Page 32 of Can't Refuse Him
Eddy turns slowly. His face changes with every object he sees. The lube bottle beside the McMuffin wrapper. A condom that had been filled with bin juice, that may have once been frozen for something I won’t repeat. The filthy sock I'd named "Henry", yes after my HR Manager. Don’t shame me.
I want to scream. Run from my embarrassment.
“I didn’t mean…” I croak.
Eddy stares at me. His eyes look lifeless. Vacant.
And then somethingsnapped.
Not in the memory.
Inhim.
His memory-figment body recoils as if he’d been hit. His outline shimmers, corrupted. The soft aura he carries with him—the spirit shimmer that makes him,Eddy—crackles with static and turns jagged. Splintered bin-light shoots through the room.
“No, no, no, no—” I desperately try to hold him.
But he’s already falling apart.
We tumble back into the real world with a crash.
Eddy staggers backward, clutching his head and shouting.
His eyes are wide, black with gold rings around his irises. They shimmer with rot.
“Eddy?” I say slowly, not sure what was happening.
He doesn’t answer. His back arches. His form stretches, then convulses. Eddy’s skin peels like sodden, mouldy wallpaper. His fingers elongate into clawed slivers. His clothes tear down the seams, but what emerges isn’t naked.
It’s grotesque.
Sludge-clung ribs. Mismatched teeth like bottle caps. A glistening crown of coffee lids and drain hair. A shield shaped like a wheelie bin forms around his torso, with holes for his legs to push out of.
“Eddy!”
He hisses—hisses—spitting bin juice out his mouth, then bolts away from me. He scuttles across the ceiling with a lurching, centipede-like grace, then crashes through the door. A spray of wood shatters across the ground. I chase after him. A window shattered, and the sound came from the fire escape stairs. I followed and could hear the rain and thunder still battling for dominance. Joining them was my one chance to break my curse. My shoes crunch the glass shards as I step through. The door didn’t budge. My only option was climbing up and out through the window.
Chapter 16–Vanish Binto you
Eddy's massive figure had just crashed through the window, and I followed, leaping out and landing with a wet thud, avoiding the jagged glass sticking up. As I check my shoes for glass shards, I feel my heart race. I snap around and listen out, trying to hear him through the pouring rain and clapping thunder.
I was now in a part of the alley I hadn't seen before, further back and next to the building, behind Graves & Pennington. Remnants of the previous business are here, and I instantly realise what this building used to be. It was from Eddy’s story. The new owners built over it but kept the petrol station bowsers as a sort of memento, now all rusted. All this time, I’ve been at Eddy’s bin. Where he died. He had been haunting this place longer than I had been alive. It all makes sense how he had found me.
The dark bitumen reflected the moonlight and streetlights, broken by puddles that shimmered with each flash of lightning. There’s a rustling in the back corner, and my eyes catch the motion of a claw-like leg retracting.
It’s Eddy. Or the monster that he had transformed into.
I approach with caution; I don’t want to startle him, not when I am so close to breaking my curse.
Slowing down even further to a silent creep like I was a burglar from the Sims, the cold, wet night air pooled around me. Nearby, I catch a whiff of the smell of the big garbage bins, my brain almost short circuiting but I shake my head and do my best to keep my focus on finding Eddy.
The Bin-Monster Eddy recoils back as he sees me. I pull out my phone and ignite the backlight, slowly shining it along the ground towards his feet. Mouldy shadows ooze from his joints. Dripping gunk pools beneath his claws. I drag the light up and see that the skin and musculature of his limbs are elongated, twisted, patchwork from a hundred different unloved, untouched things. His torso is now covered in what appears to be some sort of warped wheelie bin. Discarded objects cling to his body: banana peels, cartons of milk, newspapers from over forty-six years ago, and more. On his head, a crown made from coffee cup lids. In full view, I can now see his transformation had completed, and he hunched like a crumpled aluminium can. He had sharp fangs, and black ooze spewed out. Through his teeth, he shot a globule of ooze and then hissed.
It was a warning not to approach. But I didn’t care. I see through this form. I seehim. Eddy.The man I have fallen for in ways I cannot describe in words, but my cock did it’s very best to translate them when I am around him. I am aroused emotionally and physically. Spiritually as well. He is still a ghost made of trash, after all. My perfect man.
“Eddy…” I whisper gently.
He lets out a low, wet, defensive snarl. It was painful to listen to and he backs further into the shadows, trying to shield away from me, but he knocks over a precariously placed woodenpallet that had not yet made its way into the recycling. The noise echoes through the back alley.
