Upside Down (MM Nostalgic)
Upside Down
First everything is the same. It's never warm, cold, light or dark. I have no idea these things even exist.
I hear nothing until I do. I hear sounds that resemble the sounds of a train. An old steam engine. Not that I have ever seen one or heard something like it before. I'm too young to be nostalgic. I'm too young to be anything yet.
I see nothing until I do. It's just lighter and darker at first. I don't know anything about colours, but if I did, everything around me would be the colour of red or yellow, or something in between.
I don't know about seconds, minutes, hours, days nor weeks. If I did I might know that's about as long as I exist.
With every day more and more sounds reach my mind.
There's one sound that I love.
It's a soft voice, it's beautiful, it's her voice, my mother's.
My mother talks to me, every day. She tells me about my father. How much she loves him, how much she misses him. How he makes her laugh, when she's sad. How he used to make her coffee for breakfast just right. It is strong coffee with whipped milk on top.
I don't know what coffee is, I've never had milk. I still hang on to every word.
I feel what she feels. She tells me that my father will come one day and take us away, to safety. I know nothing about a war. I know nothing about dangers. I only know my mother and for me she's all I need. Still, I long to meet my father, but I'm sure that one day I will.
Sometimes I hear other voices. First they were distant, but with each day they become more clear.
"You...up. He wants to see you," the words filter through layers of tissue, layers of conscience and I'm aware that the train speeds up. I am also aware I'm suddenly itching to move, I'm restless, nervous, anxious. Not that I have any clue as to why I would be.
I float but I can't settle down. The beating of drums that I hear all the time, that usually soothes me with its rhythm speeds up. It gets louder too, and it increases my distress.
Before I could move everywhere, now I've found there's a limit to where I can go. My fingers, if I could count I would see that I have ten of them, push at the soft walls, I like to do that, it's a game. I bounce and sometimes my Mum will softly bounce back. I know it is her. I just know.
A voice hisses at us. I can't make out the words, for the pounding and beating of the drums grows louder than i've ever heard them before.
I only know that my Mum feels sad, scared and it scares me too.
I stretch out my fingers, I want to help her somehow. I want her to know I'm here, that she's not alone.
"Join me and I will spare your pitiful life, and that of your husband, he came to me, to ask about you. I've offered him the same choice as I'm giving you."
I feel a rush of warmth go through me, I don't know why, there's an uncontrollable bubbling of excitement that suddenly spreads through my veins.
"He would never join you." I hear my mother say.
"He said something similar about you. Ah, there he is now. Mr Potter, so good of you to show up. Now, try to pay attention, the both of you, join me, and you may both live... and perhaps more appealing, so may the child."
"Child?" A voice cries out, I immediately know who it belongs to. The drums growing louder only affirms it.
"I will never join you." I hear my mother's voice and the drums slow down. She is no longer afraid. I keep my hands where they are. There's a warm feeling and I know we are touching through the thick veil.
"I will kill you both." This time it is not hard to hear the voice at all. The drums stay calm.
"I'm sorry James, I love you and I wished we would have had a shot at life, but I can't, won't give in. Not even to save us, not even to save our child," she says, and the drums pick up their rhythm. The train picks up speed as well.
"Well, that's perfect. You see, there's a prophecy about that babe growing inside of you, and you've just defied me a third time," the same high-pitched voice says and laughs. A laugh that would rattle my teeth, if I had any. A laugh that would curdle my blood, if I wasn't safely within the warm body of my mother.
I don't know about life or death, or about dying or living. I do know I want to hear my mother's voice, I want her to see my father again, to leave wherever we are, because I know it's not where she wants to be.
"Time to say goodbye, try not to cry too much," the voice says.
"You would murder an unborn child? Kill me and let them go," my father's voice asks. There's more laughter, even though nothing's funny.
"I will defy my fate, this child may be the wizard who vanquishes me, now that doesn't inspire my affection for it, and it makes your life worthless to me."
"You're nothing but a faceless coward," my mum says, and I blink. I keep my palms against the walls that surround me. She won't die alone, I will be here with her, just like my father. I might never see him, but we are together.
"I love you," my parents speak at the same time, their voices start a symphony in my small world, inside of me buzzes an energy I've never felt before.
"Avada Ke..." I hear words that don't mean anything to me. In the fraction of the moment before I hear them everything around me bursts into flames, the beating of the drums becomes frantic.
I know that I can't move my hands, even when I don't try to. I just know I couldn't because there's a light, brighter than any light I've ever seen before that courses through me, it's yellow and red and white. Whiter than white. It's burning hot. It grows inside of me, I don't know if it starts in my hands, or in my own drum or if it comes from the big long rope that is always there, the connection between me and my mother.
Maybe it comes from somewhere else, from my mother, or maybe it's my father. Or maybe it's all of us together. I don't know. Because I'm simply too small to know much of anything. All I know is that someone out there is about to hurt my mother and I can't let that happen.
The light is so bright that I close my eyelids, which makes no different at all. Then it dims on its own. I move my fingers and I prod at the wall. I listen closely and hear the drum beat steadily, slow but sure.
For a long time I hear nothing but a slow and steady beat. I'm not cold, not warm, I fall asleep to the rhythm, when I wake up I hear the voice of my father saying it's over, it's all over and everything is well, and I believe him.