There was screaming
I opened my eyes, I couldn’t move. I was in a room with flooring that reminds of me of my schools, mess proof and easily cleanable. The lights were dim, in fact the light shifted like the light was hanging from a string.
I couldn’t move my head, I could only look towards the bare wall.
I could hear whimpering, it was sad and pathetic sounding it echoed around the room, so I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
Then I heard a loud sound.
And then it kept on going…. And going…. And going.
The whimpering quickly turned to sobbing to screaming.
There was screaming, it was all I could hear, it echoed around the room and practically covered it in the sound.
I didn’t know where it was coming from.
My stomach was in knots. The sound it continued to get louder, I could hear the sharp sounds ,but only when the screaming grew quitter for the moment. The screaming was insistent constant, I could almost hear words in it, but I didn’t understand it.
Where was the sound coming from?
The screaming stopped after what felt like hours, and I found that I could no longer hear the loud smacks against…
Then the whimpering started again, but I could hear it know it was coherent. It was just three words over and over again. With stuttering and dips and raises in volume thrown in.
“..h-help... M-me. pl-lease…”
-
I woke with a start.
It happened again, that dream. It didn’t happen often, but I hated them all the same and at least unlike my regular nightmares, I don’t wake up in the middle of the night from them, but I still feel horrible when I wake up.
Sometimes their like that but sometimes I can move my head and… I look down and…
…I don’t usually remember much about those ones, but I know there in the same room.
I always think I recognise whose screaming, whose asking for help, but I can never place it.
They dream anyway dreams and nightmares aren’t meant to make sense.
Still drowsy from the nightmare I reach for my glasses, I grumble slightly, as I remember they are still slightly damaged from the last Harry Hunt, when Piers threw my glasses at the wall, it’s probably be months before a teacher notices and tells my Aunt and Uncle.
I put them on and can see the world clearly for the first time this morning.
I see a spider dancing above my nose.
I give a small yelp, sitting up faster than any non-spider-in-face-kid this side of the globe could even dream of achieving, but it resulted in me bumping my head quite loudly against the wall.
Aunt Petunia must have heard the bang because she then started screaming at me, “Harry I know your awake!, make the eggs my poor boys are starving!” Petunia shouted from the kitchen. Dudley could go without eating for a month and he would still be half a lard ball. Only time he is ever starving is when he is pregaming for a buffet, which at most has only been five hours, I’m still not convinced he doesn’t take snack breaks from sleeping, it would explain his weird sleep schedule.
I opened the door to my room under the stairs, after being careful not to make too much noise or hit my head on the ceiling.
The cupboard is my sanctuary of sorts, a few times they locked me in and I didn’t have to do chores, they unfortunately learned from their mistake. I’m still surprised they got Dudley to get me food while I was locked in during those times. To be fare it was juice boxes and plain biscuits, and he probably took the time to snack on a few of them while bringing them to me.
“What would you like today Aunt Petunia?” It’s hard sometimes, to be nice to them because they like to pretend I’m not there even when I am… but at least they ignore me when I am, even if that makes no sense.
“twelve eggs worth of scrambled eggs, ten boiled, and six fried.” She said with a frown that on her looked like a horse’s smile, knowing that when asking me to make that much food, they have no excuse not to give me some and not just getting me to have some grainy cereal, because even with the two whales in the household, they cannot eat that much just the three of them.
After everything is done and we all sit at the table, I glance over at said whales, the bigger one was reading the local newspaper with as much enthusiasm as if he was looking at something worth reading. While the smaller one, in a relative sense, was deep in thought, which was unlike him, unless he was thinking about his birthday presents he would be receiving in a couple of days, wondering whether he would break even on quantity or exceed it like last year.
Like she read my mind, she said to Dudley “Sweetiecums! Are you excited for your birthday? you don’t get double digits every year!” He was turning ten
Looking like he was coming out of a daze, he blinked a couple of times and looked like he was waking up again, it reminded me of a camera coming into focus. Thinking that hard must have really put him out.
“Yes, I guess I hope my presents are better than last year though!” He said with a snarl which looked practised, he had two great role models for the best snarls in the county after all, but he could still improve.
“Of course, my little dud we really upped ourselves this year, right honey?” Her teeth almost gleaming across the table at her whale.
“Of course,” with the smile of a defence lawyer.
“Only the best for my boy!” Looking at Dudley, then looking at me out of the corner of his eye, a sneer quickly coming over his face.
“And you will not ruin it with your freakiness, when we get to the movies you can just wonder around until we are finished. Are we clear?” Dudley looked slightly dejected.
“Don’t worry diddum’s he won’t ruin your big day!” That appeared to make him feel better.
Dudley not wanting to be left out of a good time, “Yeah freak!”
“Yes Uncle, yes Auntie, yes Dudley” I slightly clenched my jaw, as I tried to finish my meal as quickly as possible.
Aunt Petunia then started to complain about a teacher of Dudley’s, “That teachers got a lot of nerve trying to make Dudley change with the other boys!” Uncle Vernon, Dudley didn’t look as convinced but he looked a bit relieved that they didn’t succeed in making him.
Uncle Vernon concurred with his wife, “My boy needs his privacy after all!”
My Aunt and Uncle continued to go back and forth on all the wrongs of the world conventionally only affecting them, and their ‘precious’ Dudley half of them didn’t make sense but in the Dursley Household.
You don’t rock the boat
You don't ask questions - that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys.
-
It’s the weekend, so I have lots of chores to do, I rarely have enough time to even start my own homework after I’ve done Dudley’s.
Dudley, like usual is writing some random dribble on the newspapers that his dad reads in the morning constantly repeating zeros and ones and they say I’m the weird one.
He then moved on to crashing his toys together, really anything to make my job cleaning after him harder was on the table for him, including and not limited to,
hiding the cleaning utensils
and playing Harry Hunting, house edition.
Aunt Petunia had already done her daily disinfecting of the house, and was watching the news, it was about rainbows? I wasn’t paying much attention. I was focusing on the vacuuming, it was weird how she wasn’t yelling at me for vacuuming over the TV, but she doesn’t like the news, so it’s not a complete surprise, they ask to many questions after all...
I then got the vacuum tangled in the coffee tables legs, I was pulling on it, so I could get going again, as Aunt Petunia was talking to Dudley about what was on the TV.
“Those freaks are like that because their parents didn’t beat them enough!” She kept on rambling on and on.
Dudley started watching TV with his mum after that, as Aunt Petunia rambled on about the morality of those on the television.
As a little bit of pettiness, I say, “Whats so wrong with rainbows.” Aunt Petunia glared at me and started to tell Dudley about why the naughty rainbows were ‘bad’ and ‘immoral’.
The conversation went on for a while and I started vacuuming again after getting it unstuck, but then the vacuum started moving like a snake, it was wiggling around quite franticly scared me and it then jumped out of my grasp, was floating and wriggling around in the air above our heads.
One of the most blatant freakiness that’s ever happened, even weirder than the one time I appeared on the roof and my hair was moving around like… snakes.
Dudley was already watching in horror at what was happening, and as Aunt Petunia turned around shouting at me to stop it.
“Stop it now freak your scaring my poor Duodenums!” She continued to ramble her bony face never gaining the read Uncle Vernon was none for.
As this was going on Uncle Vernon came into the room, “Freak Whats all the fuss about in her-“
At that moment the vacuum dived down, something it has done before while I was being yelled at by Aunt Petunia but never before had someone been walking past it.
Uncle Vernon tripped over it, he didn’t fall but he did knock his knee on a side table next to the couch and gave an audible gasp of pain. The vacuum had stopped at this point but was still slightly jumping around on the floor.
As Uncle Vernon recovered he looked to me with a smile, “Freak, you’re going to pay for that.” He said this with a manic look on his face.
He creeped up to me, and led me into a corner, away from the windows, I tried batting him away, but he batted away my hands. I was scared now, this was different than anything they have ever done before, Whats he doing?
Then he started hitting me, I gasped out in shock, but it didn’t hurt as much as some of the beatings Dudley and his gang sometimes gave me.
Despite all the stuff he has done to me this is the first time they have hit me.
Then I found out he was holding back, as every single hit was harder than the last, they were centred on my shoulders, my chest, back and thighs, places where you wouldn’t be able to see under normal circumstances. It was getting harder to breathe; my heart was having a hard time pumping my blood around my body. It hurt. It hurt a lot more the than Dudley’s Harry Hunts, more than a stray frying pan. It hurt.
He hit me for the first time in the head. His rough hands hitting me all over, with feral speed but he was inaccurate and tired from this excursion of energy. I saw out of the corner of my eye that the carpet was moving, and the lights were flickering. On a normal day those would have scared him into stopping, on a normal day it would have worked, but Vernon was beyond fear today.
I heard screaming, I did not recognise it.
But I heard myself say, before I passed out.
“..h-help... M-me. pl-lease… “
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