Eddie Gluskin

> "*When I was a boy my mother often said to me: "Get married, son, and see how happy you will be." I have looked all over, but no girlie can I find, who seems to be just like the little girl I have in mind; I will have to look around until the right one I have found.*"
> ― Eddie Gluskin singing I Want a Girl.[source]
>
>

**Eddie Gluskin**, commonly known as "**The Groom**", was a Variant who ruthlessly pursued Waylon Park, with the intention of making him his "wife". He serves as the secondary antagonist of *Outlast: Whistleblower*.

## Background

All that is known about Eddie Gluskin's early life is that he was sexually abused by his father and uncle, who took photos of the incident. The event was a matter of medical and public record and Gluskin wasn't even old enough to know it was wrong, just that it hurt. His father and uncle were eventually incarcerated. As a coping mechanism for his traumatically violent upbringing, Gluskin would claim that he was raised in a "Leave it to Beaver" home. Prior to being admitted at Mount Massive Asylum, Eddie was a misogynist and a serial killer who mutilated women. There are implications that his insanity stems from being sexually abused as a child.

## Story

### *Outlast: Whistleblower*

Eddie Gluskin makes his first appearance at the start of the game in the Underground Lab, being forced against his will to enter one of the glass spheres in the lab to undergo painstaking restraint and experiments. Waylon Park is there working on one of the computers for debugging to allow the aforementioned experiment. Before Eddie is finally restrained, he runs up to the glass begging for help and exclaims that Waylon has the power to stop all of it before being forced again to enter one of the glass spheres.

In Drying Ground, where Waylon can pick up the "Kill Us" document, a buzz saw can be heard revving up on the other side of a locked door, along with a man screaming in agony. Zooming in with a camcorder reveals Eddie standing in the hallway, before disappearing from the corridor.

After collapsing through a roof into the Vocational Block's attic, Waylon encounters Dennis, a patient with a multiple personality disorder who wishes to present Park to "The Groom" as one of his offerings in order to avoid ending up as one of Eddie's victims. Once Waylon escapes down to the third floor, one of Dennis's personalities proceeds to taunt him, noting that he handed himself over to "the Thing below".

Shortly afterward, Waylon tries to open a locked door, only to be greeted with Eddie, who presses his face against the glass of the doors, smiling and calling Waylon "darling". He is notably scarred and acts out much like many Variants, though to a much higher degree; he has misogynistic and transmisogynistic fantasies and mutilates other men to make them look like his ideal woman, including genital and chest mutilation, all in an attempt to create a "bride" for himself. This gives him his label as "The Groom."

During that time in the game, Eddie pursues Waylon. Waylon jumps down an elevator shaft to escape him and gravely wounds his right leg while doing so, making him less mobile for the remainder of the game. With an injured leg, still attempting to escape Eddie, Waylon attempts to hide in a locker, but Eddie discovers this and drags the locker itself to another room - Eddie's "workshop," where he brutally mutilates others.

Eddie gasses the locker Waylon is inside of to "calm him down". Waylon wakes up 12 hours later and sees Gluskin mutilate other captive inmates through the slits of the locker door. Shortly after this, Eddie strips Waylon of all his clothes and places him on a table, preparing to cut into him with a buzzsaw, with Waylon's body placed so his genitals are aimed towards the blade. Just before the spinning buzzsaw reaches Waylon's body, a Variant comes in and engages in a fight with Eddie. Waylon uses this distraction as an opportunity to escape through a broken window, breaking his leg in the process.

Once Waylon escapes, he is forced to go back in the block and find the key that unlocks the door to the Male Ward. Eddie continues his pursuit of Waylon and captures him once more, shouting out misogynistic slurs while chasing him. He puts a noose around Waylon's neck while berating Waylon for "betraying" him, and attempts to hang him on a pulley system, along with many previously deceased and mutilated hanging victims.

Waylon struggles for his life as he is lifted, with his weight causing some of the ceiling and pulley systems to break away, which forces Eddie to use more strength to lift and hang Waylon. Eventually, Waylon's weight becomes too great of a burden for Eddie to lift. This causes a sudden weight shift in the pulley; Waylon falls, while Eddie is caught up in his own ropes and pulled upward to be impaled on a hanging metal bar. Eddie uses his dying breath to grab Waylon's hand, sadly telling him "We could have been beautiful." Waylon falls down and lands on the ground, causing Eddie to be further impaled on the bar, killing him.

### *Outlast: The Murkoff Account*

Following the events behind the Mount Massive Asylum Incident, Eddie is briefly seen cutting into a captured victim in Waylon Park's leaked footage.[1]

## Personality

Gluskin has a misleadingly kind personality; he is, by and large, very charming, though upon being rejected he can become violent, misogynistic, and insulting. He is obsessed with the idea of his "perfect bride," to the point where he mutilates people he deems mentally acceptable to make them physically acceptable as well. He appears to be only interested in taking men and removing and adding parts to create a woman by removing the penis, testicles, and excess body hair, as well as stuffing the body to create "breasts". His charming personality often slips when he is rejected, and he teeters dangerously between complimenting his "bride's" appearance and personality and insulting them, often using violent and misogynistic slurs. He also refuses to accept the difference between what he believes and the actual reality, insisting that his traumatic childhood was actually Leave It to Beaver sprang to life, and he completely denies the well-documented sexual abuse he suffered. When confronted with photographic evidence of the abuse, he alternates between trying to laugh it off as fake and flying into a berserk rage. He also refuses to admit he killed his victims, insisting that the women in the photographs are "just sleeping". After being exposed to the Morphogenic Engine, Eddie develops a lisp, possibly from some external injuries to his voice box and lips. He also enjoys listening to and singing romantic melodies such as *"I Want a Girl"*.

## Physical description

Gluskin is seen as a very tall and muscular man, middle-aged, with a black slicked back undercut hairstyle which is neatly combed down and blue eyes. Due to exposure to the Morphogenic Engine, Eddie's face is covered with red blisters, skin peelings and he has a severe case of subconjunctival hemorrhage in both eyes, the right more so than the left. He dons old-timey gentleman clothing crudely sewn together into a dirty dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up slightly, a dark blue bow tie and matching waistcoat, as well as black fingerless gloves, matching work boots, belt, cargo pants, and armbands. Whilst being strapped into one of the Morphogenic Engine's pods, Eddie had his clothes stripped off, leaving him with only a pair of white underwear. Whilst being exposed to the Engine, a number of tubes can be seen entering every orifice in his body.

## Trivia

* His role in the story is similar to that of Richard Trager as they both capture and address the game's respective protagonist with a certain nickname, are misogynists, mutilate their victims, speak in a polite tone, and are killed in an attempt to murder the protagonist.
* The song Eddie sings is *I Want a Girl* and is the same song that plays in the trailer for *Outlast: Whistleblower*. It can be heard playing on a radio in the background when Waylon climbs down the attic's stairs. While singing the first half of the song, Gluskin replaces the word "boy" with "son".
* There is a bug where sometimes a second Eddie's AI will be spawned at the moment the first Eddie AI grabs you and kills you.