When he arrived at the council offices, he waited until ten o'clock, pulled up his hood, tucked in his ears, and slipped quietly through the doors. He padded silently down the corridor to the offices where that he traded his completed assignments to for new ones. The receptionist was a plump Vampire lady with fiery red hair, who wore glasses like his mothers. Edward breathed a sigh of relief.
This was the only homework giver that didn't look at him like some kind of thing that goes bump in the night. In fact she had even said that he had the loveliest ears she had ever seen once. Maybe she wasn't scared of him because she was a Vampire. Edward tucked his new homework into his jumper and fled as fast as he could. There was always too many people here.
Today was Tam's birthday. Normally Tam and John had a strict 'No Strangers' rule, because of they way they reacted to Edwards unusual ears and skin color, but these where all John's and Tamara's best friends, hardly strangers. "Muuuum, do I have to be here?", complained Edward quietly for the third time.
Tamara wasn't going to not have a birthday party just because her son was uncomfortable with crowds. "I don't even know anyone!, Edward continued. "Nonsense!", Tamara replied, "You know Jun and Elvira, and you know Em and Dolly's friends Belisama and Sebastian."
'Belisama is the only one I talk to though', thought Edward, frowning. "Fine!", Tamara relented, "After the cake, you can go hide in your room."
Camilla Fortescue, the butler that had lived in the penthouse apartment next door when John and Tam first moved into town, led the group in several chorus of 'Happy Birthday', and 'For she's a jolly good fellow!'. It was good to catch up with old friends.
As soon as the cake was cut, Edward did his best Ninja impersonation and vanished.
Eventually the remaining guests also vanished, John took care of the cleanup, while Tam soaked in the bath.
"Oh Maker, I feel old!", Tam sighed as she slipped into her birthday bubble bath that John had run for her.
She had aged into a mature adult gracefully, unlike her husband, who still appeared to be the same age he was on their first day of university.
"I think that Edward is coming to visit", Dolly told Emily. "Shoo you little creep, we are not dressed!", Emily yelled. "I.. I just wanted to ask..", Edward's voice floated up from the downstairs workshop.
"Rack off you monster, or I'll tell Mama you were spying on us in our undies!", Emily yelled harshly.
"That was a bit mean.", rebuked Dolly as the barn door snicked closed. "I know." said Emily. "But I've been waiting all day to talk to you alone.", apologized Em.
As Edward crept through the house to his room, he overheard snippets of a conversation between his Father and Aunts Lil and Angel. "I didn't even know about it, it all happened before I was born. Lil only found out about it because she has access to the royal archives.", Angel explained.
Edward knew it was rude to eavesdrop, 'Whatever it was they are talking about must be very old, Lil and Angel had both lived forever', Edward thought to himself. Edward couldn't help himself, he slunk around the side of the couch to hear more.
Lil's face replaced Angels on the computer and she read excerpts from a scroll. "According to this, Angels grandfather gathered all the black magic practitioners in the land together to create an army. They eventually created a new race called the Goblins. They were a dark green skinned race with long pointed ears and long sharp teeth. They where meant to be strong warriors, excellent trackers, and loyal obedient soldiers.", Lil read.
"Instead the dark magics created a race that where stunted, chaotic and quarrelsome, prone to thievery and cannibalism. Goblins stole and ate babies, even their own siblings from a young age. The older a Goblin lived, the more mischief it created.", Lil put the scroll down.
Edward had heard enough, he crept back outside.
"Look John, we are not saying your son is a goblin, obviously if he was, that kind of behaviour would have shown itself by now. But the physical similarities are most likely some carry over from your mothers magic wish."
"Seriously Mama, we want a lock on the door! Eddie is always creeping around in the barn, we don't have any privacy!", Emily complained. "Look, in two and a half weeks, you and Dolly are leaving, and it will be his room, so no, you cant lock him out of the barn. He has as much right to the workshop as anyone else in this family!", Tamara argued. 'Insanity is hereditary, you get it from your children!', Tam thought.
John kept a close eye on his son for anti-social behavior beyond his regular grumpiness and hermetism.
"What's that you're reading?", John asked. "It's called a book. Didn't you have them when you where my age?", Edward replied. John played along, "No, in my day, everything was carved in stone, some of our books where so big, that you had to get help just to turn the page." John and Edward grinned at each other.
John caught a glimpse of the book title. "The Sims Army Survival Guide"
Tamara, concerned with the fact that her husband aged so much
slower than her, began putting more effort in to staying fit.
Edward had a sudden interest in cooking, camping and fishing.
Emily and Dolly aged up to young adults and stopped hiding their relationship.
"When you age up, your body goes through a lot of changes.", Emily had explained
to Edward in one of those rare moments that she wasn't mad at him for something.
'When you age up you change.' The thought stayed
in Edwards head, like a good tune, or a bad one.
"It sucks that we are going to miss Edwards birthday tomorrow, but if we don't catch this flight, we are going to miss out on Paris before Uni starts.", Emily explained. "Speaking of Eddie, where is he?", Dolly asked.
The taxi driver honked his horn again, as Dolly and Em said their last goodbyes. "Don't forget Beli's Dad is coming to pick up Princess!", Em yelled out of the window as the taxi drove off.
As the taxi roared off down the road, Belisama's father Roger arrived. "The Mrs. and I really appreciate this, Belisama tells me Princess is a good horse, well behaved, and perfectly suited for our younger daughter, Sylviana."
Edward doesn't see Dolly and Em leave for travel and higher education. Edward doesn't see Princess taken to a new home. Edward doesn't see any of this, because Edward has already left. Edward ages up on a deserted block of land at the edge of town. Knowing that he was going to become a vile gobbler, he had packed a bag of clothes that should fit as a teen and one of the lighter sleeping bags, and fled.
There was a half burned out house that he had read about in the paper. The council had wanted it demolished, but due it's current owner living overseas, they couldn't touch it. Edward decided that he would hide out there for a few days, and then go live in the jungle, or the desert, or whatever was beyond Bridgeport.
John inspected the house by moonlight, almost everything he touched crumbled, and the flooring kept breaking under foot, maybe sleeping inside the ruins wasn't such a great idea. Somebody was using the lot to park a semi trailer on. John thought about setting up his sleeping bag under that, but the thought of getting run over in the morning if they came to collect it, pushed Edward to look further. There was a small tool shed, but the door was locked. He tried to pick the lock with his pocket knife. After breaking two of the tools, he put the knife away. "Hell, I'll just throw my bag down next to the shed, and deal with it in the daylight.", Edward grumbled.
Edward dreamed. Edward nightmared. It was hard to tell the difference. In one he was chasing Dolly squealing around the barn bedroom, in the next he had Emily pinned in a corner of the kitchen, she was covered in blood and bite marks. Now a voice was fluttering around inside his head, like a moth against a window. The whispers grew louder, the voice more urgent.
wake up. wake up. you can't stay here.
'Wake up. Wake up. You are going to freeze to death!'
"You need to wake up, You are going to die, and I am going to be alone again!"
"WAKE UP. YOU CAN'T STAY THERE!"
The persistent voice eventually pierced the fogginess of sleep and pried Edwards eyes open.
The whispered voice on the wind assaulted Edward with a half dozen questions at once.
"Why wouldn't you wake up?"
"Do you want to die?"
"Don't you know you almost froze to death?"
"Why are you here?"
"Who are you?"
"What year is it?"
"Whoa! Slow down a bit! I can hardly hear you!", growled Edward as he clambered out of his sleeping back, which was obviously a summer bag and not suited for the current weather. He rubbed his arms to thaw them as he looked around, finally spotting the source of the whispers. "You are.. Your'e a ghost!", gasped Edward. With his family tree he wasn't scared, he had just never met one before.
"And you are obviously observant.", responded the ghost. A long silence passed between them. "So who and what are you?", asked the ghost in an effort to break the silence. "What do you mean, and what am I?", asked Edward rudely. The ghost ignored his tone, "You are a supernatural, I can smell it, so what are you? And don't forget I also asked the who bit as well."
"My name is Edward, and obviously, I'm a Gobbler, I'm a monster, any one who isn't blind as a bat could see that.", Edward snarked, "Obviously.", he added again for good measure, annoyed that his plan of hiding himself away from the world was not, well, going to plan.
"Well, Edward, my name is Isabelle, and yes, I'm as blind as a bat, have been since I was seven years old, thank you for that blunt and painful reminder.", the now not nameless ghost snarked back.
"Not that it's totally unpleasant to have company Eddie, but why are you sleeping on the frozen ground at midnight?", Isabelle inquired. Edward thought about making something up, but no plausible somethings came to mind, and he went with the truth. "I've run away from home, I'm a Gobbler, and Gobbler's hurt people, especially the ones they care about, so I've run away to look for somewhere to live away from people.", he said with a shrug.
"I suppose I can let you into the bunker, you can live with me until you annoy me to much, Eddie.", suggested Isabel. "There's a key hidden under the rock over there, I don't need it.", said Isabelle, pointing to a small rock under a nearby tree. "Thanks Izzy, that'd be great, and my name is Edward". "Whatever..", was Isabelle's reply. 'Ghosts aren't edible, she should be safe from me, she can't touch me, I should be safe from her', Edward's logic told him.
Edward jiggled the key into the lock, eventually it budged, Edward shoved it open, entered and shoved it closed. The tony shed had a wardrobe with a false back. There was a ladder leading down.
"The pincode is 1234, again, I don't need it.", smiled Isabelle as she drifted through the door."That's a pretty easy code.", Edward remarked. "Yeah, my father had only just had it installed, he didn't get time to change it, before everything went wrong!", Isabelle explained.
"Wow, what is this place?", asked Edward, admiring the stone basement. It was almost as large as the ground floor of his parents barn. "My father was a mental giant, a genius among genius's, but he had an irrational fear of a zombie apocalypse, so this was his anti zombie bunker.", Isabelle laughed.
"So ah, how did you kick the bucket?", asked Edward, not sure how else to phrase it. "What year is it?", Isabelle asked, without showing any sign of being disturbed by the question.
"Twenty nineteen, by the standardized Sim Nation calendar.", Edward supplied.
"Well, fifteen years ago, a meteor strike hit this side of Bridgeport, it was the night before my birthday, and PLONK!, happy birthday, hit on the head by a meteor.", explained Isabelle. "The house burned down, killed my Mum and Dad, and my pet hamster, Reginald."
"So you're parents are ghosts here too?", Edward asked. "No, there was enough remains of Mum and Dad to be taken to the cemetery, so I've been here, mostly by myself.", Isabelle explained.
Edward: "Mostly?"
Isabelle: "Yeah, after the house burned down, some kids came to play on the back yard swings of the newest haunted house. I scared them off, didn't mean to. Probably has something to do with being all orange and ghosty."
Edward: "So do you go see your parents often? Hey wait, if you're blind, how do you know you are orange?"
Isabelle: "Do you see this hand?", she asked, holding her a hand out front of her face, "I can't.", she said, inching it closer to her face. "Still can't, still can't, still can't, can now.", Isabelle said when her hand was two inches from her face.
Edward: "You know the cemetery is less than a mile away, I can take you there if you like."
Isabelle gave Edward a quick tour, "Now I'm going back to bed, you can have the top bunk, or the bottom bunk, your choice.", she told him cheerfully. "And if you murder me in my sleep, I'll haunt you forever!", she added as she climbed into the double.
Isabelle waited until she was sure Edward was asleep, she slipped quietly out of the bed and floated across the floor to get a better look at the only person who hadn't run away from her screaming, since the day she died. He had green skin like a Plantsim family she had once met, and the largest pointiest ears she had ever seen, no scales, no horns, no pointy teeth. Isabelle didn't know what a Gobbler Monster was, but she was pretty sure Eddie was obviously just a normal teen boy, not a monster, well mostly normal.
Edward: "Hey, have you got anything to eat?"
Isabelle: "I haven't eaten in fifteen years, thanks for reminding me how hungry I am!"
Authors Note:
A whole lotta setup. A whole lotta gameplay. Not a whole lot of descent screen shots. This was three or four chapters worth of plot....
To make this work without smashing the RLC rules, I added Isabelle as Edwards girlfriend. Eddy and Izzy are technically living in a second block owned by Tam and John, the fridge in this house is linked to the fridge in the other house, half a map away, how cool is that! Dolly and Emily moved to a penthouse mid town on reaching YA, although for story purposes they are jett-setting, followed by imaginary university. Princess was adopted out to a random, not sold to Belisama's family.
