INSTANT REPLAY | REDDIE

- 15 | INSTANT REPLAY

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Eddie woke up in complete darkness. His back ached dully as he sat up with a loud groan. There was a shuffling sound from a room down the stairs and he froze, glancing at his door. He took a deep breath, looking down at the crumpled sheets his head had been resting on. He stood from his bed and arched his back, seeking the delightful crackles and pops, but they never came. Wincing, the brunette glanced at his clock, taking in the ungodly hour. He walked down the stairs, careful to skip over the step that creaked, and walked into the kitchen.

Trash caused every room to smell progressively worse, but the living room was the worst. There was a gentle buzz coming from the television in the background as Eddie opened the fridge to see nothing but beer cans and tropical fruity mixes for Sonia's alcoholic beverage collection. He closed his eyes, sighing heavily. Of course, not a drop of water in the house, save for the sink, but he was not allowed, under any circumstances, to drink from the tap. Eddie grabbed one of the beers, a rebellious trill causing his heart to skip a beat. Part of him was still furious with his mother, both in the dream world and out. After all, the situation was nearly the same.

He cracked the beer open and took a sip, expression contorting at the horrible taste. But it was cold, and wet, and it went down easy, so he ventured deeper into the kitchen, opening cabinets and looking through what was around. Three boxes of Delicious Deals. Some stale crackers. A few full bottles of wine and one untouched bottle of her favorite brand of vodka that she always broke out whenever there was something to celebrate. Eddie sighed heavily and ran a hand down the side of his face.

"This is a disaster," he told himself firmly, grabbing as many of the wine bottles as he could before she found them and drank all of that, too. He took them all upstairs to his room, hiding them in his closet where she would be too big to fit anyway. It took him two trips. Then he grabbed a few more of the beers along with one of the boxes of Delicious Deals and headed back up to his room, closing the door softly behind him and shoving a bobby pin he had found on the bathroom floor into it so Sonia couldn't use her fancy new lock to close him in from the outside.

Eddie opened his window for a breeze and fell back onto his bed, taking another sip of the can he had opened earlier. The taste started to fade and just became a dull background every time he swallowed, but when it filled his mouth he couldn't help but shudder.

How could Richie and Bev drink this, he found himself wondering. But when he finished the first there was no hesitation before he reached for another. It wasn't the taste that appealed to him, it was the soft buzz of unwavering calm that had already begun to edge into his mind, like a curtain hanging just in front of his problems. Making them feel lesser than they actually were. Every sip put another layer of thread into the material, making it thicker, harder to see through. He watched his clock tick by, a lot faster than he thought clocks were supposed to go. One hour, then two, then five, then the sun was coming up and he forced himself to his feet, stumbling towards his window.

One look outside and down towards the ground a floor below him had his knees wobbling. But there was a tree outside. Maybe if his legs were a bit longer. But he glanced at his mirror and saw the disheveled and absolutely wasted look that Richie had in all of his latest Snapchat stories, only it was him that looked that way now. His hair was sticking up in odd spots, and his cheeks were flushed red, eyes brighter than they had been hours before. His clothes were wrinkled and he had a relaxed sort of posture that seemed to almost be unthinking.

His brain struggled to analyze his reflection, and he blinked, rubbing his eyes. His back had stopped aching, but there was a building pressure behind his eyes and in the back of his head. He looked down, suddenly noticing the three cans on his floor and the one half-empty one on his bedside table. He wondered where they had come from. He could hear a pair of heavyset footsteps making their way up the stairs, and a dull panic started to weigh in on him. He kicked the cans underneath his bed and threw the rest of the unopened pack with them, chugging the last half of the opened one whose taste no longer bothered him and throwing it with its brothers.