Brick by Brick
By Rey
Started on: 12th February 2020 at 08:10 PM
Finished on: 14th February 2020 at 06:16 PM
2. Dream
Winter 1984
The little freak of a boy, maybe also named "Mister Potter," still lives in the cupboard under the stairs of the house on Privet Drive number 4, Little Whinging, Surrey, England. Although the summer in which he found the true, fierce determination to go away and never come back has long passed, he stays, because he is yet to find the true means to do so and still support himself until he can work somewhere else.
He hasn't been idle throughout this time, though, not that he can be truly idle in this house. He has been learning lots, from his own observations and from "Aunt Petunia." He can mend clothes and cook things and read the stock phrases used on his list of chores, now, and he can also build a simple brick wall and write a sloppy "poter" on the back wall of his cupboard, among others.
In fact, the brick-wall project, whose result has lined the flower-beds since autumn, as well as the stupid trap incident from that summer, has taught him something very, very valuable: "Don't rush things. Be very, very, very careful or you will have to restart from the beginning – and get punished for wasting the materials, too. Do everything like building a wall: brick by brick with a polished finish. Nothing is finished before the result and the tools to make it have been neatened up."
The trap incident has also changed his life in an unexpected way.
The family who live upstairs, rightly suspicious of what he might have taken from their house despite the seeming lack of evidence, has taken to locking him out of the house, doing chores or not, when he is punished for something or another. No more heaping indoor chores on him or locking him in his cupboard. As the result, the tool shed squatting at the farthest corner of the back yard is as much his living space as his cupboard under the stairs, now. In fact, nowadays, he spends more nights in the tool shed than in the cupboard.
When it was autumn, living outdoors like this was a rather pleasant change to living indoors, though chillier. He spent the nights locked in the tool shed, of course, but he was free to roam the back yard otherwise, with the pretence of weeding and gardening. When "Uncle Vernon" wasn't home, he could even roam on the front yard, often peeking at the nice interactions between children and their parents happening at other homes, however hurtful it feels in his chest. When it is in the depth of winter like this, though….
The little boy sits huddled on the packed dirt on the middle inside the tool shed, surrounded by all kinds of gardening, carpentry and repare equipments. A huge tarp has been drawn all round the outside of this circle of mismatched things, folded painstakingly twice over and draping over into the poor nest as well, to act as a double wall inside the leaky walls of the tool shed. But, sadly, it's still not enough, and the little boy shivers hard within his winter cloak, the family's "Christmas present" for him, which used to be "Uncle Vernon's." His belly is hollow and hurting again, adding to the misery, and to think that this is only the third day of a second week-long punishment in his life! `If only I was more careful with that expensive wine and didn't spill it on the table cloth when Cruncher came in. And then I ran with the bottle when it tried to bite me! I should've just let it bite me, maybe. Then the bottle wouldn't have been broken and I wouldn't be locked out here for a week. I can't even go outside!`
He wishes that "Aunt Marge," "Uncle Vernon's" sister, failed to come this Christmas. She always brings her big, vicious dog Cruncher with her! And this year she brought a tin of stale, a little mouldy dog biscuits for him as his Christmas present, and Cruncher thought that he was stealing its food and hated him ever since, and he had to throw a biscuit back up along with any other thing in his belly when he tried one yesterday, it was that aweful.
Sadly, he didn't get to smuggle anything to eat from the house before "Uncle Vernon" locked him in here, and all his stolen supplies were still in the cupboard under the stairs. He won't get anywhere even if he makes the tingles open the tool shed's door and the back door and the cupboard's door, though, since Cruncher is inside and will no doubt notice him. He has no wish to be punished like this for weeks and weeks and weeks!
`But I'm still hungry, and thirsty, and chilly, and achy….`
He hugs himself closer, imitating the mother at the house on number 6 who cuddled a little girl after the latter fell down from her tricycle. `If only Mummy is here, and I'm with her…. I don't mind if I'm a girl, if only she'll hug me like that. It must feel so nice. That little girl looked like she liked it so much.`
He dreams, and dreams, and dreams, and, slowly but surely, his head rests heavily on his folded-up knees. He slips calmly, smoothly into sleep, with an ache in his chest so sweet that there's a little smile on his thin little face. And as he sleeps, warmth and comfort and safety like he never felt before blooms in him like the roses and lilies and petunias on the front yard last summer.
It's all dark and empty, at first. And then he feels the water and power and dug-dugging, rush-rushing sound hugging him thoroughly from all sides, from head to toe. It's odd, but lovely, and the loveliness beats away the oddness soon enough. The power sings to him, sometimes, and the dug-dugging, rush-rushing sound is ever-present. The water churns at times, too, and he finds himself riding it joyously.
Well, but, sadly, like all things good in his little life, this safe, warm, comfy experience ends too soon, and rudely at that. Without any warning, he is yanked out of his safe, warm, comfy place and into a cacophony of frantic grown-up noises, hospital-like smells, and a harsh beeping, oddly huffing sound that so poorly replaces the lovely dug-dugging, rush-rushing one he so loves. Worse, he hurts all over, including deep in his chest and behind his eyes, and the latter hurts are the most hurtful of all.
He is asked lots and lots and lots of questions, when he is deemed better by the doctors and nurses. He is said to be a "miracle child," for not dying from something called "hypothermia" and for waking up from a two-week "coma" without anything wrong in him. He is talked about in low, angry and fretful tones by those doctors and nurses when they think he can't hear and understand them, although he knows that they aren't angry at him. `It's the same as last time, in some things,` he thinks, `but I'm here longer, now. My punishment after this will be longer, too, then? Oh, I really don't look forward to it!`
The doctors and nurses talk about getting him away from "abusive" people, which he takes to mean "hurtful" people, like the family living upstairs in the house on number 4. It's really the same as before, as he notes. But, even before, it didn't work, or this little freak of a boy would have been elsewhere, like he has often wished.
He thinks that the nicest thing those grown-ups could have done for him would be to let him stay in that so, so, so pleasant and lovely place. But they didn't, and he knows that the worth of a freak's word is nothing, and now he has to prepare himself to face the angry grown-ups at number 4 and a long, long, long list of chores. They might even give him indoor chores, now, for lack of outdoor ones in winter holiday, and he can't look forward to it, although he was looking forward to it, before he fell asleep that day. Now, he is simply so tired with everything, deep deep down in his chest.
He gets to rest for a little while in the baby bed in "Cousin Dudley's" second bedroom, when a kind doctor drives him back to the house on number 4 in her clean, lovely little car. The house' grown-ups claims that it is his bedroom and he is just so messy with all the things that he has been given. The doctor asks difficult questions to the said grown-ups following that.
But she never comes back later, unlike what she has promised. All, as per usual, by this time, and the little freak of a boy has learnt not to hope.
He feels disappointed, all the same. And rather bitter, too, because his prediction of the long, long, long list of chores has indeed come true. And he can't slip anything anywhere because "Aunt Petunia" is always following close behind, watching him sharply.
He is back living in the cupboard under the stairs, now, except for when "Aunt Petunia's" most sympathetic neighbours and friends come to the house, giving her their praises of taking in "such a difficult child" and their sympathies for dealing with the same. In such times, he is locked in the tool shed again, silenced by the threat of being belted day and night by "Uncle Vernon" if he lets out or causes any sound.
This, too, is usual by now. What isn't usual is the sensations from the safe, comfy, warm place that linger vividly in his mind, to which he returns to whenever he can, and which he safeguards dilligently. It is far better than the dream of the flying motorcycle, or the green light and screaming, or the family hurting him even more and in absurd ways.
Far better, because he somehow knows that it must have been real, once, and he is never lonely in there.
`One day,` he tells himself most seriously, `I will return there for real and I shan't ever come back here.` And he keeps to the promise most dilligently of all.