Eddy River

• Alex Mckenzie
• Short Story
• 2008

He was born with Featherlangatitis, an extremely rare disease which resulted in the victim growing feathers all over his body except the palms of his hands. This boy was brought into the world with a scream. Edison’s parents hated him all foster parents rejected him and worst of all he had a pet. A pet couldn’t be that bad, could it? Of course if you resembled a bird and your parents gave you a… bird you would hate your life. Twice it tried to mate with him and another time it tried to kill him because he was invading his ‘territory’. Eddy only lived with himself (and everyone else) by thinking. He had this unnatural power to make things move by themselves with his mind. Some called it ‘Ki’ others called it ‘Mind Control’ he made up its own name for it; He called it ‘Ann’. No-one knows why. He just called it ‘Ann’.

10 years after his parents discovered about ‘Ann’, they died. On July 14th 2007 they were on their way to the Zoo and they crashed into a tree. Meanwhile, Eddy, who is now 18 and has his full grown feathers, was left a home alone with only a bottle of water, a block of chocolate and a 15 year old comic about kittens and ponies.
He was so furious, his ‘Ann’ built up so much that Polly the bird died of a fractured skull. “I could get back on all those people who had teased me and put me down,” thought Eddy “starting with my parents”. He thought of his parents, he thought of them in a car, he thought of this car spinning wildly out of control and hitting a tree and then he dismissed the thought. He hated his parents and they hated him but he couldn’t do something like that. No. He was going to use his powers for good and not for evil. He was going to become a superhero, like Spiderman or The Green Lantern or Fluffy the Super Unicorn! But that’s when he heard the news. The knock on the door. He had been designing a costume when he heard the sad dreary knock. He went up and opened the door. To men in black uniforms were standing there he already knew the news. He killed his parents. By accident of course but still. Eddy ran down to the basement and locked himself in before the men could say a word.

2109
He stayed there for 60 years living off canned olives and the water that leaked through the floorboards. It was then that the police wondered why he was gone so long. They never found him poor Eddy River. In the basement was a hole going through the wall. Goodness knows how long it was. They never found out. And that is the end of the story. Oh, and did I tell you? Featherlangatitis gives you triple the average life span. Eddy is over 120 years old!
END