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Literature Text
Chapter Seventeen
When Moira came back home that evening, old Kevin Boggs was just walking out of the front door. Moira's mother was leaning out of the tiny portico that formed the porch, and as Moira came up the road she overheard the old man say, "Well, just don't let on that I lost it, d'ye hear? Alright, Wendy, I'll see you soon. And tell Ted I found us a new fishing spot. We're going catch us some big fish this time, I promise."
As he passed Moira coming up the neat white zigzag path that crossed the lawn, Kevin Boggs smiled at her and ruffled her hair.
Moira and her parents had always treated old Mr Boggs as a close part of the family, and she'd called him Uncle Kevin as far back as she could remember. Uncle Kevin was her grandma's brother but Moira was also related through her father too. Moira's mum, Wendy, had married one of the Boggs family, a very distant cousin many times removed.
Kevin, always the jokester, often teased Moira's mother about the fact that she could never get rid of the Boggs name. He'd even bequeathed her the atrocious family crest as a wedding present, a wooden, wall-mounted shield with 'Boggs' emblazoned beneath. It was a long running joke, like the brass doorknocker, again with the family name inscribed thereon.
"My, but you do look like your Grandma." sighed the old man, his breath steaming in the cold February night air. Then his eyes dropped down and took in her tatty old jeans. The jeans were encrusted with mud from the hill, which had afterwards been given a nice matt finish by the dust from the old mansion.
"Not but that she hadn't got more of a way with her clothes. What in tarnation do you young girls get up to nowadays to let your things get into such a state? Huh, I suppose it's the fashion now to wear your clothes all ripped to pieces."
And Mr Boggs pointed to the front of her hoody, where, earlier in the week, the same hands that had given him the shiny white weals across half of his face had misjudged the timely removal of a large spider by a fraction of a hair. And he wandered away down the street muttering about the vagaries of youth.
Moira slunk over to the sky-blue front door, relieved that he hadn't asked her anything more, and went in, straight into the beige front room. Her mother was just picking up a faded lilac twin set from the pile of ironing she had been in the middle of when old Mr Boggs had come round.
"What was Uncle Kevin over here about, Mom" asked Moira, walking into the kitchen and coming back, carelessly pinging off the white plastic cap of a fresh carton of orange juice. She splashed out a glass and collapsed on the battered old navy sofa in the front room. The décor was tired and hadn't changed much since Peg had lived here, but at least it was as still as spotlessly neat and tidy.
"Moira, honey, how many times, will you just pick that up –" Moira's mom retrieved the bit of white plastic from the carpet and brandished it at her daughter before she put it in the bin. "Oh, he just came over for a chat. He was asking after your grandmother, she is his sister after all. He's going up to the hospital this weekend to see her, poor thing. I did warn him that's she's not really with it right now, and that the place is a long way up into the mountains but he said he'd like to be there, even if she doesn't know it." – and here Wendy blinked fiercely, accidentally leaving a large triangular ironmark on the lilac coat lapel.
Moira was suddenly very absorbed by the swirling orange sediment at the bottom of her tumbler of juice.
Moira's mum turned away, ostensibly to fish out another ancient dress suit. "And he's a bit worried about all those break-ins recently, although you know your Uncle Kevin. Gets a whiff of violent crime and then he's off with one of his stories. He was telling me about this karate guy he saw once, you know, one chop to a guy's neck and - it's all over." Wendy sighed
"This is normally such a nice neighbourhood. I blame that bunch of young hoodlums down at the mall. All no-good layabouts, like that kid of the Webster's. Really, in my day - " and Wendy went on retailing all the trials and tribulations of the local parents and the alarming behaviour of their offspring. Moira wondered when she would get onto Moira's very own bunch of layabout friends, who were not above getting up to no good occasionally themselves, although of course, you didn't let parents, and especially not Uncle Kevin catch on to anything like that.
"…Still, even so, it's very worrying, isn't it?"
"What's worrying?" Moira wasn't really listening. She was slurping her orange juice as she twiddled with the TV remote, while trying to think up a way she could tactfully teach Edward to sharpen her pencils in a way that didn't reduce them to useless matchsticks. It wasn't that he was incapable, she decided. She'd seen him perform so many actions that required much more finesse than that. But it was probably all due to misapplied enthusiasm, and an overweening anxiousness to please.
"Well, really, honey, whatever they say on the TV, a gun's still a gun. And Mr Boggs was very clear he wouldn't just mislay a thing like that."
Chapter Eighteen
Moira sat up straight, slurping orange juice all over her top and onto the table
"There now, Moira", and Wendy came hurrying over "If you didn't keep filling it to the brim – and the state of your top. I'm getting worn out with all the washing, and how you get such tears, it's so ungrateful, really it is."
"Does he know who took it?" Moira tried to change the subject.
"Well, of course not. But I'll tell you one thing, he's wrong to keep it all hushed up. It might hurt his pride but, really, he ought to tell the police. He just doesn't want his cronies down at the station to think he's going soft."
At this point, the front door banged open and Moira's dad, Ted, came blustering in.
"How're my girls?" He gave them both a hug on his way to the mini bar. "What, Moira, still up? It's a school night, isn't it, young lady?"
Moira chucked her bag on her dressing table, stripped off her sodden juice stained top, right down to the vest beneath and chucked it in a corner.
It was Kim's old room, and looked much the same as when she had been a young girl herself. There wasn't really any different way you could arrange the room, as the dressing table with its fixed mirror had to stay where it was and there was definitely no other way to accommodate the large canopied bed. There were no cuddly toys on the duvet any more but there was a cheery 'Kittens of the World' calendar on the back of the door, and gaudy posters of various rock bands, plus the usual makeup, broken necklaces and detritus of every teenage girl's bedroom. The two girls had both decorated the large mirror with clippings and photos of things that interested them. Had they known it, a large fireplace in the mansion above had been also been adorned in much the same adolescent, magpie way, but here the similarity ended, as neither of the girls had chosen to collect cuttings about freaks of nature and miracle cures.
Recently Moira had added some new decorations to her bedroom. Edward's fanciful paper chains now filled the room everywhere you looked. Every wall and piece of furniture was hung with strings of dancing ballerinas, roaring dinosaurs and waving hands. Moira's mum thought her new hobby was very cute.
As Moira slipped her trim form into a pair of pretty blue pyjamas, and jumped into the welcoming comfort of clean sheets and plump pillows, her eyes roved sleepily over the paper confections. She felt sorry for Edward, alone up there tonight in the dark house on the hill. She wondered if, perhaps, at this very moment, he was gazing mournfully down at their house from his castle on the hill. The random thought crossed her mind that he had once lain here himself, in this very bed. Moira drifted off into sleep and troubled dreams, in which she seemed to be looking for a gun which then turned into giant scissors which tried to chop and maim her.
Chapter Nineteen
She had forgotten all about her dream by the end of the week, and was in a fantastically good mood. Spring was definitely on its way and life was full of good things.
She hung out down at the diner or the bowling alley with her friends, where they chewed gum, planned summer trips to the mountains, blew wads of paper at each other from empty ballpoint pens, and all tried to flirt with the really cute older guy who worked on the counter where you got your bowling shoes. And all the while Moira lived a hidden double life, that seemed so separate from the pink plastic and neon of the shopping mall or the Sonnet dishwashers and mini bars of the suburbs.
Her visits to Edward had become the mainstay of her days, a wonderful secret addiction which just got better and better, and which she was in constant fear of losing, whether through discovery, through Edward's melting back into the shadows from whence he came, or through the simple belief that all good things come to an end, she did not know. She didn't think she would be able to go back to her old life from before, and very much doubted that Edward could.
The razor-fingered black phantom who haunted the hallways and staircases of the house on the hill gave the impression of becoming more and more dependent on his lively companion as the weeks went by. The pretty young girl swept into the dark and dingy house like a fresh breeze, full of the perfume and colour of the cheerful town below, which the lonely boy hadn't set foot in for so long, but which he gazed at longingly almost every night.
Moira wondered again and again how Edward had been able to manage by himself for so long, sequestered in his hilltop lair, when he so obviously yearned for the companionship and acceptance of others so much. It seemed as though when she wasn't there that this eccentric personality wound down gradually like a clockwork toy only to spring back into life when she stepped foot in the house.
He was so incredibly eager to please, so interested in trying to find things to help her with her studies, so insistent to show her new rooms and new curios, that she sensed underneath it the same kind of desperation that she herself felt and found it another comforting common ground in their oddly matched existence.
Even so, there was definitely something else keeping them apart, aside from the obvious physical impediments posed when spending time around Edward. She was often exasperated by the fate that had cursed the most accident-prone person she'd ever met with eternally present fistfuls of metal daggers instead of hands. But there was something else between them too.
Although Edward seemed so much of the time to want to be as near to Moira as safely possible, just as if he too were an ordinary person, and although he was clearly fascinated by her, and her arms and hands in particular, she still found that he would scuttle back or flinch away whenever she approached him of her own accord. It was the same practically every time she came near him, no matter how carefully and considerately.
Moira could see that there seemed to be some internal struggle going on within him, which pulled him towards her but also pushed him away.
At these times Moira knew that he often returned to his glittering ice statues, looking for refuge and quiet oblivion in the fiery white clouds of sparkling ice billowing from his marvelous handiwork. But the days were getting warmer, and the crystal museum of ice statues and scenes from his former life that still sometimes greeted her as she entered the house were very often gone well before she left again. Moira wished she could help, and wished she knew why he still buried so much of himself in frozen faces from the past.
She knew what some of this could be put down to, and caught herself on the edge of wishing she didn't look like a certain person quite so much – and subconsciously wondering what things might be like then, and whether he would still act in quite such an odd and inconsistent way. She had to admit to herself that the answer was probably yes.
There seemed to be a lot of times when Edward would just stop in the middle of what he was doing and stare vacantly into the middle distance. It was as though there was a little private film playing in the strange boy's head to which she wasn't invited.
It couldn't be anything to do with what was in front of him at the time though – what had they been doing the last time it happened?
Chapter Twenty
Last week when it had happened, she and Edward were sitting on the hall stairs and Moira was getting out her packed lunch. She'd brought along a little tin of Del Monte pinapple chunks, and was in the middle of opening it when the tiny metal ringpull snapped off. She was about to hand it to Edward – he was very useful in these situations – when she saw he was having one of his moments, his eyes glued to the little can she held in her hands.
Now, who on earth gets emotional when somebody's opening up a tin can?
"Hey Moira, wake up. What are you day dreaming about? We're going."
Moira jerked about and knocked a packet of masonry nails off the little hanger in front of her, while the bunch of girl friends she was with giggled and pointed at her. She was getting worse than her friend up there on the hill.
She, Kerry and Angela were standing in the little hardware shop in the plaza just by Southgate mall. One of her best friends was going out with the assistant who worked here, so they'd come along to hassle him while he was at work.
Dean, Moira thought, was looking very peaky these days. He looked like he hadn't had a square meal for days and was very jumpy when a customer came in with a bunch of garden shears and asked to get them sharpened. He took the shears shiftily and disappeared off into the back of the shop without even waving goodbye to Angela.
"What a nerve!" exploded Angela as they walked out of the shop and past the window with its coloured light bulbs and the legend that read 'KNIFE & SCISSOR SHARPENING – KEYS CUT'.
Moira and Kerry attempted to soothe Angela's ruffled feathers but she was having none of it.
"He never comes to see me any more" Angela moaned "He just spends his entire time down at Chayne's place with Webbo. They're doing up a car or something, he said, but they must be lousy, I keep hearing the thing backfiring from our house. Boys and their stupid toys!" If she had been slightly less of a hard nut, Angela might just have been on the verge of tears, but instead she pulled her leather jacket closer round her low cut top and stormed off along the plaza gallery, Kerry and Moira trailing in her wake and exchanging glances.
It took several ice creams at the diner and some very intense retail therapy in one of the tacky jewellery shops, where Moira ended up with some awful tat that she knew would be buried at the bottom of the drawer the instant she got home, before Angela's fury was spent.
Moira was tired out when she got back home that night. She headed straight for her room with a mumbled hello to her Dad who was watching the match in the front room. She flung herself on her bed. Once again she guiltily wondered whether it was really worth all the agro, hanging out with a bunch of people who more often than not landed her in trouble, or at least trouble by association.
Unfortunately, the wrong crowd were always so much more interesting than the right crowd. And they really accepted you, whatever your personal story.
It hadn't been easy for Moira, not as easy as you might think for somebody with her looks. Her looks were part of the trouble. She looked too much like her grandmother, Kim. And everyone, from the start, had been watching her to see if she would go equally do-lally.
It made her paranoid, and that was why she nearly always preferred mooching around in a large crowd of no-hopers, wearing longsleeves, hoodies and fingerless gloves. Perhaps she thought nobody would notice her as much if she covered up every square inch of skin, and was as different from the blonde cheerleading prom queen as possible.
It didn't really work, Moira was eye-catching in anything she wore, just like her grandmother. And just like her grandmother she nearly always attracted the wrong sort.
Chayne, who prided himself on being able to catch anything in a skirt, had made quite a few moves on her himself in the past.
Moira felt that at least some of it was to do with the bizarre way both of them had been caught up in the shadow of the past. She knew he had an unhealthy fascination with the tragedy that had taken place all those years ago, and she had always wondered how much he guessed or knew. But these days all Chayne's fast moves had subsided into frosty resentment, and now he leered at Moira purely because he knew exactly how much she hated it. She stayed well out of his way whenever possible. It was tricky now Angela was going out with his best friend, which was always the problem when you lived in such a ridiculously small town.
Moira sighed and rolled over on her side, facing her bedroom door. Her eye rested on the calendar pinned to the back of it, and the large glossy photo of a kitten which was struggling helplessly with the wool tangled in its claws.
At least she had Edward.
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More of my ongoing Edward Scissorhands saga.
Link to fullsize version of the illustration
Link to Story of Snow (Part 1)
Link to Story of Snow (Part 2)
Link to Story of Snow (Part 3)
Link to Story of Snow (Part 4)
Link to Story of Snow (Part 5)
Link to Story of Snow (Part 6)
Link to Story of Snow (Part 7)
Link to Story of Snow (Part 8)
Link to Story of Snow (Part 9)
Link to fullsize version of the illustration
Link to Story of Snow (Part 1)
Link to Story of Snow (Part 2)
Link to Story of Snow (Part 3)
Link to Story of Snow (Part 4)
Link to Story of Snow (Part 5)
Link to Story of Snow (Part 6)
Link to Story of Snow (Part 7)
Link to Story of Snow (Part 8)
Link to Story of Snow (Part 9)
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oh i just love this story!!! edward acts just like EDWARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i know thats what you were aiming for butthis is like a real story you'd find in the bookstore
i love it so much its so sweet
i love it so much its so sweet