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1
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My screams often woke me, though my dreams were never remembered. Only the vaguest impressions of rotted bone and crackling gristle were left with me in the early hours of the morning. Blood so dark and thick, squelching readily between my fingers and bathing my hands. Screams that were so cold and shrill, they had crept into me and filled me from the inside out with ice.
I would sit in the dark with shaky hands clasped to my rapidly beating heart and try to calm myself with nothing more to do than wait for Petunia to waken and let me out to cook breakfast.
They kept me in a small hall cupboard beneath the stairs, and though the door was wood on the outside, the inside was nothing but steel littered with discolorations like rusty blooms, reminding me of blood and dying things. The door was full of dents and scratches, and when I lifted my hands to them and they fit perfectly —the fear pooled at the base of my spine and wouldn't leave.
There was a vent in the ceiling, but apart from that the cell was sealed with not even the smallest crack anywhere to let light in. Time was near impossible to judge this way, the only markers in my day being when I got a chance to glance at the clocks on my journey out of the hall cupboard and into the kitchen to cook all three meals of the day. Breakfast at nine, lunch at twelve, and dinner at seven with the exception of being let out at three to clean the house and ten at night to wash in the upstairs bathroom.
I was never allowed outside anymore. I used to go to school with Dudley, there were only two rules then; 'be home by six', and, 'keep your mouth shut'.
That was then, but now is now. I didn't go to school anymore and there were a lot more rules, but still. Vernon and Petunia had nothing to worry about. I would never tell anyone anything about my humiliating life.
I heard the telltale clip-clop of Petunia's boots above me as she made her way down the stairs, then the muffled scraping of her turning the key outside my door. A bony hand shot out and pulled me out by my hair, dragging me along down the hallway until I had gotten my feet under me enough to keep up with the brisk pace. I saw the grandfather clock by the landing out of the corner of my eye as it slowly ticked its way to eight —an hour too early. Then I was being shoved into the kitchen, the whitewashed door slamming behind Petunia and I. She stood at the back of the room by the door, keeping me in her sights as she snapped out instructions.
She was a cold woman, brittle in a way —just one nervous breakdown away from turning into a big, sniveling, pile of pathetic. Her hands never shook, nor her voice, but she had nervous eyes that strayed away from mine. She didn't like me looking at her for too long, said that it gave me 'ideas'.
"It's a very special day today, so you're going to make the full breakfast," she said, voice frosty, "and don't you dare burn anything or you'll be feeling it for days."
I tilted my head down in a half-nod. With her, it was best to take the path of least resistance. I turned to gather all the utensils I would need and listlessly turned to the task of making an omlet. I knew where all the potentially poisonous cleaning supplies were, though it would do me little good, with the way she was watching me. Something was wrong with that, with how she looked today.
And then she said; "There'll be three place settings today."
Then there was the longest second of silence where I felt somebody should be screaming. I sped up my movements. The knife blurred as I sliced the tomatoes, their seedy innards squelched out all over the cutting board from the force, and I thought about stabbing Petunia again, wondered if there was a special spot, different from last time, that would make her insides spill out too.
She had a gun to protect herself with now, tucked into the waist of her skirt. I'd stand a better chance poisoning her.
After I had docilely cooked breakfast I was dragged back to the cupboard, where it was silent and dark and the cold ate away at me.
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I felt as if I were rotting. Festering on the inside slowly, my skin crawling —a thin film just barely keeping hatred on the inside. When it was dark like that and I couldn't even see my own hands before me, or hear anything beyond the beat of my scared heart and the dripping —the dripping, always from somewhere, sounding hot and wet. When every false vibration felt through the floor was someone's heavy step coming to let me out with a beating that would make me forget all the ones before it —I really thought I could cry and never stop for years. And I would take my face into my hands and hold tight until I felt nothing but the bruises, and then I would dig my fingers in and tear at my flesh until I could feel it caking under my nails. I'd scream because no one could hear me, and I would pick my eyeballs out of my face because new ones always grew back and I was starving, starving. I hadn't eaten in so long; I could feel my spine through my hollowed-out stomach when I pressed my hands there.
I had long ago ripped the tiny vent out of the ceiling and with its sharp edges tried to dig out a bigger hole. Every day, if it was that, I would file away at the powdery cement above me until I passed out from exhaustion or devolved into hysterical hammering at the door until the bones in my knuckles splintered through my skin. It took a long time, a very long time in the suffocating dark, but there was a sizable hole in the low ceiling now, one I could manage to crawl through in my emaciated state. With numb fingers that didn't feel like fingers anymore I lifted myself out to the waist and forced down a sob as my face pressed against the inside of the stair.
I don't know how long I spent trying to dig a hole through the wood with my piece of worn out vent. I don't remember how I succeeded. I only remember finally curling up on top of the stairs, my skin filled with splinters, and vomiting blood. It slid down the stair sludge-like as if it were alive and was slowly trying to escape the sight of me. By the time it had gotten to the bottom stair it had grown teeth and they were softly clicking and scraping against the floorboards of the landing, soft, soft, like cat's paws. I was too tired to move and too weak to close my eyes. I watched and felt afraid.
When I could move again I crawled down the stair, muddling through my own vomit and teeth on hands and knees. The house was completely empty. All the clocks were gone.
I managed to get to the kitchen and drank straight out of the tap until my shrunken stomach was full of lukewarm water. I searched the pantries for food, but there was nothing. I lay down on the floor and tried to sleep; only my eyes refused to close, they just stared open at the trail of dripping red that crisscrossed the kitchen and tapered off around the bend of the door and into the hall. I knew it would lead up and down the stairs and into every room, everywhere I've been, it had followed. I didn't want to know.
When I next woke up I was perfectly lucid and extremely aware of how badly I stank. I searched the whole house for a second time and confirmed that Vernon and Petunia did indeed vacate it, leaving me in the cupboard beneath the stairs to die of starvation. Nothing left behind, not even a scrap of a dirty rag. No soap, no toothpaste, and especially no food and I was starving and dirty. I smelt so bad my stomach was heaving, trying to vomit itself out of my body completely.
It was night when I broke into my neighbors' house.
The first thing I did was gorge on their food. It was strange at first, trying to eat with so many unfamiliar gaps in my mouth; my tongue unconsciously gravitating toward them. I couldn't seem to stop, not even after vomiting over the pie I had been eating. The food was so good and I had been in the cold dark for so long. I felt like a bottomless pit that needed all of everything or I would collapse in on myself and dissipate.
I managed to finally drag myself away with the promise of coming back to eat some more after I cleaned myself up. All the houses in the neighborhood had a similar floor plan so I had no trouble finding my way around. The first thing I did when I entered the bathroom was drape a towel over the small mirror that hung above the medicine cabinet. I didn't want to see myself.
I threw my vomit stained clothes off near the sink and waited on the shower to start steaming. As I stepped in the water ran black down the drain, then brown, and then red. I used the bath supplies I found on the shelf to scrub myself raw, my hair had gotten so matted that no amount of shampooing seemed to be helping. I finally gave up trying to save it and found a pair of scissors to cut the knottiest chunks out.
The room next to the bathroom happened to be the bedroom of an adolescent boy. I didn't feel like a creep going through his clothes; I thought I could wear anybody's hand-me-downs at this stage, after two years of wearing a dead boy's clothes.
His jeans were too long, and too wide on my emaciated body, but I had a feeling that had I been at optimal health, they would have fit better than Dudley's ever did. I strapped them to me with one of the many belts littering the floor and looked for a shirt and jacket, I didn't know what month it was but I was freezing. Socks and shoes next, all the shoes were, as expected, too large for me, except for a scuffed brown pair that was shoved to the back of his closet and looked as if they hadn't been touched for the past five years. I shook them free of their dust by the laces and two spiders and a dirty coin fell out. I stared at the money as I double-knotted the worn white laces and decided it would be a good idea if I had some.
The master bedroom didn't turn up anything useful, just a bunch of half-filled suitcases on the floor, and a general mess of open draws and knocked over picture frames, like someone had been trying to pack in a hurry. Strange though, why would someone pack for what looked to be a very long holiday and not take any of it with them?
I backtracked out of the master bedroom and made my way down the stairs. I noticed it now, that odd smell.
With a sinking sort of sensation I walked back into the kitchen and stood in front of that closed door that I knew would connect to the living room. My hand shook a little as it wrapped around the doorknob and pushed the door open. I could see three silhouettes in the darkened room. One slumped across the couch, the other two staked haphazardly atop one another on the floor. The smell was awful. A soft, disgusted, sort of noise left my lips before I doubled over and retched all over my shoes and the floor. I wiped at my mouth with my sleeve and hastily slammed the door closed and backed away, tripping over my feet until I felt the kitchen bench at my back.
I felt a hot flush crawl up my skin, and then shivers scraping down, like being submerged in water of fluctuating temperatures. There was that steady drip-drip again, that had followed me around incessantly; I looked down at the floorboards between my feet where there were small round splashes, hot and red, gathering in number with every passing moment. Unease clung to me like cobwebs.
I half ran out of the house and made my way a little up the street to the next house over. The sky was beginning to lighten but the streetlights were still on, flickering as I passed under them. I was freezing, it was so cold, but I was sweating a lot too, already the back of my shirt and jacket were damp and sticking to me in a suffocating manner.
I stood in front of the paneled door and rang the bell. My stomach was positively roiling with nausea at the prospect that someone might actually answer, but also at the prospect that no one would. I rung the bell another four times, and still no one answered. The doorknob turned easily under my hands and the heavy door swung inwards, laying a bare and empty house at my feet.
There was nothing there. Every piece of furniture, every memento and personal possession had been taken away. I did a cursory walk-through of the house before I left, in case there was something I missed, trailing drip-drops of hot red with every step.
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There was a point where I stopped ringing the doorbell before I walked into a house, somewhere between the fifth and seventh empty house that I came across. The dread that I felt pooled beneath my skin like tender bruising. The moisture at my back had seeped two layers through my jacket and started dripping into the waistband of my pants. I sat at the doorstep of another of the empty houses, knowing that the answers that I needed were just in reach, I only had to ask the right question.
It was freezing, my body wracked in shivers, I knew that I wasn't really sweating. The dripping, it was blood, my blood, and it had seeped through my stolen clothing, slowly making a puddle around where I sat. A lot of blood. I ran my hands through my damp hair, heart skipping a beat as they caught in a snag. My head bowed low, forehead pressed to my knees, and my breaths coming in bouts of hyperventilation —It felt like I was maybe crying, but I could feel no tears running down my face. Delicately, I ran my fingers over the weeping bullet hole at the back of my head.
She shot me. She dragged me back into the cupboard and told me to turn around, and then she shot me.
I slowly began to rock, fingers digging in deeper into the wound. I could feel my brain squelching between them, a hot, thick, trickle down the neck of my shirt.
"Am I dead?" I whispered, and my voice was a low and rusty scraping, raw from screaming and retching. I pulled the bullet out, couldn't stop looking at it. And all I could hear was my heartbeat, fast and heavy, could feel the pressure in my temples.