A/N: Written for Round 2 of the fourth QLFC for the Ballycastle Bats! Prompts used: (image) of the black and white photographs, (word) noble, and (genre) suspense. Location: Little Hangleton.
Tom Riddle found flowers beautiful, and girls moreso. He experienced the same gains and advantages of his noble position as any other privileged adolescent. The paupers rightfully drew their eyes away from his wealth as he passed, and he invited the otherwise disinterested stares of the townspeople.
He spent the majority of his break from school riding over plains with a neighboring girl of a similar social status. She was nice, her lips more so, and he thought he was in love.
Her name was Marjorie.
But when the seasons turned on his sixteenth year, Marjorie's parents took her across the sea. Tom resigned himself to taking his rides alone.
His family lived on a duff, far way from the town their home enshadowed. Tom regrettably had to ride through said town to get to the forest path. He was not against the peasants who lived their individual lives, but he saw their shortcomings far too easily.
They were dirty and even a little bit creepy. One girl - Tom was sure she was a girl anyways - stood outside her ramshackle home, frozen like a statue, and watched him ride by. Tom felt a good mix of both terrible revulsion and deeper pity.
The girl was usually alone, a singular dot in the distance as he rode closer into town.
She was a constant. When he was younger, he had felt obligated to look into her eyes, and it felt like he was staring into infinity. More mature, Tom understood that she did not require his attentions, that he had no obligation, and that he was not bound to endure her odd gaze any more.
The eerie, backwater girl never broke eye contact as he passed. But he avoided her eyes as best he could. The road before her home plateaued, a change from the steady incline leading up to her gross existence. The gravel and dust elongated and time was elastic as he passed. Tom often felt like a animal trapped in honey, boggled down by the sheer dysphoria radiating from the terrible girl, her terrible relatives, and her terrible home. Air, once crisp, grew more heavy, gross with the presence of the girl and her rotten family.
The home reminded him of truths he would rather ignore: long nights alone, fathers long trips, and mothers weekend absences. Long shadows loom in the crevices of his home and Tom does what he can to best avoid them.
Out in the road, he cannot ignore the oppressive feelings of doubt, unwantedness, and extreme loneliness. All he can do is grit his teeth, slouch in his seat, and coax his horse to get to the end of the road and turn the corner.
Almost immediately, once he was out of the dark house's reach, the grass seemed to grow greener, the trees less sickly, and the people relatively more attractive. Tom breathed easily once more, ignoring the prickling feeling at the back of his neck and the base of his stomach.
A new girl replaced Marjorie at the end of the year. Before Tom went back to school, he made an effort to ride by her house - twenty minutes out of his way - in hopes to catch a glimpse of the girl who would inevitably become his new Marjorie. Her name was Mallory.
New Mallory liked ribbons, and cameras, and hated horses. Tom spent a total of fifteen afternoons with her, unevenly dispersed throughout his daily rides. As the summer drew to a close, he found himself more and more inside, watching new Mallory, with her thicker wrists and doe-like eyes squint against lighting, watching her photo negatives carefully.
She wasn't quite Mallory but she seemed enough, if not marginally smarter. Not as intelligent as himself, but she seemed funny enough to not take offense at his jokes. She laughed awkwardly, not as free as Mallory - and her unwillingness to touch a horse made her less-than-ideal - but Tom resigned himself that she would do fine for an annual companion.
She had caught him mid laugh, his black curls bouncing rakishly in the wind, while his red stained cheeks glowed from behind the screen. The october wind cut across his hair and pulled one side up while swooshing the left side across his face. He was frozen next to his trusty horse, hand on her strong neck with a dazzling smile that seemed to be infinite.
Mallory had caught the elusive spirit of youth in her camera.
There's a point where day fades to night, where the forest gives way to grassy plain, and where the worries of both their parents seemed inconsequential.
In such a moment, Mallory turned her head and watched the boy - who could ride, who listened to her, who was an ever present fixture in her sumer - and watched his mouth move. She moved closer and, as if the wind had changed, Tom eagerly positioned himself to be receptive.
In the back of Mallory's mind, she wondered if this was what Tom had been waiting for, but she dismissed her concerns.
He seemed familiar with the motions, whereas she felt frozen to the spot, feeling the softness of him, yet not comprehending where the magic lied.
She left him that day; it was turning dark and the sweltering heat of the day had not abated. She told him to wait, to let her walk home alone and he acquiesced to her desires, grinning a little cheekily as he made a move to put his hands to her hips and hold her close in between her arms, under his shoulders.
Tom felt elated, excited, and hopeful. He rode back to town in a slow trot. He promised himself to take the miserable path back to his home, the small stretch of road that always seemed oppressive and terrible at an even slower walk, just to combat the sadness with the rushing happiness in his head. When he flexed his fingers, he could still feel the sensation of Mallory's cotton dress and her warmth.
Perhaps the evil spirit who had cursed the land before the odd girl with darkness had gone and found a new victim to terrorize. While the poor girl still stood before her sad excuse of a home, the misma of intense sadness was lessened. Instead, Tom simply felt his usual emotions of unease. However, his earlier euphoria kept his caution away. The girl flagged him down and offered his a clean glass of water.
Looking into the girl's eyes, and looking down at the infinite cup in her hand, Tom felt the lingering remnants of his pity take hold. The glass was cool, fighting against the heat.
Strange, there was no condensation.
The girl held her breath, she was horrible looking. Tom did his best to block her from his mind. The cup invited all his attentions, and in the face of the hag before him, Tom could not be any more grateful.
The cup smelled like Marjorie's perfume - reminding Tom of euphoria and entrancing him with scents of Marjorie's toffees and the chemical sting of Mallorie's dark room. He drank it down, hie earlier apprehension gone with the wind.
His head felt hot, and the sun abandoned him. In the dark of the night, the girl's hopeful eyes shining up at him, Tom had never felt more alone, more desolate. Eventually, his feeling of lonesomeness passed, written over with thoughts that came bombarding into his mind. Doesn't not-Majorie look divine? Wouldn't not-Mallory be better at kissing? Maybe he could even get her to go further. Her hair too... why would anyone want curls and ribbons when not-Mallory's draping locks framed her oval face perfectly?
Tom Riddle, at seventeen, ran off with nineteen year old Merope Gaunt.
When Mallory head whispers of what happened, of her boyfriend and his new bride, she laughed herself silly.
The poor peasants were so eager for gossip and too fascinated with the lives of the rich. They really forgot how to think and how to live their own lives.
The miserable town of Little Hangleton was a town out of time by the turn of the century. The rooftops of the humble city slanted, only redone once since the mid-twentieth century. The local people liked to think of the aging roofs and worn grass to be proof of ancestry, evidence of their long-time settlement. Yet some those of whom remained in Little Hangleton remembered the miasma of loneliness, of hatred, and of pure misery that haunted the outskirts of their town. Aging residents who's scuffed shoes match the worn conditions of the weeping buildings, still flinch and avoid the back road that leads to town.
A/N: thanks for reading! Drop a me line!