d'Urberville, pt. 1

(empty)1

It had been a rum and whiskey sort of day.2

It had been the sort of day where you would wake up with not enough sunshine in your eye and too much darkness in your step. It had been the sort of day where you would stub your toe on clumsily shaped objects like lamp tables or reading chairs or maybe an owl cage. It had been the sort of day where you would casually steal neatly packaged bottles of liquor from convenience stores–not big, brilliant, spectacular thievery, but small, pathetic, cowardly lifting. And it had been the sort of day where you would drink your prettily wrapped alcohol in some dark alleyway across the street, hiding from your family and friends and rain clouds and sorrows.3

It had been a cloudy sort of day– but not a heartbreakingly cloudy day. It was the sort of cloudy day where you had nothing better to do but stare out of your window and wonder if tomorrow would be like this too, but finding that you didn't quite care in the end. It was the sort of cloudy day where you'd stumble home with your necktie rumbled and wrinkling and your dress shirt untucked and muttering something about cats or pigs or maybe just the rain and wondering if tomorrow would be like this too, but finding that you were too drunk to care in the end. And it was sort of like a punch in the gut, really, only numbed by anesthesia, and you find yourself going under shrieking something about mass dog murder in the basement of the hospital only to wake with an empty bottle of rum rolling around under the sheets of your bed.4

Or maybe it was just a numb sort of day.5

A fat raindrop landed on his arm and exploded into a million droplets all over his skin. His large green eyes looked up in a sweepingly mechanical movement. Another raindrop plopped unceremoniously onto his lens and burst all over his sight, breaking, fragmenting, blurring.6

And it was a rainy sort of day.7

He thought of how much he'd like to take a swig of something, anything, right then. He would take anything hot and salty and bitter that would scratch against his throat like nails on a chalkboard as he drank quickly and eagerly and deeply. And he would slush the fire through his mouth in an attempt not to choke, and he would feel the flames sting the cut in his cheek where an ugly plump hand had struck. And he would hiss when he finally let the liquid tumble down into his stomach, coating his insides like gasoline just waiting to be ignited. And he would light the fire then, with one sweeping, choking, weeping, trembling sigh that was more a gasp than anything else. And he would feel the flames grow and catch and blacken and kill until numbness gave way to pain and sorrow and anger and fear.8

And the fire would burn until he finally relented and extinguished them with shy, quiet tears veiled beneath curtains of shame and confusion.9

And he would wake up the next morning cold and neglected and dead and vomiting life, with his head spinning and his hands shaking and his breath hitching. But he was grateful even for this, because at least it wasn’t nothing.10

And then he would get just a little hysterical.11

Because anything was better than nothing–that long aching, struggling, painful, sobbing, but empty nothing that spanned the space between his heart and his lungs and grew with every breath and every beat and every thought. And he wished that he could press his fingers on it and crush it to death beneath his index finger, but he couldn't because he didn’t know what it was or where it was or why it was. So then he would just press his thumb clumsily over his heart and push until he could feel the rigidness of his ribs pressing back and the he would half whisper and half weep:12

Oh, oh, oh.13

It was a trembling sort of oh, a shuddering, wavering, tear-filled yet tear-free sort of oh. And it would resound through the space of his small bedroom and seep through the cracks of the floorboards and cupboards until it had soaked and permeated everything. And it was on these sorts of days, rum and whiskey and dark and painful and fugitive and cloudy and numb and rainy days that they would crawl out and burrow between the muscles of his heart, just waiting to be freed by a clumsy thumb brushing over his steady, lifeless pulse.14

Harry could never have enough ohs in his life.15

Because Harry could never want for any more nothingness in his life.16

It wasn't the nice sort of nothingness that you got when you were sick of your relatives by Christmas morning and woke to find them all gone skiing. It was the sort of nothingness, the sort of sheer and complete emptiness, that would hollow out your eyes and cheeks while you slept, and leave you disoriented and confused in the morning. And it was the sort of nothingness that you would think was something, because it reeked of something and hurt of something and tasted of something, but was actually just nothing. And he would think to himself that it was just nothing and not actually something, because it had to be.17

It just had to be.18

"Harry are you okay?" She watched him as he poked and twisted his food with his fork with a withdrawn expression contorting his face. It bothered her how he wore that look for weeks and weeks at a time. She didn’t know why, because she knew that it wasn’t anger or pain or sorrow. It bothered her, because, for once in her life, she couldn’t put a label on it, classify it, sort through it and number it.19

"Yea." It was like being locked in a room with a box and told not to open it. And it was like giving into the insufferable curiosity of it all and gripping the lid tight with trembling hands and white knuckles. And it was like finally lifting the top of the forbidden box.20

Only to find nothing.21

"You haven’t eaten at all." And that was the only way she could explain the emotion that seemed to have plastered itself over his face. It was disappointing, empty.22

And horribly vacant.23

(hollow)24

Fuck.25

He groaned and stared at the blurred stone ceiling with his eyes feeling cold and hard in their sockets. The bed sheets draped over his body were too cold and stiff and his head felt too light. And his eyes were freezing in their scantily protected sockets. It was two in the morning and his mind was still as sharp as a razor. And he began to think about why he couldn’t sleep and why Ron wasn’t in bed and why things always exploded in his face during potions and why he could never find his books in time for herbology and why he was always the one ending up in the infirmary.26

But mostly why he was still awake at two in the god awful morning.27

But his mind started wandering anyway onto other things like why his best friend wasn’t sleeping in his bed like the sweet, clumsy, awkward Weasley he was. Because Ron had never been one for spectacular adventure or half lidded walks through the deserted hallways of Hogworts or for rendevous with girls his friends didn’t know. And that was none of his business, he decided, because Ron wasn’t a child, and even if he were, he certainly wasn’t his child, so what the fuck did it matter?28

Right. It didn’t.29

And because it didn’t matter, he also shouldn’t dwell on why Ron and Hermione were never with him in the evenings anymore and why they never partnered with him except when one of them was late and everyone else had already been partnered. Because it didn’t matter. Right. And that was why it wasn’t making him feel so bloody lonely lying on his bed under the muffled moonlight and that was why his eyes weren’t getting just that much colder and that was why he wasn’t wishing he had something nice and hard and bitter to dip his tongue into.30

Right? Right. Right. Right?31

Fuck it.32

And he stumbled out of bed unsteadily.33

Fuck it all.34

He hissed as his toes pressed against the freezing stone floor.35

Especially that.36

(nothing)37

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.38

It was one of those Poppin sort of nights, where all he could think of was sugar and medicine and the vague silhouette of childhood memories swimming absentmindedly somewhere in the back of his mind. And he would think on them, the sugar and medicine and faded shadows, with a quiet sense of apathy that seemed to rush through the crevasses of his brain, short circuiting thoughts as it ran. And he would decide that it was the sugar’s fault, the hot, spicy, hurtful liquid sugar that coursed through his veins, burning everything in its path to ashes.39

And he liked it that way.40

He liked it that way, because his brain had been throbbing against the walls of his skull. Because he had stubbed his toe on one of those annoyingly well-made chairs in class. Because Pansy had been running her disgusting hands up and down his body again, tracing little crop circles in places that he would later scrub raw with soap. Because there were thick, grotesque, knotting scars covering his soft skin just below the neckline of his shirt, just waiting to peek out after a stumble on the steps. Because someone who was supposed to be dear to him but wasn’t at all had put those scars on his flesh with a few well-enunciated words and a stick. Because his toes were hanging cold and bloodless over the ledge into the autumn wind wet with acidic tears.41

And because he was too pussy to jump. Just yet at least.42

"Malfoy?"43

And because of bloody that too.44

And somewhere in the dull recesses of his drunken mind, he wondered if he should jump now and do the stereotypical pondering during the fall. But he didn’t have time for trifling thoughts like that, because a firm hand was already reaching out for his billowing robe, damp from the fall air. And he was panicking now, because he didn't want that hand to reach him and ensnare him with whatever moral or immoral teachings it might have. And he just thought to himself, it's now or never, and evidently he tried to pick now.45

But fucking Potter decided to pick never.46

Or at least later.47

And so he tumbled; not to his death, but into the arms of his enemy.48