Something Nasty, Tom Riddle/Amy Benson, G
Title: Something Nasty
Pairing: Tom Riddle/Amy Benson
Rating: G
Disclaimer: It’s all JKR’s.
A.N. Written for the 500 Watchers celebration at hp_literotica. 500 words exactly. And the quote is from Stella Gibbons’s `Cold Comfort Farm`.
The last time he comes back, Amy is sixteen and the prettiest girl in the orphanage. Her rosy cheeks dimple when she smiles (which she sometimes still does) and the boys fight to sit next to her at dinner.
But he is beautiful like the end of the world.
She spent the darkest days of winter at the window. She watched the season’s last fury through frosted panes, her breath blossoming damply across the glass. She’d sat on the sill, peeling away flakes of varnish. Or she’d read, glancing up from her book whenever a phrase or image struck her, her fingertip resting on the page as she heard the ice over her frozen memory cracking.
I saw something nasty in the woodshed.
There is something beneath the ice, something in her head that will drown her if she lets it. It is a carnivorous thought inside her. But she does not want to be that mad old woman from the novel, rambling to anyone who will listen of a horror she cannot explain. There are no words for hell.
When summer came and burnt the days away until his return, Amy migrated outdoors. She does not like confined spaces; they are too much like her own head, too much like the stone maw she doesn’t want to remember.
Then, one morning, the cheap mobile of flat metal stars that hangs in her window spins in still air. Her bedroom door is suddenly open. Any other boy, Amy would run to Mrs Cole.
But not him.
One does not complain when demons approach, one prays.
She gazes at the faded gingham bedspread as he moves. The wardrobe door creaks open and he snorts derisively. He has no time for her prettiness; she used it against him once before and has wished forever since that she were born ugly.
"I might leave, you know," he tells her. "But I want something to remember you by. What will you give me to make me leave?"
She reaches for the buttons of her cotton blouse, it’s a price she’d pay gladly. She wants the summers back; she doesn’t want to spend the days longing for falling leaves and crane flies.
But he doesn’t want what she’ll give.
His light is sharp and strong, tilting her chin up to meet his eyes. The lady at Sunday school always said that beauty was a gift from God, but Amy thinks that no-one should be as beautiful as Tom. He sifts through the shadows he left behind, and a hundred nightmares coalesce into memory and she can’t look away.
His smile is lazy and sated, and he tugs the pearl earring from her earlobe, slipping it into his pocket.
After he’s gone, Amy throws the other earring away. She doesn’t ever want its sister coming back to her. She’ll hide forever if she has to.
But she knows that when she dies, if they open up her skull, there will be only darkness and Tom inside.
Pairing: Tom Riddle/Amy Benson
Rating: G
Disclaimer: It’s all JKR’s.
A.N. Written for the 500 Watchers celebration at hp_literotica. 500 words exactly. And the quote is from Stella Gibbons’s `Cold Comfort Farm`.
The last time he comes back, Amy is sixteen and the prettiest girl in the orphanage. Her rosy cheeks dimple when she smiles (which she sometimes still does) and the boys fight to sit next to her at dinner.
But he is beautiful like the end of the world.
She spent the darkest days of winter at the window. She watched the season’s last fury through frosted panes, her breath blossoming damply across the glass. She’d sat on the sill, peeling away flakes of varnish. Or she’d read, glancing up from her book whenever a phrase or image struck her, her fingertip resting on the page as she heard the ice over her frozen memory cracking.
I saw something nasty in the woodshed.
There is something beneath the ice, something in her head that will drown her if she lets it. It is a carnivorous thought inside her. But she does not want to be that mad old woman from the novel, rambling to anyone who will listen of a horror she cannot explain. There are no words for hell.
When summer came and burnt the days away until his return, Amy migrated outdoors. She does not like confined spaces; they are too much like her own head, too much like the stone maw she doesn’t want to remember.
Then, one morning, the cheap mobile of flat metal stars that hangs in her window spins in still air. Her bedroom door is suddenly open. Any other boy, Amy would run to Mrs Cole.
But not him.
One does not complain when demons approach, one prays.
She gazes at the faded gingham bedspread as he moves. The wardrobe door creaks open and he snorts derisively. He has no time for her prettiness; she used it against him once before and has wished forever since that she were born ugly.
"I might leave, you know," he tells her. "But I want something to remember you by. What will you give me to make me leave?"
She reaches for the buttons of her cotton blouse, it’s a price she’d pay gladly. She wants the summers back; she doesn’t want to spend the days longing for falling leaves and crane flies.
But he doesn’t want what she’ll give.
His light is sharp and strong, tilting her chin up to meet his eyes. The lady at Sunday school always said that beauty was a gift from God, but Amy thinks that no-one should be as beautiful as Tom. He sifts through the shadows he left behind, and a hundred nightmares coalesce into memory and she can’t look away.
His smile is lazy and sated, and he tugs the pearl earring from her earlobe, slipping it into his pocket.
After he’s gone, Amy throws the other earring away. She doesn’t ever want its sister coming back to her. She’ll hide forever if she has to.
But she knows that when she dies, if they open up her skull, there will be only darkness and Tom inside.