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Mike lets his back rest against the tree he is standing behind. He just needs to hold on a little longer…
“You cannot escape me, Michael!”
Mike wants to laugh; he’s so scared, but any noise could give him away, if the monster doesn’t already know where he is. They are just in Mike’s head, after all. Not the real world. There’s only so many places Mike can hide.
Only so many memories he can hide in.
“Come out and face your destiny!”
Mike squeezes his eyes shut and sorts through his memories for something, and what he gets is:
Eddie’s trailer. The inside is sort of a mess, but to Mike it just seems like organized chaos. It matches Eddie, who is also a little chaotic, a little messy at times. Mike likes Eddie so that isn’t a bad thing to him.
Mike moves forward, through the trailer until he gets to Eddie’s bedroom door. Mike looks down and grasps the doorknob, turning it and pushing the door open.
He can see himself and Eddie sitting on the bed that’s pushed into a corner, talking about anything and everything while music plays softly in the background. He can hear himself opening up about his father, about how it felt like he didn’t have a father at all because he was so unattached from his family.
Eddie actually listens and doesn’t talk until Mike has finished. He assures Mike that there’s nothing wrong with feeling angry because of it.
Mike says he doesn’t want to be like his father when he gets older, but he feels so apathetic all the time it seems like he’s already there.
“Just because your dad is shit, it doesn’t mean that you are,” he tells Mike. “There’s nothing wrong with feeling like that, just don’t shut people out because of it.”
It’s safe to say Mike cries at the end of that conversation. But it’s good crying.
The memory fades from his mind, but his surroundings stay the same. He smiles, moving over to Eddie’s music collection, running his fingers over the outside of the cassette cases.
Then he hears a crash, and he jumps, already trying to think of another memory.
“Oh, you can run, but you can’t hide forever!”
He hopes Will and the others hurry.