the teasing from the Kanker Sisters in the past, he decided to let them live; he really did like Marie, and the only one whom had really gotten on his nerves was May, just for the sake that she was dumb as a rock.
He still had a few arrows left and several poisoned darts. For a moment he mused over how this ammunition would be applied; it was very important to him that each kill should be creative as well as personal. However the sun WAS falling and he was running out of patience. While spending time with Marie was pleasant, it had tortured his schedule and he really wanted to have this all wrapped up within a day.
The only advantage to the coming nightfall was that the kids may use the darkness as cover to find a better hiding place. It was more than likely that they heard the commotion he had stirred up at Jimmy's house, and they were bound to get restless staying in one place. He smiled at the thought.
He made a trip back to his house one last time before darkness consumed the Cul De Sac and refitted his outfit for nightfall. He reloaded his dart gun and tightened his bow and grabbed some more homemade explosives. He wished that he had time to set some charges in the street to create some real chaos, but he assured himself that there would be plenty of chaos to go around the minute he got the first kill.
Exiting out of his house through the backdoor, he hopped a couple fences until he was a decent distance down the street and sat atop the roof of a house, and waited. Darkness had engulfed the street and the streetlights began to stir, washing a yellowish haze over the black sea of asphalt. He waited tirelessly, watching over the darkened houses like some kind of superhero.
It seemed like hours before he finally heard it.
Several hushed whispers, collective footsteps.
A pattering of sneakers on cement.
There they were; Edd watched them from the shadows as they nervously, huddled in a large group, marched stupidly down the street. They wore armor that had obviously been scrapped from Nazz's house; pots and pans for helmets, baseball pads for body armor, oven mittens for gloves. Pathetic.
However in all its bleakness, it made Edd smile. They were making an effort to resist, even if they were trying to slip by unnoticed.
He fitted his arrow and watched the group move.
Eddy was in the front, sweat cascading down his brow, whispering furiously to Ed, who insisted on stopping every 5 seconds to stare at the june bugs that had come out under the lights. Then there was Rolf and Nazz, who stood side by side and obviously looked the most coordinated out of the meager group. Edd couldn't decide who he should strike down first; the group would scatter the moment the first one fell.
Edd could hardly keep the arrow still as the kids pattered down the street, who knows where they were going.
Nervous anticipation.
His fingers slid and he let the arrow fly.
It soared right into Ed's neck, darting all the way through the boy's neck and dropping him instantly, Ed's eyes growing the comic size of saucers before he dropped to the ground. Nazz shrieked and the group began to scatter, scanning the rooftops for the source of the arrow, but Edd was already gone.
"Oh my god! Ed! ED!" Nazz sobbed, trying desperately to pull Ed's limp body along. Eddy, in all his cowardice, backed away, watching the horror from a distance. Rolf held his work rake high in the air, howling something in his long forgotten foreign language.
"Eddy, goddamnit, help me!" Nazz cried, pulling Ed by the arms slowly to the sidewalk.
"NO WAY!" Eddy yelped, scrambling out of the streetlight. "Double Dee's here! He's HERE!"
"To the clubhouse!" Rolf commanded, grabbing Nazz by the arm and pulling her along.
Edd ran alongside them from behind the homes. His heart pounded as he hopped fences and skipped over forgotten toys in the yard. It was now, with adrenaline pumping through his veins, that he coped with the fact that he killed one of this best friends. There were few things in life that he truly desired, and one of those things was a jawbreaker. The process to obtaining one of these delicious candies went like this; Eddy came up with the idea, Edd would design it and direct Ed, who would do all the heavy lifting/muscle work. The way Edd operated was that he had a plan, and it was this plan that he stuck to. Ed, in the meantime, would do everything in his power to disrupt that plan. Whether it be a comic misadventure playing with his imaginary friends, daydreaming about horror movies, or just plain getting in the way, it was all these things built up that prevented Edd from obtaining those delicious balls of candy. In a way, it was a good thing that Ed died; now, at least, Edd would be a lot more productive. He felt no shame, or remorse; time for that may be later, if at all. The task at hand was now taking out Eddy, Nazz and Rolf. He was very pleased at his bow accuracy with Ed, hopefully he would be able to emit such effiency with the rest of the kids.
The clubhouse appeared on the horizon and Eddy was first in line, his tongue flailing wildly out of his mouth; their plan had gone horribly. They had hoped to escape to the clubhouse undetected, but this was obviously not the case. Edd sprang out of the shadows and from his shadow figure a wet ball was thrown. It glistened in the moonlight as it soared toward Eddy and landed on his shirt.
"WHAT THE-?" Eddy yelped, pulling at the white, slimy ball that was stuck to his shirt. As he turned to look for Edd, the ball exploded, severing Eddy's spinal cord from his rib cage. Eddy's jaw erupted with the consistency of shattered glass; bits of bone fragments rained over Nazz and Rolf, who stared on in a stunned horror as Eddy's lifeless body crumbled to the ground, his eyeballs loose in their sockets, exposed muscle tissue glistening in the moonlight. The explosion had severed many major arteries and had burned them to the core, so blood only emitted in short, small bursts. Nazz was screaming and sobbing, so much so that Rolf could do nothing to move her, and decided it was time to stand his ground. He readied his rake as he surveyed the surroundings for Edd.
It was dark but Rolf's eyes had been trained in the wilderness and he saw quite well. So well, in fact, that he saw Edd approaching in a low crouch from a short distance away and hurled his rake with terrifying accuracy.
Edd saw this at the last second, and did an evasive roll just in time to dodge the rake, with only a bit of its blade ripping across the skin of his arm. It was nothing to worry about it.
Coming out of his roll, Edd scooped up his dart gun and fired three rounds into Rolf's right leg. The blue haired menace yelped out, but did not faulter. Nazz, despite all this, was a sobbing mess, watching the fight but was unable to move with her legs retaining the consistencies of jello.
Edd pumped two more rounds into Rolf's left leg, and watched the boy began to succumb to the effects of the poison. Rolf fell to his knees, watching Edd approach with a long, sharpened stick ready.
"You smarmy sonofagun! You no good lousy-"
Rolf was cut off by the modified bat jammed into his mouth and out through the back of his head.
"Rolf," Edd replied with a long sigh. "I've had enough of your "foreign" anecdotes for the rest of my life. As it is, I'm pretty sure that you're not actually FROM anywhere but here...suburbia. You're only lying to yourself."
By now he was talking only to a corpse and a sobbing girl, who watched Edd with terrified eyes.
"Double Dee..." Nazz said through a cascade of tears. "Why are you doing this...?"
Edd simply smiled at her, admiring her body and reminiscing over all the times he had yearned for her. Now the object of his former desire sat in a pathetic heap on the ground, clad in strange armor and sobbing her eyes out.
"Because, my dear," Edd answered, subtly sliding another "sticky" ball explosive down the front of her shirt. It most likely was sticking to one of her breasts, which, for some reason, turned him on slightly. "You all annoy me."
In a stunned silence, Nazz watched him leave, trying to figure out why he had left her unscatched except for this strange sticky ball that had been placed down her shirt.
Once Edd was a safe distance away, he pressed the button on the control and there was a small explosion.
And then,
Silence.
Edd stood in the middle of the street and listened to the melody of the crickets and owls. It hadn't been long since Edd realized that they had been living in a fantasy world; a world that was limited only to this neighborhood, a junkyard, a small patch of woods and a trailer park. Aside from all the other reasons Edd wanted to end the lives of his so-called "friends", he really felt as if he were doing them all a favor. If Hell existed, it would be in the form of a cartoon, where characters had logical, intelligent thought and were forced to live within small boundaries for the rest of eternity.
Not this Edd.
He slipped into his darkened home and turned on the lights, peeling off his armor as he went along.
No, this Edd was going to be different.
Today was a good day.
Today was the day that things had changed.
He had eliminated (most) of those that held him back or irritated him, and he had gotten some good target/combat practice while he was at it.
It was a long day, but there was still work to be done. Jimmy and Kevin were waiting for him in the basement. Edd fitted on his apron and picked out his kitchen utensils carefully. After choosing a long steak knife and another sturdy knife with serrated edges, he opened the basement door to the dismay of the terrified kids inside.
Edd had worked up quite an appetite slaying the population Cul De Sac.
At least with all the bodies, he would have plenty to eat for a while.
He sharpened the knives, sliding them together as he walked down the steps,
eyeing Kevin carefully.
It had been a very long day.
Kevin watched him, bound and gagged, fear overwhelming his eyes.
Jimmy lay in a crumpled mass at the foot of the stairs, both his legs broken.
He struggled to pull himself away from Edd, sobbing uncontrollably.
Edd smiled as he approached Kevin, trying to decide where to make the first cut.
Today was the day things were going to change, indeed.
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