HER

I am an empty shell, the carrier of broken dreams and stolen childhood (violently ripped away by red-lacquered claws and gold belts). My skin, when looked at and traced, tells the story of how I became the monster of fairy tales.

I never hoped (dreaming is not allowed to me) to be able to evade the eternal dramatic confusion that covers my person. I have never fooled myself into thinking I could be more than what I was (a soul destined to exist without ever living).

I didn't feel the need for it because I gave myself up even before the game started and it never crossed my mind - twisted-sick-rotten- that I could deserve more.

The prospect of a better life had not been embroidered into my destiny and I was reaching for peace with needles, not threads and fabrics. - unless by threads you mean veins and by fabric you mean skin. An illusory peace that lasted for nothing and left me naked.

Naked before, naked after. I was always pathetic

A pill of artificial calm down my throat, swallowed with the help of Christ's blood. I don't think he would approve but if he didn't want it that way he should have asked his father to be more clement and not pair up my parents. Two negatives only make a positive in mathematics.

Can't you hear it? Commiseration has a definite sound, like forks on plates, nails on the blackboard and... and... and damn memory loss is a side effect.

Is it worth it? Looking healthy, I mean.

I'm exhausted.

They make me sleep, lose the concept of space-time and everything becomes the same. the taste of water is the same as meat and fish. Water for water, and that's all I get. I can see it, in Flint and Nott's gaze. They look at me and see my empty stomach, hollow eyes and pulled skin, almost transparent. They see the bones too protruding, they see failure.

Pity, I don't want it. I want to be at peace, the real peace you get when you are bloated and pale. Curled up in the wood waiting to become compost.

They were brief (and cruel like the red smile on the harpy's face) the moments when the voices stopped and allowed me to breathe -my lungs burned, perpetually, they too did not want to support my body-.

Those were the moments when I was not a shell but a hummingbird, darting through the air with the wind against my face. The emptiness around, above and below me. The promise of falling if I got distracted and the knowledge that it was up to me. In the sky, among the players, it was the only time I had control.

And Tom Riddle had robbed me of it in the cruellest way. As I fell I could not hear the wind hiss in my ears, not even the screams of the people around me. All I could hear was his arrogant smile and the caress on my thigh.

'Everyone knows who I am'

Rubbish. No one knew Tom Riddle, not the way they wanted to.

I knew him through my incredible talent of being invisible in front of everyone.

I could see him sneaking off to the forbidden forest at odd hours.

I saw him wandering through the corridors after curfew and in the morning when not even the birds had woken up.

That same morning I had watched him while his minions told him my 'story'...pathetic and time-wasting. There was nothing interesting about me at all.

Just before I smashed into the ground a sad grin escaped me, 'what the hell did Riddle want with me?' I was indifferent to any proposition and probably would have accepted, just because he had taken the time to ask me and it is here, at this very moment that you realise how pathetic I am.

The hummingbird has broken wings and is picked up from the ground by the gentle hands of a child, it is wrapped in a cloth and his mother takes care of it. She clips its wings - she treats its wounds - but the child does not leave, it stays by the hummingbird's side. Perhaps he is curious and wants to know if it will survive or perhaps he feels guilty because it is his fault that the Hummingbird has fallen.

The boy's hair is too blond, so I sigh. He couldn't wait I suppose, I give up (this is nothing new).

"I give up, go get him."

Malfoy leaves me alone in the infirmary. The sun burns my retina but I leave my eyes open hoping to blind myself. the vain hope of never seeing the world again. Malfoy doesn't come back and neither does Riddle.

I'm alone all afternoon, Flint and Nott are fed up with chasing me around and I understand them. They should have left me long ago. That leaves me and my pain, physical or mental does it matter? I've been living with both of them for so long. The voices return and the impulses with them.

The scissors the nurse used to cut my bandages. The puncture needle. The mood pills.

Which is the less dignified end? I want that. I have no way of finding out. The sun sets, the nurse removes everything, and silence falls over the room.

What should I do? Should I fall asleep or stay awake? I am tired, I stay awake, I wait.

He arrives, a cocky smile on his lips and his hands crossed behind his back.

He walks like a man who owns the ground on which he steps. I would like to ask him many things, starting with 'why?' but the only thing I say - baffling us both - is

"I accept"

Short and horrible chapter but it's okay I guess

hi i love you