Posted 2:18 PM by Alfred

Hiya. Just so you don’t think the master thesis is nothing more than a drawn out penthouse forum letter, (not that there’s anything wrong with that, yadda yadda yadda), I picked a scene at random from the vaults of the backlog. This episode features the same character, Eddie, earlier on in the tale, and as can be seen, the script has been flipped a bit retroactively at this point.

Eddie woke up to total darkness. His hands were bound behind his back. He was sitting in a chair, his feet on the ground, feet bound as well. His face hurt. Ha ha. He remembered the old joke “yeah, your face is hurting me,” and then, well, yeah, his face really did hurt though, and so did his stomach, and his ribs, and the small of his back felt like somebody’d been beating on that for a while too.

The last thing he remembered was Vera looking at him with that look of longing mixed with sorry mixed with tough shit. As in, “sorry I fucked you after you fucked me.” but he had fucked her. It almost made this worth it, whatever this was. Her skin had been so soft. He’d fallen so far for her lies, her web of deceit, every cliché in the book, he’d been the victim and he’d prolly do it all again.

The darkness wasn’t clearing, and neither was the silence that accompanied it. Eddie had no idea where he was. He thought that he could really use a bonghit. That would make at least some of the pain go away.

Why the fuck? He couldn’t think of any reason why anyone would kidnap him. The money? Take the shit. It was all new, he’d never had it before. Ransom to his folks? They were rich, but not that rich. I mean, if that was the case, kidnap every brat in La Canada, he was nothing special. Yeah, his parents were well off, but they were one of a very gigantic bushel, nothing special whatsoever. Well, they were special, obviously, in that they were good parents, blah blah, whatever, ruthless fucks didn’t care about that, now did they? No.

So, yeah, he just couldn’t figure it. And why bother. The pain was subsiding, a little, but it was probably just Eddie getting used to it. Then there was a tiny pinprick in the darkness, a figure, gradually coming near, which he could sense more than see. Sense, aurally, kinetically? Whatever it meant to just feel something’s presence. That was the word he was looking for.

It was a man. A big, black, man. Fat. With sunglasses, for God knew what reason. Had to be more of a disguise thing than any kind of protection from the light, of which the source of which Eddie was still trying to figure out. It was coming from his right, a soft bluish white light, but he couldn’t pinpoint the source, and as gentle as it was, in the overbearing prior darkness, looking at it still hurt his eyes and was just a big blur if he tried.

“how you feelin’, white bitch?” the fat black man asked, in an oddly timid voice in light of the words being spoken.

Eddie was surprised at his own bravery and sarcasm when he answered, “pretty fucking shitty, fatass.”

He could feel the man looking at him, his bald head reflecting the blue light on the far wall, which Eddie just now noticed, the first dimension to this room, the first clue that he was even inside aside from the recycled air and the lack of wind and the nonexistence of stars above him.

“Funny.” The black man answered. “You’re a funny white fuck, aren’t you? What, you ain’t got beat up enough?”

Eddie again surprised himself. “not even close, shitwad. I figure, you got me here, no matter what I say, no matter what I do, you’re gonna do what you gotta do.” As the words were out of his mouth he was biting his tongue wishing he could take them back. One side of the logic chain screaming that he was slitting his own throat, the other side of rationale making the argument that the best way to keep your oppressors off their feet was to give as good as you got.

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