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Edward - Story of Snow Part 8

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Chapter Twenty-Nine

   The boy with the scissors for hands had been walking along the length of the metal conveyor belt in the great inventing room, poking and prodding at the ominous metal machines that spanned it.
   At this precise moment Edward had eased himself onto his back, and was lying on the belt itself, peering upwards while fiddling with one of the spindly, pastry-cutting robots. He looked a little like a garage mechanic right now  – except for the fact that this mechanic's fearsome tools were riveted permanently to the ends of his arms with great rods and bolts, and very few mechanics wear shining black skin-tight leather, sewn and bound up with innumerable buckles, straps and studs. Any further pretence to ordinary humanity ended with the strange boy's face however.
   Technically it could have been a beautiful face, and perhaps it may even have been so once, long, long ago. There was an underlying regularity and harmony between the features that ought to have appeared charming. But the complexion was pallid, the lips deadly purple, the eyes were lightless; bruised beneath, and startling above, where there were no eyebrows.
   And, throughout the years of unfortunate encounters with his own unforgiving hands, Edward's face had grown more and more ripped and tattered until it was hard to see the hopeful young boy beneath.

   Edward pouted now, brows contracted in deep concentration as he cautiously inserted a probing scissor blade up into the medley of dangling metal hearts and stars.
His ashen face lit up as he dislodged what looked like a top hat that was jammed in the heart of the machinery, and suddenly the whole conveyor belt, and everything on it juddered noisily into life.
   Edward, who was still on his back, struggled hysterically, blades clawing at the edges of the conveyor belt, trying to push himself off the side, but he only succeeded in being carried further along it instead. He was alternately powdered with flour, sprinkled with sugar and was then dropped off the far end onto the floor, a sodden doughy mess.
   So much for the dark hero of tragic romance thought Moira as she watched the shivering and bedraggled figure get to its feet, hands dripping.

   At that very moment, down among the neat houses of the lamplit suburb below, one of the very same hands, or something very like it, was being stealthily passed between two dark and hooded shapes.
   "You sure it's gonna work, Chayney?" whispered a nervous voice from the shorter of the two figures standing by Janet Monroes' back door.
   "Sure, I'm sure, Razorblades did my old man's place once didn't he? It was on the news. That's what that psycho went to jail for." The taller figure took the bundle of daggers and shears, squinted at it, then carefully extended the longest blade.
   "Really?! I didn't know that!" exclaimed the shorter boy.
   "Shut up, buttmunch, d'you want the whole neighbourhood to hear us?" whispered Chayne furiously. The calculating blue eyes swept quickly over the surrounding lawns and fences, checked that no curtains had been twitched, no doors had surreptitiously opened. All was quiet.
   Chayne turned back to the door, bent over slightly, then inserted the sharp metal dagger into the lock.
   "Yeah, they got him that time, but the retards let him go. You know what those faggot shrinks down at the station are like when they get a charity case."
   He lisped effeminately ""The years spent in isolation have not equipped him with the tools necessary to judge right from wrong… his awareness of what we call reality is radically underdeveloped". What a load. And my family paid for it." As Chayne said the words, the door quietly swung open.
   "Payback at last," He bowed theatrically to the shorter boy, who was grinning broadly, "Shall we?"

   All through that week, Moira and Edward waded deeper and deeper into the welter of astonishing inventions. Although there was more and more daylight now when Moira arrived at the old mansion on the hill, she and her scissor-fingered companion unanimously turned away from the sunlight and the allures of the budding garden in order to delve deeper and deeper into the dim secrets and hidden mysteries of the vast and dingy inventing room.

   It was incredible, the amount of crazy inventions the eccentric owner of this turreted mansion had come up with during his lifetime up here. It was like being turned loose in a vast store room of exciting treasures, like hunting for unknown Van Gogh paintings in somebody's garret. You never knew what you might find, among the towering piles of robot parts, hooks, clamps, gears, cranks, wheels, pulleys, and cisterns which were all strung up and across with chains and straps and ropes.
   Once they found a pile of black leather scraps and a broad studded leather belt, with a huge oval buckle.
   "Great!" said Moira, turning over the leather in her hand, "We've got something to patch you up with when you get yourself in a jam," and she pointed to various new rips in Edward's outfit which had appeared with increasing frequency in the last week of frenzied ferreting.
   "Jam?" asked Edward, puzzled, inspecting his legs and then shuffling around awkwardly on the spot to try and see if there was anything sticky on his back.

Chapter Thirty

   At home during the week Moira decided to look through the inventor's notebook to see if there were any notes about how to repair Edward. She wasn't bad with sewing, at least, as long as it wasn't complicated or delicate. Judging by the raggedy patchwork nature of the rest of Edward however, she very much doubted that it would overtax even her feeble needlework skills.
   Moira got back home early from school as she had a free period, and dragged the heavy folio out of its hiding place in her cupboard. She often took it to bed with her and would sit cross-legged on her duvet in her pyjamas, poring over the brown and mouldering pages by the yellow light of her bedside lamp.
   Today, however, she propped the book against the fruit bowl on the kitchen table. The battered old tome looked completely out of place here in the sunny kitchen with all its bright and breezy modern gadgets, and its shining Formica worktops smelling faintly of synthetic lemon cleaner. Moira flopped the book open and began to read the old inventor's copperplate writing.

   The aristocratic features of the silver haired inventor were twisted in concentration. Hundreds of tiny furrows lined the ancient, wrinkled brow, like a piece of old paper that has been crumpled up and discarded, but then retrieved and unfolded again.
He had been bending over a large black thing propped in a corner of the inventing room, against a pile of disused junk, but, as he straightened, the black shape revealed itself to be a disembodied torso, roughly assembled from scraps of black leather and shining tape. The thing's head, which resembled a young boy with a slightly vacant expression, was much more finely crafted, and presumably near completion, as the old inventor had now begun working on the rest of the creature's body.

   The old man was currently in the process of fixing a long shining black arm to the shoulder socket of the unfinished man, securing the joint firmly as he went with large tacking stitches. Meanwhile, the creature's huge dark eyes were following every movement of the old man's face as he bent near to his work. As the inventor blinked and frowned, the creature's face mimicked the old man; furrowing itself into folds, frowning and fidgeting, raising its eyebrows and pursing its lips in a facsimile of deep concentration.
   The old man finished at last, shoring up his work by winding black tape round the arm and buckling it securely in place for good measure.
   "Don't move, Edward," he cautioned as the head of the young boy twisted in fascination to gaze at the strange new appendage now hanging from his right shoulder.
The old inventor's eyes met Edward's eager gaze and he smiled reassuringly at the unfinished boy's excitement.
   "We will soon have you up and tearing about the place, my boy."
   "Tearing?"
   The old man chuckled. Then, from the pile of scraps beside him, he picked up an old pair of tailor's scissors with long wicked-looking blades and red handles, as well as what looked like half of a pair of garden shears and some diminutive pliers. Groping for a handful of wire and straps, the old man took the motley collection of scissors and deftly fashioned them into what was undeniably a hand, although the fingers were horribly elongated out of all proportion. The disturbing assemblage was strangely elegant, and, clearly, from the way in which the inventor tested the smooth manipulation of the finger joints, very functional.
   The old man nodded in satisfaction, and within moments had buckled and strapped the hand to the end of the creature's arm, securing it fast with a heavyweight structure of rods and metal rivets; the hand clearly weighed more than it looked.
   "Now, Edward, that's better isn't it? Say how do you do, like I taught you."
   "How do you do." answered Edward, automatically jerking his new arm forwards to shake hands, and slicing through a shelf of nearby croquet mallets.

Chapter Thirty-One

   The front door slammed, and Moira jumped up quickly, slamming the book shut and hauling it off the table. Unfortunately there was absolutely nowhere to hide such an enormous great thing, so she just stood there, paralysed, with the book clutched to her chest, as her mother walked into the kitchen.
   "Moira, you're home early?" said Wendy, in a muffled voice, her arms full of shopping bags, and her face, in particular, full of celery. She dumped the bags on the counter while her daughter hurriedly tried to assume an expression of breezy innocence.
   "Yeah, we had a free period, and I wanted to get my homework done. See, art history. They could at least get us some books that didn't predate the dinosaurs."
   "That's my girl, get it out of the way before the weekend – I take it you're going to Katie's party then?"
   "Katie's - ? Oh, uh, yes, of course. Yeah, I'll probably be there most of the weekend, you know, girl stuff, uh, clothes, boys, shoes…" mumbled Moira as she disappeared with her book down the corridor to her room "…scissors, scars…" she finished, flipping open the book again on her bed.

   The one armed torso was now happily waving its fingers experimentally. It worked each blade one by one, and each time one of the fearsome daggers of metal jumped in turn, the boy's face lit up.
   "It will only be for a short time, Edward. Hands are such tricky things, though, I'm afraid you may have to wait until Christmas." The old inventor smiled fondly as he watched the delighted boy swinging his lone arm experimentally, flexing the long sharp scissor fingers at its extremity, eyes riveted on his new found dexterity.
   "So, in the meantime, we shall continue your education. Wait there."
   Edward raised his eyes from the scissors and stared straight at the old man, with an uncharacteristic wry look on his face.
   "Oh, of course, silly me," the old man chortled, "I had almost forgotten that you can't walk yet, my boy."
   He was gone a few minutes. Edward, in the meantime, slowly brought the scissors close to his face, and lay the cool flat sides of the blades against his lips so that he could feel them.
   The inventor returned, wheeling a large silver box before him. Edward looked at him curiously as he swung up the deep-set lid, revealing a wide trumpet shaped horn of metal. The old man fiddled with something beneath the horn and suddenly a quickly pattering rain of piano arpeggios thrilled through the room.
   The young boy's head looked wildly around and then a beautiful smile spread across the bleached white features. Edward waved his hand dreamily to the rhythm of the music, and the old inventor showed him how to mark time.
   "Ah, Edward, I shall make a fine pianist of you." laughed the old man proudly.

   Moira shut the book softly and lay back on her bed. Her eyes were far away, and out of focus, so that the multi-coloured ribbons of intricately cut and trimmed paper shapes fluttering from the canopy above her head swam in and out of her vision, as if stirred by a gentle breeze sweeping down from the castle and gardens of the hill above.
   
   The grounds were full of nodding flowers when Moira passed through the old crooked stone gatehouse later in the week. Birds were trilling from the yew arches, and a yellow swallowtail butterfly was drifting lazily over a bed of columbines as Moira rounded a corner and found Edward just in front of her, contemplating a towering evergreen hare with disturbingly large ears.
   He clearly had not heard her approach and seemed lost in a world of his own, scissors half extended, motionless. Not for the first time Edward reminded her of a clockwork toy that had run down and needed rewinding. Once again, she felt that very slight shiver of alarm as it was brought to her attention how very inhuman this strange individual really was, particularly when surrounded by this magnificent fairytale garden of rainbow coloured blossoms and playing fountains.
   The butterfly, unconcerned, floated past Moira, and settled on an outstretched metal finger. The scarred face showed its first signs of life as Edward's red-rimmed eyes moved downwards to ponder the dainty little yellow thing that had poised itself so trustingly on the lethally sharp metal edge.
   Moira cleared her throat. Edward jumped and his knees crooked together in alarm as he looked wildly up in the air for some reason, then turned round and saw her. His habitual gentle smile crept across his face, and, stepping over to a little path between dew-hung shrubberies, Edward cheerfully beckoned Moira to accompany him, and they made their way back to the mansion together.

   The scarred young boy was clearly overcome when the pretty dark-haired girl, who chose to spend so much of her time with him these days, shyly announced that she was going to be able to spend the greater part of the weekend up on the hill with him.
   The long thin blades of Edward's hands clipped audibly at his sides, his warm brown eyes creased in radiant contentment, and he permitted the line of his lips to straighten almost into a broad and frank smile, except that, as usual, he seemed to restrain himself at the last moment, as if expecting that something might go wrong as usual.
   Moira suddenly got the impression that she had just promised him a whole weekend of her company, and unhappily felt duty-bound to tell him next, that she couldn't stay for long on Saturday as she had been invited to a friend's party, and felt she had to put in an appearance at least, as this had been the only thing that let her get away with spending the weekend up on the hill.
   "I think it's just a few of us, it's nothing special, just popcorn and a horror film or something, the usual, you know what it's like." she told Edward.
   The two of them were sitting round Edward's fireplace up in one of the attics. Moira had brought up some new magazines for Edward and he'd been carefully leafing through them, cutting out all sorts of articles in a great whir of happy industry, while Moira set light to what was left and made a cheery if pathetically small fire in the grate.
   Edward had amassed a small pile of adverts for new kitchen appliances, gas barbecues, sofa suites and cosmetic coupons where "the crowsfeet and blemishes stay away thanks to brand new firming technology. Say no and the wear and tear will go". Edward had just excitedly picked up "Cutting Edge: Hairstyling for the New Woman", but he now let it flop to the floor again as she spoke.
   Moira suddenly realized that he'd never had a chance to find out what 'the usual' was, and once again wanted to hit herself for her stupid big tactless blunder.
Edward's large sorrowful eyes were downcast, staring hard at the floor, as if he could see straight through it. There was such a yearning look in the sad young face at the sound of such a wonderfully ordinary thing as a bunch of people getting together to watch a film, that Moira suddenly had an urge to seize him by the arm, and drag him forcibly down to the busy suburb below. She wanted to march him straight to that party, and they'd lounge around with everyone else their age, just a bunch of normal kids munching Doritos, spilling coke, jostling for room on the couch or beanbags, while they took bets on which moron in the film was going to be bumped off first by the knife-wielding maniac.
   Except, that, if she did march Edward along to Katie's party, she would be bringing the horror film to life as all the girls shrieked and screamed at the town's very own knife-wielding and misunderstood maniac.
   "You know I'd rather be here with you, you know that, don't you? -" and Moira suddenly found she couldn't look at the forlorn boy with his pile of sad little clippings about the life he couldn't ever have.

Chapter Thirty Two

   On Saturday evening, as Moira tugged her white hoody down from the shrieking metal banshee statue in the hall, and turned wordlessly to Edward, she almost thought he was going to reach out to stop her from going.
   He said nothing however, merely watched as she slipped quietly up the four shallow steps to the huge and forbidding oak front door, and out into the night to regain the bright lights and nightlife of the town down below.

   When she had gone, Edward stood for a long time silently looking at the door, which was still ajar, and through which blew a stirring draught of night-time foliage scents from the dark garden below.
   Edward's torn and neglected face was dappled in blue shadow, under the forlorn strands of his unruly hair, making the distressed contours of the great dark rings around his eyes even blacker and sadder in the half light. His eyes seemed to gleam and grow larger, and darker, and deeper and so full of unfulfilled hopes and dreams that they seemed to swallow up the rest of the poor white face in the darkness.

   Down below, at the foot of the steep dark hill on which the inventor's house stood, Moira had just passed through the gates and out onto the town's side of the railings. She carefully kept to the shadows projected by the tall and slightly outward leaning wall, until she was absolutely certain that nobody had observed her emerging from the inventor's dark wooded knoll. Now she quickly slipped forward and was outside Katie's house, which was nearest to the hill, in moments.
   Moira stood in the porch, hesitating. She could hear the sounds of laughter from inside, and low thrumming music in the background. Just as she was about to knock, the volume increased as a door inside opened and footsteps came through into the kitchen.
   "Yeah, she did say she was coming."
   "Really, thought she usually hung out with those stoners from Southgate?"
   Moira recognised the voices from school and shrunk back in the shadow of the porch. They were clearly talking about her.
   "You mean Chayne's gang? Get real. Moira Boggs would so not hang out with any relation of the guy her family practically murdered. I mean they were the ones that brought that freak down off the hill in the first place."
   "Oh, yeah, I totally forgot. It was her grandma who was mixed up in all that stuff, wasn't it. Hey, didn't she get with that weird scissors guy?"
   "That's what I heard too. If you ask me, they're the freaks in town…"
   The door suddenly opened and the two girls came out, passing Moira, who'd slunk further back into the shadows beside the porch. She was not sure she wanted to go to this party. But if she didn't, she could kiss a sweet goodbye to her alibi. She glanced quickly back at the dark silhouette of the house on the hill.
   
   Little did Moira know that every step of her progress so far had been closely observed, though she might easily have guessed as much. Up above her a dark figure had watched from afar as she had crept up to the last tiny little matchbox house in the street, with its warm twinkling lights and blue lit garden.
   Edward had seen her hesitate in front of the porch and look undecidedly up towards the hill, and this was possibly why a sudden smile illuminated the gentle features. It vanished just as quickly as the tiny figure rung the doorbell and disappeared into the house. Edward stared one moment longer and then turned his back on the moonlit vista.
   Then he began to walk, the way he always did, and had done for years, hour after hour, day after day. His were the feet that had worn a path down through the stone tread of the silver stairs. He wandered slowly through disused attic galleries of rotten wood paneling, forgotten garrets with dormer windows, down small dark stairways to forgotten landings. He passed through shadowy master bedrooms, where skeletal four-posters sagged under veils of neglected bedcurtains; long white cobwebs that blew in the draughts sighing through the lonely old corridors. He wandered from floor to floor, from stillroom, to cellar, from pantry, to scullery, and then finally out into the garden.
Edward wove his familiar circuit around each dark hedge sculpture in turn, and his stride at last became purposeful, his eye critical. His hands reached out masterfully to trim a green twig here and shape a wayward branch there.
   Edward turned into a long dark avenue of cypresses. One of them had grown outwards diagonally, and as he looked at it, he seemed to see a shape hidden in the greenery. His hands leapt forward of their own accord to help guide the shape out of the clumsy boughs. The young man's face became serious, sure of itself, focussed, showing a glimpse of that other, confident personality which took over only in those unique moments of strong artistic fervour. His eyes shone with fiery, intense light, his eyebrows creased, his lips tensed, and his face was animated by miniature thrills and triumphs like cloud shadows passing over a hill. His whole body became fluid with the energy of the talent latent within his fingertips.
   A girl came dancing towards him out of the tree, fingers poised to meet his own.
He stood back to assess his handiwork. He had drawn Kim out of living bark and bough for year after year, but wait - Edward narrowed his eyes. Something was different. The figure was not wearing the familiar, proudly sweeping dress, but clinging waves of something soft and reserved, which fell softly from the shoulders into the folds of a hood.
   Edward stared. Then the scissor hands reached out to reshape his unconscious lapse - and trembled, inches away. The silent blades shook. The horribly long, razor edged blades gleamed softly, raised in the air on either side of the young girl's head, which he had so easily mistaken for the girl from the past, and which seemed to be smiling back at him blindly, trustingly, forgivingly. The duality was terrifying.
   Edward's pale face glimmered in the twilight like fine porcelein, fragile, breakable. The great dark bruises of his brows contorted, above the soft gleaming eyes, drowning themselves now in liquid, wavering light. The darkly curving lips parted, the eyes became brimful of trembling light - and the black suited figure ran away into the night, back to the house, down into the metal room he came from.

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fluffyspidercow106's avatar
This story is absolutely amazing! Your style of writing really does give the story the same feel of the movie! :D It made me pull out Edward Scissorhands and watch it again. I cannot wait for the next continuation! You have me hooked!