AN: And now for something completely different. I don’t even know if I should post this, but when else will I get to anonymously practice writing like this? Exactly. No point in being bashful. Rating is to be careful until I figure out where I'm going with this.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Twilight.

“Cascade and Cyanide”

Preface

Bella

December 14

People had always warned me about Edward Masen.

He was the first name I heard when I stepped foot into Forks High School earlier this year. An overeager blonde boy named Mike Newton had taken it upon himself, without my consent, to give me the rundown on this small town school. “To save yourself from social suicide,” he had said, as if the choosing the right circle of friends in Forks was the most important decision I would ever make. As if Forks was Clallam County 98331, the hottest zip code in northwestern America.

He told me of the trendy places to shop in Port Angeles, and of the best diner in Forks. “And the most important thing,” he had been very adamant about this, “is that you avoid Edward Masen. The kid is psychotic.”

Psychotic was a word commonly used to describe Edward. Weird and freakish were other good ones. My father decided upon “troubled” when I first mentioned his name at dinner. Edward frequented the police cars of Forks, never doing anything bad enough to earn a sentence, but constantly fined for more minor offenses. Trespassing, illegal parking, littering, and one count underage drinking, though Charlie released him into the care of his adopted parents after the last one with a verbal warning. And he’d lost his license soon after turning seventeen for marijuana possession.

But the Edward I had met and fallen in love with wasn’t like that. He was funny, honest, and incredibly passionate about music and art. He was the kind of boy who would write a poem when he was angry, or would play piano until his frustration passed. It took a lot of effort to get him to open up to me, but I was so thrilled when he had. I earned his trust the old fashion way– ignoring the rumors, and talking to him as if I hadn’t been forewarned about his problems. And it did take a while.

Eventually he realized that I held genuine interest in him as a person, and not just the alleged town psycho. He began answering my questions with questions of his own, getting to know me slowly and thoroughly. And I was stunned to learn exactly how intelligent and caring he was. Edward never gave me any reason to be afraid.

Which made it even more terrifying seeing him like this. Edward was hunched over a sketchpad, his arm flying furiously across the page, feet jittering so much it looked like he was seizing. The pencil in his hand was bent and strained with the force of his grip. Nonsensical words slipped out of his mouth at an incredible rate. I had entered his room ten minutes ago, and Edward had yet to notice my presence, so consumed in his drawing and whatever was running through his head.

“Fucking heart is beating out of my chest,” he seethed, ripping his apparently inadequate creation out of his sketchbook and beginning a new one before the paper had even hit the floor. It landed gently next to the empty baggy coated in white powder and a rolled up dollar bill.

“Edward?” I asked, my voice shaking like it never had before. His eyes shot up to me, green irises hidden by highly dilated pupils.

“Bella? What are you doing here?” He was quickly distracted by the sound of my name, “Bella, beautiful beautiful Bella, fee fie fo fella, ella ella ella.” It would have almost been funny if it weren't so disturbing. He sounded like a drunk child. His pencil changed direction on the page, but never stopped scratching. I took a moment to really look at the discarded portrait on the floor. A girl with wide and dark eyes stared up at me, hair twirling wildly around her head. She was haunting and beautiful, as was her creator.

“Edward, are you doing cocaine?” I asked over his unintelligible rambling.

“I’m in the midst of a creative hurricane, my dear sweet beautiful Isabella. That stuff,” he gestured frantically to the paraphernalia on the floor, “only helps the process. Just enough to push me over into the abyss. Plus I took it hours ago, so I barely feel it anymore. No need to worry Bellaella.”

My mind frantically searched for stored information from health classes, anything to help me figure out this situation. It didn’t look like an overdose. He was barely sweating and the jittering seemed completely voluntary. Perhaps he really hadn’t done that much. That scared me even more.

“You haven’t been to school in a few days, Edward.”

“Of course not. I can’t leave until this is finished. Tickle polyester sick within the parapet.”

I gulped, noting the dozens of water bottles scattered around him on the carpet. “How long have you been working on this?” I asked, not entirely sure what “this” was.

“Time is an irrelevant and cruel measure. There’s barely time for sleep let alone for something as superfluous as school. Screwing for a dollar sucking on a fire-hose. But now that you’re here, I can finally finish. My muse has come to me. Chewing on a rubber line tied to chairs and rare bits.”

My mind could not connect the Edward I knew and this twitching, terrifying mess before me. There was no way they could comprise the same person. This person before me was psychotic and scary. I felt terrified of this person. This person could hurt me.

Edward suddenly stood and moved towards me with a loud step, “Bella, Bella, you have to sit by me so I can get your eyes right.” I didn’t even let myself consider the implications of that statement, and focused on helping Edward get past whatever was making him act like this. I touched his bronze hair for the first time, running my fingers through it like my mother did to me as a child. The calming scratches always put me to sleep.

Edward’s eyes closed and his breath shook horribly, his mess of hair nuzzling frantically into my moving palm. I swallowed my fear and continued my ministrations, ignoring the continuing stream of words from his mouth, “… pay another player oh you’re such a good lad here’s another dollar tie him to the bedpost…” I touched his hand gently and sat him down on the bed, pulling him so that he lay with his head in my lap.

His eyes shot open after a few minutes, and he grabbed my fingers from his hair, placing a kiss in the center of my palm. Edward’s lips covered every inch of my hand, and my heart stuttered. Broken sobs escaped me as I realized this had to be my Edward. Even in this frightening state, he affected me more than any other man.

His mouth soon tired of my hand and began moving up my arm, licking and sucking along the bare skin. It felt so good, and I had been waiting so long for proof of his affections, but not like this. I yanked my hand away from his willing lips, tears running freely down my face.

For a moment I saw my Edward, staring up at me with confused and rejected eyes. But the glaze soon overtook them and the muttering continued, “… sick with witches’ covens craving for a raw meat…” He sat up off the bed and resumed his jittering on the floor, grabbing the fallen sketchpad and picking up where he left off. I just cried on his bed, too shaken to stay, but too terrified to leave. If he hurt himself… I couldn’t think of it.

So I stayed, watching with a heavy heart as he mumbled and sketched, occasionally stopping to down a water bottle or to run to his adjacent bathroom, but always returning in the same manic state. It wasn’t until hours later, when he calmed and eventually passed out on the floor that I let myself give into my exhaustion, falling into a fitful sleep on Edward’s bed.

Before this, I had justified the rumors. Edward was shy, and difficult to talk to at first. Years at a school where children mocked you for being strange and psychotic could easily explain his frosty exterior. Also he was adopted, so maybe the rumors came from his birth parents, or perhaps a troublesome childhood. I didn’t believe there was something actually wrong with him. He was just misunderstood.

But something was horribly wrong with Edward Masen. Something that had nothing to do with the drugs or the gossip or his family.

And I had no idea what to do.

AN: That’s the preface. Edward’s nonsensical ramblings come from “The Murder Mystery” by The Velvet Underground (skip forward to 6:40 for Edward's part). That’s the last conscious music connection I’m going to make. I’m attempting to let the story tell itself this time. I’ll be updating again once I’m done “You Get Me Closer To God”, and I’ll be writing more of this in the meantime.

This is so absurdly different from “You Get Me Closer To God”, so I apologize if it takes me a few chapters to get into it. But… what do you think?