Freaks: Year Two

The Restricted Section

Descriptions of abuse, emetophobia.

Jasper couldn't sleep.

He had just woken up from a nightmare. He couldn't remember exactly what it was about, he just knew it was not what you would call a dream. He only could remember one thing; the feeling of hopelessness. And that it was dark. So, two things.

He sighed quietly before sitting up. He rubbed his eyes, his body shaking slightly. He tried to rub the horrible feeling out – the pool of darkness – before opening his eyes once again to be enveloped in it.

He was scratching the insides of his palms, and then tapping the tips of his fingers against it, then he was back to scratching, trying to calm himself from whatever that nightmare was. He felt stupid feeling so on edge. It was only a feeling. A dire one, but he had not seen anything scary in his dreams. He had only felt it.

Maybe feeling something and not being able to see it made it all the worse.

He felt a tiny pain in his palm and he realised he had gone from scratching to digging his fingernail into the palm of his hand. He let out a quiet curse, deciding that it would be best to get out of the dark.

He exited the dorm as quietly as he could so he wouldn't wake the others and slowly made his way down the steps, his leg (as when Maryrose had forced him into the infirmary to get it looked at) almost back to normal from the potion Madam Pomfrey had given him. His leg had gotten a tiny fracture from the beater's bat and he was going to tell Madam Pomfrey that it would most likely get better on its own, but she said that it was good Maryrose had caught this as a small injury like this could worsen over time if it wasn't taken care of.

Jasper wondered if that was why he had a shoddy wrist.

He remembered being grabbed by the wrist by his father when he was really young. He had accidentally broken a piece of equipment at school that day. He had gotten so upset that one of his playmates was hogging the monkey bars. They had just been hanging from them and Jasper had repeatedly asked over and over if he could have a turn. They had not listened and Jasper had snapped, yelling at the kid that he and everyone else waiting should have a turn and before his very eyes the bar the kid was hanging from snapped off, making the child fall.

Jasper was blamed immediately.

He didn't know what he had done. All he had done was yelled and then the kid was in the sand screaming. No bones were broken, but the piece of metal had hit their arm, making a cut appear and then fingers were being pointed at him.

"WITCH!"

Everyone had screamed and had run and from that day on no one would play with him. He didn't know why and that made it all worse. He hadn't broken the bars, had he? He wasn't a witch. Now everyone was saying he was and running away and school, something that had been his happy place, had just turned into another nightmare.

His parents had been called. Jasper really didn't remember much about that. All he could remember was his dad being pissed about it. Screaming at him about how he wasn't normal and how he shouldn't go and cause trouble because that only meant he had to clean it up. Jasper, who was four, didn't understand his comment because it was always him or his mum cleaning up the messes that were made. He didn't say anything about that though, he was just so terrified.

He hadn't understood what was happening. He didn't understand why he was being screamed at for something he had not done and he didn't understand why his father would get more angry with him for saying sorry and for crying. He would just scream at him some more saying how boys shouldn't cry and I'll have to teach you a lesson on what happens to little boys who think it's okay to cry.