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“These moments stare back at you.
You do not remember them, they remember you.
Turn around, there they are. Staring”
Nic Pizzolatto ‘True Detective S2’
Curtis tells himself that the day Gilliam saved Edgar changed him. He tells himself that every now and then, hoping he will one day forget that it is a lie. But it comes back – every morning, just as he passes through the line between asleep and awake, and every night when he is rounding the day off. The moment Gilliam held his severed hand out is the Yekaterina Bridge of Curtis’s mind. It is a starting point that he comes back to in circles, with the precision of clockwork. It is frozen, and the very idea of it having the capacity to melt and come alive again scares the living hell out of him.
But the thing is, It is alive. It follows him. It climbs onto his bunk at night to wrap itself around him. It even talks with an Irish accent. It explodes in laughter. It wants to start a revolution. It does not know any personal borders. And Curtis tries to fight It, and Edgar takes that personally and looks at him with a furrowed brow, but worst of all – It stares at Curtis at the same moment.
It does not define Edgar, but Curtis tends to forget that. Sometimes he has to examine his hands to check he is not holding a knife, to check that his palms are not covered in Edgar’s mother blood. Sometimes he sees dreams at night that terrify him when he is awake, but he finds serenity in them while being asleep. In them he sees Edgar, he sees Edgar’s mother, but Gilliam is nowhere to be found. The insidious It’s throat is cut open and the blood spills like pomegranade juice, and It dies. Curtis feels like a thousand heavy chains are falling from his neck, hands and feet, he is free – a feeling he is not sure he has ever even known in his life. It feels like falling down the stairs, and he realizes that freedom is death. Then, Curtis’s eyes fly open.
Edgar is lying next to him, eyes wide open, staring at Curtis, a mischievous smile dancing on his lips. He looks like marble, he looks frozen, his throat is cut and the vermillion fresh blood covers his chest, and perhaps it is the first time the boy is not entirely colored brown and green. Curtis’s hand drops the knife, and he tries to somehow close the dark wound, but somebody grabs his arm.
His eyes open once again, and once again Edgar is lying in front of him, only he looks nothing like a statue. His eyes are moving fast from fear and incomprehension as he tries to get Curtis hand from his neck, so that the older man won’t strangle him. ‘Easy, mate’, - he mutters, and Curtis backs off. The lights then come on and the siren signifies the beginning of the new day.
And Curtis is still a man with a knife, and now he is scared lifeless that this is the moment Edgar knows It.