He was alone that night; Billy still slept in his bed, he was sure of it: all twining grey sheets and malnourished legs and bumpy kneecaps. His face was pale, almost pale as his own. Tom could see the jutting bone at his brow, the oiled shadows of a feature born of starvation.
Though, that is not to say that the children never received feed. Many ate until they shrivelled their bodies and drooled on the spreads, so that the fear of hunger the next day was non-existent. The stupid children never learned.
But Billy Stubbs is simply an ill boy, the work staff (Tom refused to refer to them as caregivers. The other little fools may require their unwilling care, but he did not) would tell the younger children as they threw rocks and stones at his shoulder blades. Billy cannot eat. Billy vomits his sludge up and makes a mess of things when the putrid scent of salty tears and tasteless porridge already compels the table that this meal is best saved for tomorrow.
The mentality was similar, but contrary in the common sense of both phrases. Gormandising and storage. The orphans ate, anyways.
Tom argued with Stubbs, just once. It was only a single infraction on the prat's part. However, the general populace of the orphanage knew that underfed, thin Tom Riddle was not to be questioned, nor defied. Stubbs was always quite a simple-minded and volatile creature, though, and as such it had been no real shock to the orphanage inhabitants as Riddle was shoved into the dirt. Caked, cracked under his meagre weight, for there was mud at his shirt elbows. Tom did not stay for long, and departed the whispering scene and a triumphantly heaving Stubbs for the bathroom. The clay had slipped from his mussed hair as though it were corrupted sewer water, and he left tracking footprints that echoed his presence long after he had gone.
There had been little question of what he was to do next, as vengeance was no foreign concept, not to him. Not to a Riddle that swindled and cheated and lied and exploited. It wasn't so pettily personal. He only played the game. Those who were faulty in their solutions were punished accordingly.
Stubbs slept soundly, and it would have only been an inconvenience to Tom to force his dreaming, splendid fantasies of Wonderland and a bloody Queen, armoured cards of jack and jokers alike, united in their servitude, because it was at the end of the tunnel that there lie a white hare.
His rabbit. It would do nicely.
Tom would have preferred more time, but there was hardly much to be had. And so he did not linger to watch the little animal struggle in his palms: he squeezed his hands at the base of the neck, envisioning a hidden Eustachian tube at the inside of the throat, when the creature struggled and uttered the barest squeak. It was not thumb or index first, but a joined effort of ten fingers. He twisted his two hands, (the process must be proper) and he was the only one awake to revel in the crack emitted from the shattered bones.
His smile was uncomplicated and minimal, the sort of adults who indulged toddlers, and he held the rabbit with one hand in the dark, by its unlucky brown rabbit feet. He imagined for a moment the tears, had pitiful Billy been up to see the lacklustre of dead eyes, and retrieved a string of rope from his drawer, wrapping it tightly about the furry neck like a noose, which it essentially was.
The excitement, which had been apparent to Tom only after the last twitching of the rabbit, of reprisal flourished steadily by the swell of his proud lungs and rapidly beating heart; it increased surely as he strolled the empty orphanage, all dull checker patterns and thoroughly impaired brio.
Never would he have called this place his home, and he had not yet discovered his castle, but Wool's Orphanage made for an exceptional hall: in its bland, unthinking nothingness, the place provided opportunity and practise, and it was incredibly lacking in consequence.
Tom reached the rafters. He was certain of what needed to be done next, as much of yesterday's dusk had been occupied by preparation.
The rabbit must be visible, through the windows, through the corridors as the sun rose in glory, and touched upon his work. A skeleton of a thing hanging from above. His warning.
He siphoned the magic, and was no longer afraid of it, nevermind the rumours of the ridiculous women, who insisted he attend church ceremonies and pray alone with Father Sebastian. Tom had only been able to control it by his palms at one time when he was a fledgling, so that it could be made tangible, real. But such a trivial thing was no longer necessary.
Insistences ignored, it was magic, this ability levitating the corpse and tying it to the wood support above, as though the rope was a thing with its own mind, its own body. No sound was uttered in the dark.
Be I the devil's child, thought Tom as he gazed at the swinging animal coldly, if for only this ability which resides within my blood.
Satisfied, he made his way back, ascending staircases, making the floor clink at his contact, force the halls to echo in his wake like death chimes.
Tom, who had made no efforts to return quickly, reached his room after some time, and climbed to bed. The sheets were still threadbare, the metal poles of the headboard still cool to the touch. That night, he dreamt of blonde Alice and a wine rabbit as it broke fingers.
He was awoken by the sound of screaming.