The Cult of Romeo

En Route to Burton Abbey

En Route from Paddington Station, London to Burton Abbey Boarding School

When Eddy told the taxi driver that he wanted to be driven to Burton Abbey, the prestigious boarding school, buried deep in the countryside and surrounded by a wealth that looked far beyond what that old taxi car had ever seen; the man's eyes widened. He raked his gaze along Eddy's suit, maybe in the valleys where he was from, it looked classy. Here, however, where the money stacked up higher than the mountains that surrounded his home, the grey didn't quite cut it. 

The driver didn't say anything, though. He nodded meekly as Eddy climbed into the passenger side seat and his fiance, Bobby silently slipped into the backseat. 

A steely silence blanketed the vehicle as the gentle green grass grew brighter and brighter as they continued along the journey. Both Eddy and Bobby were exhausted by now. As soon as they'd exited the train station in London, they took a bus out and then a taxi and now they were almost there. The pair were so close that they could almost hear the sounds of rich school children's expensive shoes pitter-pattering against cobblestone. 

By now, the sky had begun to surrender into a deep blue and the faint sign of stars twinkled through the clouds. Eddy was afraid that their time was running out and all he wanted was to hold Bobby's hand, but he couldn't. Not in public. 

"So..." The driver drawled out carefully. "Got a kid in the school?" 

Eddy scoffed, he definitely didn't look old enough to have a kid at Burton Abbey. 

"I just know some people there," he half-lied, with his voice gruff from frustration but also the poisonous exhaustion that seeped into his bones. "I haven't seen the place in a while, though." 

"Well, it hasn't changed. I can tell you that much. Places like this never do change."

And, he was right. Those old walls looked the same now as they did when they were built on the bones of the hard-working citizens that never saw past the pearly gates. The same cobbled steps, the same dusty books and the same scary stories that meandered through the corridors. What the locals didn't know, though, was that the people never changed, either. 

Because Eddy felt the same devouring dread now as he had all those years ago when he first stepped foot through the steel gates of Burton Abbey Boarding School as a first-year.