Satisfaction is a short lived feeling, especially when its cause wasn't one you actually desired.
The air in a room can get stale.
You wouldn't notice it if you didn't spend hours in the room but if you did you'd start to notice the air is stiff and stale. It leaves you heavy and trapped.
Ed hasn't moved in hours.
Maybe it's been days.
Or only a minute.
Ed is confused. He knew, he thought he knew, this would bring him peace.
And eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
He never was one to listen to a man who tried to starve himself to death. Seems counterintuitive. Maybe he should have listened. Maybe he should have done a lot of things.
The house seems empty. It felt as if it was holding its breath. He was too in a way. He's not sure what would happen if he exhaled. He's not sure he would ever be able to inhale again.
He thinks he'll just keep gasping for air. Drowning.
Drown.
The cracks on the ceiling start to move if you look at them enough. At first it's subtle, something you catch out of the corner of your eye but if you pay attention you see it.
Ed is paying attention. The lines shift. The move and meld with each other. It's seduction. It's evil.
Ed wants to look away. This is something no man should ever see but he can't, it's memorizing.
The lines are moving too fast now. The are creating images. Horrible horrible images for him.
Water. Blood. Guilt.
How do you create guilt with lines?
Ed is sweating now. His eyes are glassy. He can't look away from the horrible lines. He exhales.
The house exhales with him.
He gasps. There is no air to breath in the stale room.
The house sobs.
Ed's hands are stained red. They never were before but now it's everywhere. His entire body is covered. He can't wash it off. He's tried many times. It stuck, it's under the skin. He thinks if he claws at his skin maybe he can get it out.
The house shifts. It's stopped crying.
Now it's catching its breath. Ed hasn't caught his yet. He hasn't even started looking for it.
Where do you even start to look for something that important?
Maybe at a dock.
Maybe exactly where you last had it.
Ed isn't okay. He's not going to be okay ever again.
Maybe that's an exaggeration. Maybe it isn't.
The lines on the ceiling have stilled. They paused in the cruelest shape imaginable. To an outsider it would look normal. But he understands the lines. He knows what they mean. What they spell out.
He knows.
There's a fire lit in the room. It's a soft glow lighting everything just enough to see it but enough to know it. He knows something, like the lines on the ceiling but not all things.
Ed is avoiding himself. Avoiding the guilt. Avoiding finding his breath because he knows the moment he does he has to face everything.
So his breath finds him.
Ed murdered Oswald.
It was a rash decision that he regretted the moment it was over but that means nothing know. It means nothing because everyone knows he did it. The lines on the ceiling know.
The image of Oswald sitting next to him knows.
Ed can't bring himself to fully look at Oswald yet. It's too much.
Maybe in a little while.
Maybe never.
Maybe Oswald will make the decision for him.
"You killed me, Ed."
Maybe Ed should sob with the house.
Maybe Ed should be in the river.
Maybe none of it matters now.
He can't get a word out of he wanted.
He knows this isn't really Oswald but that doesn't mean anything.
Maybe...
Maybe everything.
