The Flashbacks
"Are you sleeping?"
Dorcas crunched a nut between their teeth, "Yes."
"Are you eating?"
Dorcas picked up another nut from the complimentary bowl, "Your guess?"
"Are you suicidal?"
"Depends how much longer I have to sit here for."
"Are you hurting yourself?"
"Only mentally."
"What do you mean by that?"
"It's a joke. Regulus, a friend of mine, makes those sort of jokes a lot. Guess it catches on."
"Please don't joke. This is serious. Why did you try to set your apartment on fire?"
"It was an accident."
"Your old roommate, Rita, seemed to disagree."
"She likes to make up rumours. I ate her yogurt, she was still a little angry about it."
"Our time is up. We have 7 more court-appointed sessions left, unless you wanted to carry on afterwards?"
"I'd rather you help me find a different therapist."
"You should really work on your attitude, Miss Meadowes."
"And you should really work on your misgendering, Mr Slughorn. I told you not to call me 'Miss'."
Dorcas turned the corner, walking back to Regulus' apartment that they were temporarily staying at. The sun was slowly sinking and they felt themselves sink with it. The night was always the worst, Dorcas felt like they were drowning in darkness and loneliness as the sun went away; that's probably why they tried to set fire to an empty yogurt cup. Or maybe it was just to piss off Rita Skeeter again.
*One month ago*
"Meadowes! Did you read my latest article? About those people caught shoplifting?"
Dorcas groaned and hid further in their bed, "No. But it sounds boring so feel free to get the fuck out my room. It's like 4am."
"It's 6am actually and you should really be up already. Didn't you read that piece I did a few months ago about how morning exercise makes you so much skinnier and you should really be thinking about working on that."
"I'm going to ignore that comment and your advice."
"That's why you're never going to improve yourself. A positive mindset is the first step to self improvement- I wrote that."
"So at what point will you start to improve?"
Rita rolled her eyes and tapped her long nails against Dorcas' bedside table, "I brought some more groceries last night, so don't you dare touch them."
Dorcas flipped her off before rolling back to sleep.
A couple hours later, Dorcas got up, scavenging the apartment for food.
They opened the refrigerator door, taking in a fully stacked fridge with labels saying "Rita Skeeter's, do not touch".
On the side, on top of the fridge, was a small pile of food with the letter 'D' written on several post-it notes. A piece of lined paper sat next to the food and in fancy writing were the words, 'Meadowes, I brought the refrigerator and I'm afraid your food was taking up too much space so I had to move some of it. Hope you don't mind. Sincerely, Rita Skeeter.'
Dorcas stared at the pile of food left to go off. There wasn't much but it would have been enough meals for the next few days. They chucked it all in the bin.
Opening the fridge door again, Dorcas stared down at a large pot of expensive yogurt.
They took it out the fridge and ripped open the top, grabbing a spoon from the drawer to eat it.
That afternoon, Dorcas got home from the skate park to find Rita standing in the kitchen with an empty yogurt pot in her hand, like she had been waiting there for hours to interrogate them.
"What the hell is this, Meadowes?"
They almost laughed, "Yogurt, by the looks of it."
Rita scoffed, "Not anymore! It's just empty plastic!"
Rita stood there, waiting for Dorcas to say something. Probably to apologise. But that wasn't ever going to happen.
"That doesn't sound very environmentally friendly", Dorcas settled on.
The comment made Rita even more angry, if that way possible.
"You think this is funny? You ate my yogurt!"
"Did I?"
"Yes! It's empty so you must have!"
"Well you are saying it's your yogurt. So it's more likely that you ate it. You know, since it is yours after all."
"Well I didn't! So it must have been you!" Rita slammed the empty yogurt pot on the counter.
"Who cares? You've got thousands more in your fridge."
"Now I've only got nine!"
"Then eat one of those and stop scrambling through the bin to collect empty yogurt pots."
"I don't want any right now! I just want you to stop eating my yogurt!"
The corners of Dorcas' lip curled upwards as their gaze drifted to the fridge, they practically ran over to it and grabbed another yogurt to tear open.
"Stop!"
Dorcas tore it open and licked the top layer.
"I can't believe you just did that. My fucking yogurt!"
Rita scrambled to pry it out of Dorcas arms so Dorcas' first idea was to reach for their lighter in their pocket and set fire to it.
Rita immediately dropped it with a scream, and the flames started to spread.
After 5 minutes, half the kitchen was on fire and the firefighters and police were at their door. And Rita explained to them of Dorcas' alleged pyromania and anger issues. Absolutely false. Well… maybe not. But Dorcas would never admit that.
*Flashback over*
Suddenly there was something heavy in front of them, that they had just headbutted into. Dorcas took a step backwards and almost laughed at the sight of their blood dripping from the edge of a telephone box. It was sort of funny. The amount of violence that occurred all because of yogurt. Yogurt wasn't even nice, it was always either too thick or thin and had a funny smell about it. Like every single yogurt was a little off from the minute it's made. Maybe there was an analogy in that, but Dorcas was never one for English Literature.
"Cas. What happened to you?"
Dorcas walked through the door and Regulus turned to them.
"I walked into a telephone box."
"And how did you manage to do that?" He sat up from the sofa and handed them a plaster from the cupboards. A normal plaster was practically useless; the cut was much too large. Dorcas gave him a look until he caught on and looked for a larger one.
"By walking into it."
Pandora passed them a bag of frozen peas. Also pretty useless; Regulus' freezer broke a few days ago and he wasn't one to call for help or know how to fix it so the peas were defrosted and just very wet. They still pressed the packet to their forehead anyway.
"Why are you here?" Dorcas asked her.
"Piano lessons. Regulus has started teaching me again."
Regulus came back over with a very large plaster, "I regret it now. She only wants to learn songs by the monkees. No taste."
Pandora gasped, "As if you do! All you want to play is Beetoven. Like that cute dog in the film."
"His name is Beethoven, he's one of the most admired romantic and classical composers! And I was trying to teach you Clair De Lune by Debussy!"
"Sounds boring!" Pandora sighed and Regulus huffed.
"Sorry to interrupt your little spat. But please tell me that's not a bunch of fire extinguishers in the corner there?"
Pandora grinned, "It absolutely is!"
"There's 7 of them. Just in case", Regulus added.
"I'm not going to set anything on fire!"
Regulus shrugged, "Your therapist told us to get them, he thinks you've got an arson problem."
"Because he's an idiot."
"You can never be too careful", Pandora wiggled her finger.
"You set fire to a place one time." Dorcas muttered to themselves.
•
"Marlene, move out the way!"
She lifted her arms up, a smile on her face. As the car quickly braked just before it hit her.
James honked the horn from the driver's seat, before getting out of the car.
"What are you playing at? I could have run you over!"
She rolled her eyes, "Oh get over it, you didn't."
Marlene grabbed grocery bags from the back seat, bringing them into the house.
"I thought I was about to kill you, Marlene!" James said, following after her.
She dropped the front door keys on a little tray in the hallway before making her way to the kitchen, "I keep telling you. You've gotta prepare for death, you never know when it'll happen."
James groaned in frustration, "Just because you've had a near-death experience, doesn't mean you're all-knowing on the subject."
*One month ago*
Marlene had gone on a short holiday with Mary while she visited her family in Cornwall.
A few days before they were due to leave, Marlene went down to the beach with her rented surfboard while Mary stayed behind to be with her family for the day.
The waves were heavier than they had been for the past few days that Marlene had been coming down to surf. But she was never one to back down from something. So she ran into the waves.
She got further and further in, paddling through the giant waves and past the mass of surfers. And as a large wave came over, she stood up on her board and got ready for it.
Marlene had never surfed before coming to Cornwall with Mary. So she had only ever gone out in the waves roughly 9 times. And she'd use that as the reason as to why she was knocked off her board and swallowed by the wave almost as soon as it came.
She drowned for a while and passed out. The mass of surfers not too far away had tried to swim over and help her without drowning as well. And by the time she been carried back on shore and the ambulance had arrived, her heart had temporarily stopped beating for a minute or so.
And Marlene believed, wholeheartedly, that she was supposed to die that day. That now she had tainted fate, nothing at all mattered. Her life didn't matter as she wasn't even supposed to be alive anymore. So it didn't matter if she died at any moment. It was just death.
*Flashback over*
Marlene stepped closer to him with a grin, "then how come I know more than you?"
James stepped away to put the shopping away; "Pomfrey called, said you didn't go to your session today."
"It's unhelpful. Pointless." Marlene almost pouted.
"Maybe because you're not going to them."
"I don't need a therapist, you just like to 'mother' me too much."
James gave a pointed look, "Well I can call mum if you want."
"I called her yesterday, she thinks you're overreacting too", Marlene said as she walked out the kitchen and into the back garden.
"Liar! She'd never think that!" he called back, holding a box of eggs.
Marlene ignored him, walking through the back garden and out the gate, on her way to the skatepark. Just because death lurked everywhere and it was sort of thrilling to her now, didn't mean she could stop working. At least her job was entertaining enough. Marlene thought she might as well shoot herself in the head if she had to go and work in a boring job every day. She had said as much to James; he didn't find that quite as funny.