This isn’t canon to my RP blog, but I thought I’d share a dark fanfic AU I’ve been working on for a retelling of Edna & Harvey: The Breakout. NOTE: this is only the first chapter and it’s not finished yet.
Outside, two children were playing. One, a shy and mostly quiet boy who often read books, kept a butterfly collection, collected stamps, but most of all, loved to follow the rules and do as he was told. The other was a girl no more than eight years old, who on the other hand, seemed to have a disdain for authority and rules, often finding ways to stir up mischief for the day. She played with firecrackers, smashed up her toys, tinkered with sharp objects, skipped school, blew up frogs in her backyard she’d catch, wandered abandoned buildings late at night while her father slept, but what really fascinated her, was fire.
The young girl loved to watch the flames dance around and crackle, it’s light so beautiful, bright, and hypnotic, consuming whatever it burned, the flames so full of life. She loved to burn wood, books, insects, toenail clippings, blades of grass, action figures, broken chair legs, leaves, trash cans, jars of old marmalade, broken old toys, scraps of clothing, marbles, bushes, almost anything within her reach. The girl wasn’t sure why or how she came to have this morbid fascination with fire, she just knew it was always there.
And so were those ugly and impulsive urges buried deep inside the back of her head that would worm it’s way up, turning into intrusive thoughts.
“Children! Dinner is ready!” a voice called from inside the house.
“Awww! But it’s too early dad!” the girl whined.
And she was just about to win at a game of marbles too. The boy stood up from the ground, picked up his bag of marbles, and ran up ahead, playfully laughing.
The girl brushed stray blades of grass and dirt from her skirt, picked up her half of the marbles that were left on the ground, grabbed her blue ragdoll rabbit she called Harvey, and began walking up the porch towards the backdoor.
“Oh boy!, oh boy!, oh boy! I can’t wait for the dessert Mattis will serve! All the cake! All the ice cream! And cookies! Yummy! Heehee!” an unusual and hyperactive voice giggled.
The girl’s violet eyes gazed at her ragdoll. There it was again, the voice that spoke through her rabbit. She smiled and hugged it close to her chest, it’s warm terrycloth feeling comforting. As a small child she always talked with her ragdoll rabbit Harvey, confiding in it whenever she needed to, seeking comfort when her father was busy working late night shifts again. One day when she was five years old, she was surprised to find her ragdoll had spoken back, greeting her cheerfully as if they had always known each other. The young girl felt she and Harvey were destined to be great friends, and they had remained close friends ever since. Laughing, playing, talking to one another, stirring up mischief together, cracking jokes, finding amusing ways to make her father swear, and, lighting fires.
The young girl opened the sliding glass door and stepped inside for dinner, gently shutting it closed behind her. The girl’s father, Mattis, had prepared an early dinner to welcome the boy and his father, Marcel, in their neighborhood, having just recently moved in. The girl took her seat, served her plate of food, and began to dig into her potato salad and sausage. Mattis and Marcel were busily blabbing about boring grown up topics the girl couldn’t be bothered to listen to, and the young boy was eagerly eating his sausages. The girl started to feel uneasy with a strange feeling in her gut, and a bizarre sense of deja vu.
“Hey! Edna! Alfred’s pretty boring, huh?” Harvey snickered as he sat in the young girl’s lap. “Shhh!” Edna shushed the ragdoll rabbit, glaring at him.
“Be quiet Harv, you know dad can’t see us talking, he’ll think I’m a loon.” “Sorry Edna...” Harvey apologized.
Alfred, Marcel, and Mattis looked up from their meal and stared at Edna with concern. Edna awkwardly stared back before her eyes slowly gazed over to her dinner plate again and she resumed eating her meal.
She felt like she was going to be sick.
Alfred, Marcel and Mattis went back to chatting away, but Edna could barely touch her food. She tried to listen in on the parent’s conversation but she couldn’t focus well. Their voices felt so distant, so far away.
“Hehehe! Edna!, Edna!, Edna! Look at this!” Harvey exclaimed in twisted delight.
Edna froze in her seat, but felt her arm slowly raise up over her head. When did she hold a glass of water? She didn’t remember grabbing it. Edna struggled to put it down, trying not to spill it all over Alfred.
“Harvey! PLEASE!” Edna angrily shouted, but it was too late.
It happened so fast. Her hand, as if being puppeted, attempted to pour the water all over Alfred, but spilled it all over her head and clothes instead. Everyone was now staring at her blankly.
“Is your daughter….always so maladjusted?” Dr. Marcel whispered.
“I’m so sorry for her behavior Dr. Marcel. Edna, go to your room.” Mattis scolded her sternly.
“But it wasn’t my fault!” Edna protested.
“Edna, I’m sorry, but I have to do this.”
Mattis reached in a cabinet, grabbing a bottle of prescription medicine. The label was marked as Chlorpromazine, for Edna Konrad.
Edna felt so humiliated, angry, and scared all at once as she tried hard to fight it, crying, shouting, struggling in her father’s tight grip as he grabbed her by the arm, forcing her to take her medicine before sending her off to her room. And then the world was spinning, pulling her away from consciousness.
She woke up in a cold sweat as her eyes opened in darkness. Gently, she pulled a thin white sheet off her and sat up. Where was she? What did these nightmares mean? Why was she in a locked bedroom in a hospital bed?
She wearily rubbed her eyes. Everything felt so confusing and disorienting. She moved her hand and felt around her bed before feeling a familiar soft material. Touching it, she picked it up, who turned out to be her ragdoll rabbit. At least she still had Harvey to get her through these awful nights. Edna softly stroked his blue terrycloth fur while humming to herself before she lied down in bed covering herself with her thin sheet, shifted into a comfortable position, and went back to sleep.
Edna awoke at 5 AM the next morning to a needle rudely stuck in her arm as the nurse began drawing blood and taking samples, looking over test sheets and paperwork on her clipboard. Edna hadn’t slept well the night before and had dark circles under her eyes, her long violet hair an even bigger mess more than usual, those nightmares and odd visions plaguing her and still fresh on her mind. The nurse smiled sweetly, a genuine smile and turned to face her.
“Good morning Edna, how are you feeling today?” nurse Gretchen asked kindly.
Edna sat up in bed, clutching Harvey by the ears and hugged her knees. She didn’t look up at the nurse, but mumbled something the nurse couldn’t hear.
“It’s alright dear, we all have our bad days.” nurse Gretchen gently told Edna, soothing her like a mother would to her child.
Edna kept hugging her knees, rocking in her bed quietly, but turning to face the nurse, would slowly glance up at Gretchen now and then with one eye, still rocking herself holding on to Harvey with a tight grip. When she was finished getting Edna’s blood sample, nurse Gretchen cleaned and bandaged the wound, tending to it carefully. It reminded Edna of when she was a child and she scraped her knee after a kid pushed her at the playground, her mother Helene patching it up. The memory always felt comforting even though her mother vanished from her and Mattis’s life years ago when she was just five years old. Gretchen leaned against the wall and sighed.
“You know, I can’t even begin to imagine how you really feel. Losing your parents like that.. It must have been so awful for you, and so young. Eight years old..” the nurse murmured.
Edna stopped rocking. Still she spoke nothing, but she studied the nurse carefully with her eyes, moving her long violet locks of hair out of her face. She wanted to speak up, to say something, but she couldn’t find it in her to. Nurse Gretchen moved away from the wall and placed a hand on Edna’s head, gently rubbing the girl in comfort like she was her own daughter, if she had one.
Changing the subject to something more lighter, Gretchen said “Dr. Marcel will be seeing you in two hours, so try and get ready, okay? He’ll be taking you and the other patients to the cafeteria for breakfast. It’s free choice day, I know how much you like that. I’ll be on my way now dearie.”
Nurse Gretchen gathered her medical equipment and strolled out the room, shutting the door behind her, and Edna heard the lock click.
If anyone looked at her right now, they’d see Edna smiled for the first time in years.
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