Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Intensity ❯ The Face Of A Mad Man ( Chapter 8 )

Chapter 8.

The little girl Chyna went out onto the beach that night to wash the bug guts from her hand. She was crying and trying not to wipe salty water in her eyes. After she was done washing her hands she lay down on the sand and sighed heavily listening to a storm brewing up in the back of the sky.

"Dear Hyne, let Chyna Shepard...die..." She said to herself and closed her eyes feeling waves wash up on her back from the ocean, she squeezed her eyes tightly waiting to be engulfed. The sky raged and she stayed outside the entire night. By morning she opened her eyes and saw that it was the next day. She was still alive.

"Little girl are you all right?" A woman asked and Chyna turned her head seeing a group of people approaching her.

'She stayed on the beach all night?' Squall thought looking at the group of people. "Honey?" One of the women said holding her shoulders, the little girl looked back at her home and saw it burnt to the ground!

* * *

"Yoo Hoo...." Squall heard a voice say through his darkness as he was beginning to open his eyes. "There ya go. Hi.... how's life treatin ya?" Squall looked at Edgeler and growled low in his throat trying to lunge at him but it proved useless. He was chained to a chair and strapped in by a muscle belt around his waist. He looked down at his situation and noticed his hands were cuffed together along with his ankles just as prison guards.

He was plastered to a solid cherry pine wood chair that was sitting in the middle of the kitchen. "I wouldn't bother trying to move son, you're stuck." Squall wasn't accepting that and he was trying his hardest to wriggle free any way. Edgeler watched him a moment the pushed his forehead so that he was sitting straight up in the chair. "Could you knock that off? Now I told you buddy you're stuck... get used to it." He added and grabbed the trays of Thanksgiving meals that he stole from the men at the gas station and took them into the living room where he disappeared.

Squall let out a huff and tried again to wriggle free but it really was useless. He looked for another option and saw that the cuffs around his wrist weren't latched on as tight as some people might put them and he started yanking it over his wrist.

Down in the basement with Edgeler; he opened the door to the room where Chyna was held and closed it back behind him locking it. Then he pulled a small rickety brown chair from the corner of the room flipped it around and sat on it looking at her. "Look what I brought you." He said holding up a bag full of things he's done in a day.

Reaching into the bag he produced the trays of food, the video tape from the store, the pictures of the dead bodies of her family- everything. "Happy Thanksgiving, Chyna." He said to her and scooped up some of the mashed potato's with the plastic spoon and held it up to her mouth. "Eat." He demanded but the girl remained silent and still.

Edgeler frowned a minute then got up off the chair and popped the video tape in yanking her head in the direction of it saying. "Maybe this will ease your stomach- ya know help get that food down a little easier." The picture was fuzzy at first but then the screen started to show what was on the tape of Edgeler at the gas station when he shot the store owner and the young boy.

The little girl watched the screen blankly, her face was completely unreadable and she turned her head seeing Edgeler move back over her and flick some pictures onto her lap. "Look at this guy, huh." He was saying talking about the picture of the boy from the gas station, he pointed a finger at the one he held in his hand and smiled.

"Isn't he good looking?" He sniffed the picture and looked at it then her. "He was a fighter this one.... I'm gonna keep one for myself and maybe put it in my wallet to look at later." He pointed to the snap shot on the girls lap and said. "You can keep the other one."

He then pointed to another set of pictures and laughed recalling something. "Oh I almost forgot, you know that guy...what was his name? Thomas Shepard? I remembered you having a CD of his in your room so I thought I'd get you a picture of him to remind you of old times." Chyna looked down in her lap at the picture of her half brother Tommy, he was bloody and his knuckles were slashed completely through.

When she looked back up at Edgeler he seemed pleased that she looked at that picture in particular and he went on. "I planned a field trip for us you know, you me and the dogs...we're gonna go out in the woods and bury your sister Laura." He grinned wickedly and went on. "Wouldn't that be fun? Maybe I could kill you and put you in the hole with her? Would you like that Chyna?" He seemed to be getting impatient with her silence and he got up shoving his chair aside making a loud noise that could only be heard in the room.

"Or maybe I should just bury you in there with her alive!" Edgeler saw that she planned on saying nothing and he threw the food down at her feet shouting. "Eat!" She didn't move or blink just sat there staring into space and he walked right up to her getting close to her face, practically hissing in it saying. "You will eat, because don't even think you're gonna starve yourself to death because I will get a rubber tube and I will pump your little body full of baby food if I have to, you are not getting out that easily." Silence.

"Okay- okay.." he went on. "Maybe- maybe I could just light that pretty little head of yours on fire, huh? Would that get some words out of your mouth?"

Chyna remained silent and he put a hand to his mouth standing up saying. "Could you just say please?" Silence. He made a sound as if he were defeated for the moment and went back upstairs, taking care in locking the solid metal door behind him.

When Edgeler returned to the kitchen he saw that Squall had gotten the hand cuff off one of his wrist and he shook his head. "Noope!" Edgeler grabbed Squall's hand and opened the hand cuff snapping it back around his wrist only it was tight enough to split the skin.

Squall held his tongue from saying anything as he watched the man go over to the refrigerator. "Are you hungry?" He asked opening the door and pulling out a carton of eggs and a half bag of sharp cheddar sprinkle cheese. "From the way you look, you are." He went on as though he hadn't expected Squall to answer and then Edgeler said. "But, if you wanna eat in this house you gotta answer some questions."

Squall sighed, annoyed at the thought of carrying on conversation with this guy. "What do ya say? You're health for some food? I mean you're gonna die any way so you might as well tell me who you are and what you're doing here?" Squall thought that over a minute and remained silent. "Oh come on, don't tell me I have two tight lipped bitches in here?" He remarked meaning he was just as annoyingly quiet as Chyna.

The killer began to crack eggs into a large mixing bowl and he grabbed some cheese and threw it in, then added some hot sauce and began to mix it up.

'There's no way in hells that's gonna taste good.' Squall thought turning his vision to the big glass doors in the kitchen and he scowled thinking of a way to get out.

"Suuure is clearing up out there." Edgeler said looking out the doors with him and Squall turned back to him and said with a slight crack in his voice.

"You're afraid?" Edgeler raised an eye brow to Squall's new found voice and replied.

"What?"

"You're afraid of the cloudless sky aren't you?" Squall was taking a gamble with this one but he hoped like anything he could mess with this guys head a little bit and make him let him go. "My matron, when she was possessed she tried hiding it from us the first time but, she was different in ways that couldn't be ignored...." Edgeler seemed to be listening contently while cooking but Squall couldn't tell if he were thinking about anything.

"She could never look at the sky at night, because there were no clouds to block out the stars and the moon. Ha, she thought Hyne and all the other Gods up there were looking down on her and seeing what a horrible person she was...It terrified her...does it scare you too?" The gunblader asked and Edgeler twisted his mouth up and laughed turning to the stove pouring the mixture into a pre-heated pan.

"That's a very interesting story, but you're wrong." He began to watch the eggs cook silently and then he stated very matter-of-factly. "If you think that by some chance I'm gonna freak out in some psychological fit you're wrong."

Squall looked reluctant to that notion but Edgeler said different. "It's guys like me.... that make the world. You can't expect to burn us out with head trips, puleeze it's guys like you that cave easily." Squall seemed taken aback by that comment and asked.

"What makes you think I'm so easily cracked?" Edgeler smiled and flipped the egg omlette over in the pan and walked over to Squall reaching for an egg on his way and then he crushed it between his hands, letting the goo slide out from between his fingers.

"That's how I know...." They looked each other in the eyes and Squall downcast his after a moment.

'No wonder Chyna broke, this guy is sick.' He thought and then looked back out the window and blinked hard to see if he were right. 'Was that a wolf?' He looked over at Edgeler who seemed a bit pricked up but he was still working contently on the omlette. 'A sign?' Squall hoped.

"Breakfast is ready." Edgeler said pouring another hand full of cheese on the steaming hot dish and he pulled up a chair sitting himself in front of Squall.

The killer cut a piece of the egg and held it to Squall's mouth, when the gunblader opened it he pulled it away. "You don't talk, you don't eat." Squalls stomach had growled just then blowing the fact that he was indeed hungry and he had no other choice.

'It won't make the difference any way. Once the Garden comes to get me, this guy'll have a huge hole in his face when Irvine finds out what he's done.'

"Okay," Squall said. "I'll tell you."