HERE IT IS! Chapter one of the rewrite is finally up! I apologize from the cold dark depths of my soul for the wait, my lame excuses are in the end notes. I hope you enjoy it!
I lost my birth parents to a terrorist attack in London. They had gone to a party that the company my father worked for hosted, leaving me with a friend. An extremist group came and bombed the building that the party was being held in. No one survived. I was orphaned, and sent to live with my closest relatives, my mother's sister and her husband and son. I was put to work at age three. I did chores, cooked, and did what my uncle told me to. No questions asked. One day, after a visit from my uncle's sister Marge, every mistake I made, no matter how small or insignificant, warranted punishment. At first it was mild. I would get a spanking, and get sent to the backyard, where I would sit on the garden bench and 'think about my actions, and how they shame the family's good name'. Of course, I was never actually considered part of the family, I was just the niece that they were forced by the law to take in, which was why I had to do so much to 'pull my weight', as my uncle put it.
Things got worse. My uncle lost a promotion just after I turned five and turned to drinking. He came home and yelled. He yelled for what seemed like hours. He cursed too during his tirade. He cursed me, he cursed God, and he cursed his boss. My aunt tried to calm him down, but he told her what happened, and how it was all my fault. She agreed with him. She had hated me since before I was even born. She had told me this ever since I was little. She used to tell me bedtime stories of evil witches and wizards that fought constantly. She always made me recite the phrase: "Magic is evil, it is not real, anyone who believes in magic is crazy, and is also evil." She told me that my parents believed in magic, and that they were crazy and evil, and that they were asking to die. She would leave and come back with a cup of water that smelled funny, and burned as it grated down the sides of my throat.
She hated me, so she sided with him, told him he was right, and that she knew that I was just like my parents, a parasite living off of the success of others. He came to my room, the closet below the stairs. Where most families kept brooms and chemicals and shoes and coats, they kept me. He would come to the door, as he was too fat, and the closet too small for him to walk inside. He pushed his head inside and looked at me with pure hatred and contempt on his squished and wrinkled pink face. He pulled his head out and thrust a short, stubby, thick arm in, his gnarled hand and fat fingers resembling sausage that had been left out to mold for weeks, in shape and color, grabbing for me.
His fingers caught the collar of my baggy shirt in a vice grip. He yanked me out of the closet and threw me on the ground in the wide hallway. He bent over me, the wood floor groaning at the shift in weight. Fingers tangled in my hair, and my scalp felt as if it were being torn off as I was suddenly lifted into the air. I clawed at the arms and hands and fingers that suspended me, but it was useless. A five-year-old girl was no match against an overgrown man.
I was lowered harshly to the ground, my bare heels hitting the hard floor with enough force that I could hear a crack, bone and skin against gravity and wood, and feel searing pain rip through my aching feet, sore from a hard day of yard work. I could feel a warm wet substance burst out of the soft flesh and drip towards my toes. Blood. My uncle's hands shifted as he pressed me viciously to the wall, one leaving my body entirely, but the other trailing down my sunburnt face and on to my neck, distorted and unkempt fingernails scratching the tender skin the entire way. I screamed in pain, but the strangled sound was cut off by fingers squeezing my windpipe closed, the high pitched note of agony ringing out for less than a second before being replaced by a gurgling choking sound.
He spat in my face, the smell and taste of putrid saliva and stale breath invading my senses. I tried to cringe away from the offending substance, and the man who put it there, but I couldn't, my small form pinned to the wall by my throat. I could feel the blood rushing to my skull, and I could feel it turning my face a purplish-reddish color. I could feel myself become lightheaded from lack of oxygen. He was going to kill me. I didn't want to die. I heard Petunia yell, telling Vernon that killing me would just get him sent to jail, get Dudley taken away, and her left without a servant. The hands released me and I fell to the floor, my head hitting the hard surface with a loud crack. A heavy foot stomped on my stomach, and the contents expelled themselves, the acrid taste burning my aching throat as it traveled out of my body and onto the floor. A thick hand struck my cheek and a shout rang through the house, "How dare you dirty this house with your filth! Get your useless ass off the floor and scrub!"
I turned over on my front, and tried to push myself off of the floor, but my arms were too weak to support my body weight. I was on my hands and knees in the middle of the hallway. Vernon kicked me again, sending me sprawling against the door, a trail of bloody vomit in my wake. I somehow managed to push myself up, and I tried to get the front door open so I could get away, but the dizziness had not dissipated yet, and I was almost too weak to stand up. I couldn't get the knob to turn, and I couldn't find the strength to pull the door. I was trapped, destined to die by the hands of the family that was supposed to keep me safe. They had turned me into their slave, and now they were going to kill me. Life has a sense of humor apparently. I passed out.
I woke up in the garage. It was detached from the house and had always been empty. Vernon believed that the family's car was something that should be on display at all times, so that people could envy their 'wealth'. Petunia believed that if you couldn't keep something in the house or the attic, it should not be kept. I was now the garage's sole occupant. No one ever came in here, Dudley was too lazy to do anything but eat and watch television, Petunia was too much of a germaphobe and a neat-freak to torture herself with all of the dust, and Vernon was always at work. I sat there calling for help, but the thickly insulated walls muffled and distorted the sound until it was blocked entirely, too quiet for anyone to hear. No one would come to my rescue.
I tried to stand, but my legs were too weak, and I was held to the floor by a rusty towing chain nailed to the ground. No doubt Vernon wanted to have somewhere that he could torture me in peace, without having to worry about dirtying the house. My throat ached from my screams, and I was coughing incessantly, flecks of red spraying as the air left my body violently, leaving a morbid and grotesque painting of shining blood on the ground. No one would ever find me. No one would ever witness what they had done to me. I was so tired, so dizzy, I could barely keep my eyes open.
I stopped fighting I gave in.
I woke again to Vernon standing above me, kicking and screaming at me. I instinctively moved to cover my face with my hands, but the chain holding me to the ground prevented me from doing so. I tried so hard to keep from screaming, but the effort was in vain, and I ended up crying out anyway. That earned me a particularly harsh kick in the side of the head, leaving me once again unconscious.
My life was pretty much the same for the next ten years. I lived in the closet, was "punished" in the garage. At eleven, I was invited to go to a boarding school for the gifted in Scotland, but Petunia and Vernon said that it was a school for freaks and that my attendance was completely out of the question. They sent a letter declining and that was the last we heard of it. I knew that there was no point in arguing with them. Part of me was disappointed, I had never actually been to school before as Vernon and Petunia had been claiming that I was homeschooled so that they didn't have to worry about getting me there or anyone noticing my frequent mysterious injuries. Another part of me was relieved. Because I had never been to school, I had never interacted with other children besides my cousin, and considering the fact that he had been horrible to me my entire life, I hardly considered his brief orders of food or the various insults he constantly shot at me as very good social interaction with another human being. I wasn't worried that I would be made fun of for my obvious educational disadvantage, when I was about seven, I was given the task of completing Dudley's homework. That of course meant that I would have to know what I was doing. I read through all of the books, and completed all of assignments perfectly, ensuring both a perfect grade for Dudley, and an education for me. You know what they say, 'Survival of the Fittest'…
After ten years of surviving the horrendous treatment instilled upon me by my so called 'loving relatives', I knew the rules. There were the little things, like 'speak only when spoken to' and 'do as we say and you can eat'. But the biggest rule was that I was never allowed to leave the house under any circumstance, not even if it were on fire. I suppose that if the house was on fire, I probably wouldn't leave anyway, not even to save my life. After all, if I did somehow make it out alive, it would just be the rest of my life living with the Dursleys. I've often times thought of taking my own life, if not for the sole purpose of being somewhere far away from that house and that family. I understand that suicide is not necessarily the best form of getting that wish to come true, but at some point, it may become my only option.
When I was almost fourteen, I was doing dishes and I noticed that I was alone in the kitchen. Usually Petunia sat at the table drinking awful-smelling tea or reading a book, monitoring me, making sure I did as I was told and that I didn't do anything strange, but today I was alone. I quickly glanced around and sure enough, there was no one to watch me carefully and quietly slip one of the large kitchen knives into the waistband of Dudley's old baggy sweatpants. I quickly finished the dishes and other chores that I was required to accomplish, and went to my room (AKA the closet under the stairs). I pulled out the knife and almost cried, finally I had something useful. This knife was more than just protection, it gave me hope, hope of paradise beyond the darkness in which I lived.
That knife had resided under the tiny, moldy mattress on the floor of my room for a year, just waiting to be used. Thankfully, I was the only one in the house that cooked, so no one ever noticed that it was missing. I hadn't ever brought up the courage to use it against Vernon, knowing that he could easily overpower me, and I hadn't ever been able to muster the nerve it would take to kill myself with it. As often as I entertained the idea, it just never felt right, as if that tiny glimmer of hope that still remained in me was telling me that there was something more out there for me.
For some reason I still continued to believe in that glimmer, even though it seemed as if there was just an endless cycle keeping me chained to the abysmal life I was living. I think part of it is that I knew that I would make it to today, and that kept me going. I smiled as I heard the grandfather clock in the living room chime twelve, and blew out the fifteen dust candles on my dust drawing cake. I stared sadly at the picture for a moment, wondering how many more years this would continue, before smearing the image with my hand and curling up on my mattress.
A/N: So I know I said that I would post this three months ago, but I got REALLY bad writers block, I was failing math and I just lost motivation. HOWEVER! I just want to thank everyone who endured the first run of this story, and I really hope you enjoy this one, I like it a lot better than the other one, but that is just my opinion and I'm biased. Seriously guys, I love you so much, thank you for giving me my mojo back!
Love ya all!
-Sam