The Nightmare Man's Journey

Chapter Seven

When confronted by the long, narrow path that showed the years of isolation, Harrison wondered how he had managed to keep any sanity from that time in his life. Even with Fred and George at his side, and light burning from the tips of their wands, he was still driven crazy by the close walls, that rotten smell, and the never-ending dripping.

"Can I gouge my brain out for a moment and you can drag my corpse along until I wake up again?" he wondered after a while.

"You can handle it," George said.

"No, I can't. It itches."

"Where?" Fred wondered.

"Everywhere. And that bloody dripping water, doesn't it have anything better to do than drive me insane?!"

"Harrison, deep breaths," George said. "Stop focusing on it."

"Don't you remember me mentioning that it never stopped? Hard to ignore something that never stopped making that bloody noise!"

He screamed that at the walls, and the dripping sound… continued, because of course it did. He whined, stomped on the place and then carried on. He felt like ripping his hands away from Fred and George. He felt like killing himself, at least temporarily but they caught on and held his hands even tighter. Flashes of pain went up his arms.

That actually made him calm down a bit. Pain was always a distraction, and at times he welcomed it. Trapped inside of that cell, he had lived for the times he could distract himself with pain.

"How long were you in there?" George asked.

"I don't know. Two centuries? More? Less? It was endless in my opinion. You don't realize how slowly time can pass until you've got absolutely nothing to do but await your own starvation and subsequent wake-up call from said starvation."

"You starved to death?" Fred said.

"In the cell? Oh, loads of times. They sometimes left me in there for years with nothing, not even water except for the annoying dripping one I couldn't reach, so it's not like I had a choice. The first time, I think they believed I would die for real. Their faces looked funny when they realized I hadn't."

Starving to death was one of the less fun deaths. The pain was different. It spread from his stomach to the rest of his body, and disappeared only to come back again, until it left for a final time. Harrison knew at that point, the hallucinations would set it. He imagined feeling his own organs shut down in desperation, how in the end only his heart, lungs and brain was functioning until those had to give up as well.

How many times had it happened in a row? He couldn't remember. His body somehow remained somewhat in good condition, not skeletal like he felt it should look like after starving to death several times. He couldn't even speak during those times, his throat too parched, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Come to think about it, he died from thirst plenty of times too.

"Harrison, come back."

He snapped back to attention. He had stopped, and the twins were looking at him.

"If that's the look you had in your eyes when you starved to death over and over again…" George began.

"What look?" Harrison said, blinking.