If Wishes Were Fishes the boy Would Eat.
"Quit your complaining you useless boy!" The rotund man with the walrus moustache bellowed at his young nephew. "You'll be allowed to eat tomorrow if you behave and do as you're told with none of your freakishness. Without complaint! Now into your cupboard and out of my sight until morning. I'll be expecting my newspaper and coffee at 7:30 and my breakfast on the table at 8 sharp and you out mowing the yard and washing my car."
"But you said if I finished all my cho-" The boy was cut off in his protestation by his uncle grabbing him around the upper arm and dragging him bodily to the stairs.
"I said no complaining!" The door was thrown open, the boy was thrown in, the door was thrown closed, and the latch was thrown home. A well-rehearsed choreography that all in the house were familiar with, some more intimately than others.
The man stomped back into the kitchen to sit his supper with his family. 'Hopefully the little freak hasn't burned any of the food tonight.' He thought to himself, 'There is nothing quite so unpleasant as an overcooked piece of chicken.' He allowed a smile to flit onto his face, if you can call something so smug and self-satisfied a smile, pleased with the fine job he was doing in stamping the freakishness out of the boy. If there were two things Vernon Dursley understood, which most he knew him would find to be a gross exaggeration, they were thoroughness and efficiency. His recent promotion into the management of the production plant had shown him that the greatest profits are to be made when you find a use for the dross and he'd brought the lesson home with him and applied it quite handily. Under his firm-handed guidance the boy was finally starting to become almost worth the cost of keeping him and over the course of the last year the man had been seeing fewer and fewer examples of the boy's unnaturalness. Yes improvements were being made in the running of #4 Privet Drive.
The boy curled up on the bare hardwood floor of his cupboard and wrapped his threadbare blanket around himself as tight as he could get it. He wished for the pain in his arm to go away but knew it wouldn't for a few days at least. He wished he'd been able to sneak more to eat than just a bit of the crusts he'd cut from his cousin's bread while he buttered it but hoped they'd still be in the bin in the morning. He wished he could sleep on his mattress as it was much softer than the floor which his friends the spiders had taken it over for themselves but he had learned they didn't like it when he tried to use it now, they'd taken to biting him whenever he tried and he didn't want to upset his only friends. He wished that he had a bed like his cousin did but had been told that freaks don't deserve beds or rooms or too many other things to even think about, it was much easier to think of things freaks did deserve to have, it was a short list and easy enough to remember, "NOTHING!" He wished that his tummy would stop being so noisy but he realized that wasn't going to happen, it never did, and his uncle would definitely be coming by and teaching his tummy to be quiet once the man had finished his supper, it was a lesson he was taught at least once a week and knew quite well but never could seem to get the hang of no matter how hard he tried. Most of all he wished that his wishes would come true but they never had.
The morning came and the boy woke to his aunt's measured steps on the stairs above him. He found his tummy the same colors as his uncle's face would get when he was very angry and yelling a lot and this left him sad because being in any way like his uncle was the last thing he wanted to do.
The door of his cupboard was hammered on and then unlatched and pulled open. "Get up and get the coffee started and the paper fetched I won't have you lazing about in bed all day." The boy looked up at his aunt taking in her horse like face and long neck; he thought for a second of a picture he'd seen in one of his cousins books of a long necked yellow horse with black polka dots and a smile almost crept its way onto his young face but he quickly suppressed it and got up out of his cupboard to start the day. He knew not to respond unless asked a question, and even then sometimes it was easier not to say anything at all, being silent was one of the few things he knew he was any good at.
He went to the kitchen and clambered up on his stool to get the coffee and filter papers out of one the cabinets above the counter. He took the pitcher and filled it in the sink then poured it into the back of the coffee machine, put the filter paper in and spooned in the grounds, turned the machine on, turned the stove on to start heating the pan for bacon, and went to collect the paper. After the paper was on the table in front of his uncle's chair he pulled the package of bacon out of the fridge and started it cooking while he put the first pieces of bread in the toaster and broke eggs into a bowl to whip them. He stirred the bacon only getting a few bits of grease on his narrow arms as it popped and sizzled, put the toast on a plate and started some more, took the bacon out of the pan and onto the plate and started to pour the scrambled eggs in to cook in the bacon grease when he heard his uncle rumbling down the stairs.
He started, he'd forgotten the coffee. Oh no! He'd forgotten to get the coffee onto the table and his uncle was almost downstairs! He hurried to get the coffee into a mug and ended up slopping it over the side and onto his hand. When the still near boiling liquid hit his hand he cried out and dropped both mug and pitcher to the floor where they shattered, spraying his bare feet with yet more of the scalding substance and though he knew it would only make things worse for him he couldn't help from crying out once more as his feet were burned and he jumped only to end up with shards of glass and porcelain imbedded into his feet. Unfortunately for the boy this caused him to jump in pain again which only resulted in more shards being added to his soles and the ones that were already there being imbedded deeper.
Vernon Dursley heard the horrific racket coming from his kitchen, the boy letting out a yelp of pain, good; probably got a nice bit of bacon grease on him, a smile began to form. Breaking glass, not good; that sounded like the boy had dropped a plate, the smiled died instantly. The boy screaming out in pain again, good; maybe it had half landed on the freak's foot, the smile tried to return. The boy was really hollering and crying quite piteously now. Then he heard his wife "Stupid child look what you've done to my floor! Quit your crying and get started cleaning this mess up!" Petunia seemed to be getting the boy on task but Vernon wasn't a man to miss out on a chance to discipline his nephew so he trundled down the stairs as fast as his significant bulk would allow eager to being tearing into the worthless little freak.
"Boy! What have you done to your aunt's kitchen you little freak? Did you use your unnaturalness in my home again?" He hollered as he got to the base of the stairs and began to waddle his way over to the kitchen. Vernon squeezed through the kitchen door and took in the scene before him. The coffee pitcher and a mug broken on the floor, the coffee spilt all over the floor, the boy sitting with his back up against the cooker sobbing and picking at his foot which was dripping blood steadily onto the lino, the stench of burnt toast and eggs. "You're useless boy. I don't know why we even bother ourselves with you. You can't even cook a simple breakfast right. Now, you are going to quit incessant whining, clean this horrible mess up, and get your lazy incompetent arse out to wash my car!" His voice had been steadily rising and his face steadily purpling as he ranted until by the end he has a brilliant mauve and bellowing.
The boy just continued to cry piteously and try to remove the jagged shards from his feet with little success, the tears making his vision swim and his coordination suffer. Vernon grabbed the boy around the neck and forced him to look up at him, "You will listen to me when I am speaking to you boy and you will do as I say." This failed to produce the effect he desired as the boy continued to cry and cradle his foot in his hands, knowing he should stop or he'd make things worse, but unable to. "That's it boy back in your cupboard with you." In a scene similar but far worse than the one seen last night he grabbed the boy around the arm again and began dragging him to the cupboard, the boy was was struggling futilely, trying to keep from putting any pressure on the souls of his feet but that's simply not possible while being frog marched. He cried all the harder.
"Vernon! Vernon stop!"
The man turned back to his wife with a curious expression on his enraged face. "What is it Petunia dear?"
"Don't walk him to his cupboard like that. Have you no sense man?" The woman scolded her husband.
He just looked back at her with a rather dumb look on his face which seemed quite at home there.
"You'll get blood on the carpets dear." She tried to affect a kind smile but it looked more like a pained grimace on her narrow and bony features.
"Ah of course, right you are darling." The man marched the boy the rest of the way to the edge of the lino, readjusted his grip, and lifted the boy by one arm to carry him down the hall to the cupboard. Once more the door was thrown open, the boy was thrown in, the door was thrown closed, and the latch was thrown home. "Now you'll stay in there with no meals the rest of the day. If you're ready to come out tomorrow and behave in a reasonable manner we'll see what happens."
The boy sat in his cupboard trying to pick the biggest pieces of glass from his other foot now thinking about just how everything had gone wrong for him today. He wished he hadn't forgotten to pour the coffee before his uncle was on the stairs but he had, he wished he hadn't slopped the coffee and burned his hand but he had, he wished he hadn't dropped the pitcher and burned his feet but he had, he wished he hadn't jumped and landed on the broken glass but he had, he wished most of all that he'd had a chance to nick the crusts from the bin but he hadn't.