Oh man, I just had to re-write this chapter... It had too many mistakes and it annoyed me soooo much that I thought of taking it off the and just tossing the whole thing down the garbage disposal. But after serious contemplation, I decided to revise it a bit instead!
As before, I might as well make it clear to all you dumb-dumbs out there that Severus Snape and co. don't belong to me, they belong to J.K. Rowling, blah, blah, blah... The only characters that belong to me so far are his poor mother and his insufferable father, the slimey bastard! Oh yeah, and this story is copyright me, Syllabub, so if you try and steal it I'll rip your head off, yada, yada, yada...You know the drill, right?
Mmmmmm-kaaaayy! Um, let's see... Am I forgetting anything? Well, I suppose I ought to tell ya that this fanfiction is rated R (As if you hadn't already checked, you silly goose, you! ), although it starts off being rated PG-13 or something like that. Really depends on your own personal interpretation, don'tcha know!
And as far as using the Marilyn Manson song, I hope nobodys' offended, I just thought the lyrics of that particular song were particularly apt for the story. Starts the mood off nice and angsty, wouldn't you agree?
Okay, okay! I'll shut up now... Anyway, on with the show!
Syllabub the Cat
(stop screaming at each other!)
"Oh please, Nikolai... Not in front of our boy!"
SLAP!
The ringing sound of hand hitting cheek went off like an achilles tendon snapping, or the flat side of a butcher knife tenderizing a bloody side of beef. A small, dark-haired boy cried in a corner. He watched his mother go down like a boxer that had been delt the finishing blow; one whom had been placed in the ring by mistake, one whom was too frail and sickly to be fighting.
His father was hulking and impossibly massive in his abrupt and sudden fury. The fetid stench of alchohol permeated the stale air, making his son gag. He had been doing what his mother called the "bad thing".
Again.
The boy coul not fully comprehend why his father kept doing the "bad thing" over and over again. Even if it made him mean, even if it made him crazy and wierd, even if it made him like to hurt people. There was no explanation, only the fear of impending doom, and even after countless nights of this, like a video tape that kept rewinding itself, jagged and squealing, the painful reality of these often violent arguments seemed fresher each time; as old scabs do when they are ripped open once again, they hurt no less, but leave deeper scars.
Such was life at the house of the Snapes, when the sun went down and the curtains were drawn shut tightly, a ferocious lion was unleashed upon mother and son behind closed doors. The little boy wanted to cave in on himself and dissapear, he wanted to curl up in a whimpering ball and die.
This was as no child should have felt. No five year old boys or girls should have ever have had thoughts so macabre and gloomy cross the threshold of innocent minds and step over the line that separated everything good and healthy from the gloomy and sickly. Yet always it was dark in the manor, and there were plenty of shadows for little boys to brood in and conjure up such unnatural thoughts.
"SHUT YOUR MOUTH, YOU INSOLENT BITCH! I'LL SAY WHATEVER I WANT IN FRONT OF WHOM I WANT-"
Once more, the yelling. Constantly, there was yelling, screeching, crying. There was no peace for a young boy to nurture his mind and body, or to be nurtured by a loving parent. Although still in the spring of his life, the boy was wan and thin; with dark circles under his eyes like rotting plums. No one was ever around long enough to teach him how to take care of himself properly, so his hair remained stringy and unclean, although not deep enough into his childhood yet to be greasy, and his nose, which would soon bear the hawk-like resemblence of his father, was too grubby for a boy that was not allowed to go messing around outside in the dirt.
(its all my fault just pleaseohpleaseohplease don't hit mum again-)
"SO WHY DON'T YOU GO CLEAN HOUSE LIKE A WOMAN SHOULD, YOU DUMB SLUT,-"
The floor shook with his father's rage. It was so thick in the air you could cut it with a knife, making the boy cry harder with fear for himself, fear for his mother. Kids can sense things like that, you know?
He hyperventilated and hiccuped, snot bubbled and tears coursed like rivers past his lips, making him gasp for air.
"AND AS FOR THE BOY-"
Always, he was "the boy" to his father. Never adressed by his proper name, or even as "son", he was as good as a piece of rubbish or a discarded, broken toy in his father's eyes. It made him angry, and kindled a spitefulness in his young heart that would only feed itself with age and spread out of control like wildfire.
"HE CAN TAKE IT! HE NEEDS DISCIPLINE AFTER ALL THE CODDLING YOU GIVE HIM!"
Jealous. The truth was that his father was jealous of any attention his wife payed to her son, although it was never very much, well-intended though she was. He had never wanted a son, and seeing him holding onto his mother's dress through eyes intoxicated with gin and firewhiskey could turn him violent at the drop of a hat. Moody enough as it was, drink only made him more unpredictable in his demeanor. His son knew this, and tried to avoid him during these times as soon as possible.
Suddenly, the furious man's eyes averted to the snivelling body in the corner of the staircase. His eyes had a wily, reddened look about them now that his wife saw before he turned on her son, but was powerless to stop. She feared for him more than ever, and tried plea for his safety.
"HEY BOY?"
(he wants to kill me)
The child had no choice. He had to face his infantcidal parent and gaze into the eyes of the devil himself; the eyes of his father, who should have loved him but only wanted to see him grovel, was immediately sticken with parylasis at the much larger man's stare, making him shake and quiver like a rattlesnake's tail.
His father was crazy.
His father was drunk.
"YOU WANT SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT? WELL, I'LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT!"
"No...No, oh please no... Beat me instead of him!" cried his wife, but her pleas were promptly ignored and only made her son more hysterical. "He's only a boy-"
He did not want to be punished again! But his father's lust for blood was too strong. It had poisoned his heart and made him bitter with resentment.
His little son, who would grow up to be as tall as himself, though not anywhere as burly, who would grow up just as black-haired but not nearly as swarthy, shook his head back and forth in a silent lament for mercy. Yet all words died and withered away on his tongue when a pair of sweaty, super-humanly powerful hands closed around his tiny throat, throttling him like a rag doll.
He could not breath. Streams of curse words poured from his father's mouth, spraying him with spittle. Dark red blood laquered his immature baby teeth as his gums split from a badly aimed
0 fist.
It was all too unreal, yet all too familiar. Like a symphony, his mother screamed back-up while he sung a sort of broken up, squeaking soprano. The sound of his father pummeling his body was the percussion, pounding rythmically in his ears, banging on his ear drums unmercifully.
After a while, his father must have grown tired of beating the everlasting piss out of his progeny, and for the grand finale, in one furious flip of the hand, lifted him off the ground by the neck, and to his mother's despair, flung him into the wall where he crashed in a heap like a dented cymbal. It was the worst beating so far of his life, although it would not be the last, nor by far the most grievious.
He felt something break inside of him then, although he could not place his finger on where, and the very final thing he remembered thinking before accepting the welcome blackness that was rapidly enveloping him, was that he was terribly sorry to be living in such a world where fathers hated their children so much, where they beat them til they bled and mistreated their mothers so badly... Would there be no end to this living nightmare, he wondered distractedly, noting with all too much observedness for someone so young the numbness enveloping his limbs, and when he finally passed into the blessed realm of the unconcious, the regretful and tragic voice of his mother reverberated over and over in his mind as she whispered brokenly,
"Oh, my poor little boy..." She did not have tears enough for her little boy, but plenty for herself. Still, she wept at the unfairness of it all.
"My poor Severus..."