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***

Shlick.

Clink.

Shlick.

Clink.

Mother crept up the stairs.

She did not walk, but shuffled, using two chef knives to pull her weight up each step to her son's bedroom. She speared the knives into every stair, creating dents and deep holes that Louis would have to go out of his way to fix the best that he could.

Mother had drank, you see, used a man and thrown him away a few hours before. He'd come and he'd gone like all of the rest, and Louis had remained out of the way, huddled on his bed, with his hands over his ears and eyes fixed on the door. After the man had gone, utterly unaware of how there had been a child in the room right above him, Mother had fallen asleep. After that, she had eaten a meal that Louis had made with a glass of wine. The glass of wine had smashed on the floor, and while Louis cleaned up the shards, she drank another, and another, and another..

Her legs no longer supported her, and Louis had lost count of the number of glasses that he now had to clean. In any case, that was not his main concern, for Mother, unable to walk, was moving still. Years ago, she discovered other ways to move when her body became abused by alcohol like this. Along the floor, ever since Louis could remember, there had been dents and deep holes bored into the wood. The knives in the kitchen would go blunt and snap at the tips far often than they should, but no one ever came into the house often enough to notice. Mother would not pick up the pieces that would snap and skid along the floor, and her son-barefoot-would always stand on the chipped blades.

The soft humming of a song followed the shuffling and clinks as Mother grew nearer. She sang like she always had, soft and sweet, but now there was something of an echo in her throat that turned lullabies to eerie chants. Yet the song-it was a one that Louis knew well, one from a story that he'd heard as a child. He hummed it with her, by instinct, while locking his bedroom door and shifting his bed, with great difficulty, across the room to block the entrance.

"I wish I were away in Ingo

Far away across the briny sea

Sailing over deepest waters

Where love nor care never trouble me"

He knew the song like he knew the back of his hand. He'd sang it many times before, when the nights had been too long and the stars were out. If he leant far enough out of the window, he could see bats fly over the neighbour's house opposite his room. To his left was the road where he would often see children play or teenagers wander around, looking for trouble. Louis wished he could be with them, and then he could go on adventures such as climbing up the Big Ben clock tower in London, or break into a zoo, or even dress up as a judge and save a criminal from going to prison for ever and ever.

There were a lot of things that he wanted to do, and he couldn't wait to be rid of this house so that he could go and be something other than this.

Looking away from the window when he heard a clanging in the corridor, he continued to hum the song. He sang to calm his fear, but it didn't seem to work very well. Perhaps that he'd hear the music too much. It was almost always there when Mother lurked outside his door, when she awaited for him to leave the bathroom, when she sat at the dining table, gripping a steak knife so hard that it trembled. Yes, he had heard it many times before, and he knew, if he didn't escape this place, that it would be the last sound that he'd ever hear.

Louis stepped to the far wall of his room, back pressed against it, watching the door, the key in the lock, and the bed that allowed no vile creature to enter. He heard breaths, deep ones, and a cracking heart, but they were not his own, at least, he didn't think they were. Mother had reached him, after a whole twenty minutes, for the stairs had been hard for her to climb. Louis felt her eyes through the wooden door, staring as if she could see him through it. Maybe her instincts as a mother allowed her to. There was a possibility that, as a mother, she knew everything about her son. She knew where he was, where he hid, and therefore, if he were to escape, she'd follow on sightlessly.

Louis-with his bright eyes fixed on the door and hair standing on the back of his neck- bent down, and lay on the floor. Beneath the bed where he looked, at the crack between the door and the floorboards, was an eye, and it stared back at him.

He shot up and scrambled back, hand over his heart, and climbed onto the nearest surface which happened to be the creaking wooden chair. He'd been told by Granny and Niall that monsters under beds were just a horrible tale to scare little children like him.

If that were true, why had he seen that blue eye when he'd looked beneath the bed?

Tales must come from somewhere; and that 'somewhere', he realised, was here.

Louis stepped down from the chair, and bent down to the floor. He was scared to look, but fear roused his interest. He looked beneath the door, and that eye-glassy blue with a mere dot of a pupil-continued to stare back. The eye was rid of sanity, yet full of desire. Greedy, yet starving. Mother had the eyes of a vulture, the kind to watch and wait for a sign of weakness, sucking the life out of their prey, purely by staring them down. They watched over Louis, always, never releasing their stare.

They never released their stare.

Those eyes-vulture eyes-always watched through the walls, watched through the floors-when Louis was upstairs and she was down, waiting for the moment when Louis would admit defeat. They never left him, too obsessed to move on, and in the few times when they would turn away, Louis' paranoia made him believe, with everything, that they continued to stare.

He stood up and climbed onto the chair again, listening to mother wheeze and crack and clink the knives together from the other side of the door. The blue eye was on his mind, making him shiver and his heart sink with disgust. It made him feel sick, truly. There was something hideous about that eye, something within it that made Louis go quite insane as he sat and trembled and leant over that brittle chair. It was then, while clutching his chest and looking at the shadowed boards beneath the bed, he made up his mind.

He would get rid of the vulture's eyes.

*

"Are you alright?" Maria asked, putting a hand on Louis' shoulder and starling him out of his thoughts. She'd noticed him to be drifting in and out of daydreams, and he'd lose himself whenever there was no wild distraction to fascinate him, or when the attention was not on him directly. Here he was again, even, sitting on the floor and stretching, but his motions were weak, and his mind was wandering in some other valley far away from the ballet studio where he should have been.

"I'm fine." Louis finally said, looking up at her and smiling. He had such a lovely face, with the softness of a kitten and the beauty of a red rose. He was not handsome as a boy his age should be, but pretty almost. Boys his age had sharp jaws and harsh eyes and well-built frames. Louis, on the other hand, was alluringly different. There was a strange aura of femininity about him, something delicate, and out of all of the swans that would dance at the upcoming the Royal Ballet, Louis-as both Odette and Odile-would make the finest swan of them all.

Maria sat beside the boy, seeing right through the fake smile that he gave her and the eyes that wanted to burden no one with worry. "What's on your mind?", she asked him.

"Nothing, I'm fine." He replied.

"You seem troubled", she insisted.

"I'm not, I'm fine.", was his answer.

But there was definitely something horrible swimming around in his bright mind. That smile was not one of a normal boy. Those eyes were not ones that Maria had ever seen. They were Louis', certainly, blue and alert and joyful, but it was behind them where corruption lurked. Something horrible drifted in Louis' mind. Maria could see it consume him, but he was trusting and mothering whatever thought this was, unwilling to expose its atrocity.

Suddenly, there was a loud bang and the floor shook. Both Maria and Louis' heads snapped around to see Harry lying on his back in the middle of the small ballroom, groaning. Lilly-Ann stood beside him, still on her tiptoes, with an alarmed expression over her face. She bent down and put a hand out to Harry who continued to lie on his back with an arm over his face.

"Did you slip? Are you alright?" She asked, drawing her hand away when Harry didn't so much as look at it.

He remained on the floor when Robin, Angela, Louis, and Maria also crowded around to look down at him. Harry lay there, left arm over his face, one leg propped up, the other prosthetic one lying flat against the shiny floorboards. He breathed heavily, chest rising and sinking, and Louis bent down to touch it. Harry didn't move when Louis crouched beside him, even though everyone had expected him to.

He would always make time for the little boy in Mickey Mouse plasters.

"Harry?" Louis poked Harry's arm, and when he did, the man tensed up and flinched, biting down a whimper of pain. Louis looked at the people around him, searching their faces to see concern there, along with the strange confusion about the fact that Harry barely ever tripped while dancing, perhaps once every three months, but recently, he'd fall more than he'd land a jump or a twirl or even a basic step.

"Is he alright?" Louis asked, scared to touch Harry now as he stayed crouched by his side.

Angela's expression hardened, and in her stern Russian accent, she said, "Of course he is. Ballet dancers like Harry never stop." She bent down and put a hand out to grab him but Harry's reaction was so unexpected that it halted her right then and there.

In fact, Harry stopped them all in their tracks.

"No!" He shouted from beneath the arm that guard his face. His voice was terrified, shaking, "I'm not." He said, "I'm not alright. I can't go on anymore."

There was silence. Two hearts in that room shattered.

*

'Dear Diary,

Harry had an accident today. I'm not sure what happened, but he fell and wouldn't get back up. It wasn't the falling that hurt him, despite what I first thought, but he'd been in pain for far longer than that. The paramedic nurses looked him over and asked him questions, and the whole time, he was crying. Not much later, it was confirmed that this must all have been going on for a while, that the first time it had happened, the doctors had demanded that Harry must quit ballet in order for it to not happen again. He went against their words, and I'm certain that that is why he's in so much pain, now.

Now that I think about it, he had been acting strangely over the past few months. He's always been proud and stubborn and full of himself and unintentionally rude.. (the list could go on) but at the same time, he was far worse now. Over the past few weeks, Harry had become so determined that with every comment concerning his dancing, he'd lash out and be aggressive. He was prouder than ever, acting as if he were the King of the world, but that was all just because he was the only one to be completely aware that his crown was slipping.

He's in hospital as I write. I believe that he's in the intensive care unit, which is scary, but they'll move him later on. I really don't know how long he'll stay there, but his crying was so loud and scared when the paramedics carried him away that I don't think he'll be out of that hospital anytime soon.

I have a lot of angry names that I want to call him for doing this to himself, but I'll forgive him because we're friends and friends stay together no matter what. Then again, Harry's been in pain for months. As great as he may be at many different things, he's foolish. He made the mistake of staying silent once, it cost him a leg; yet even the punishment of loosing it was not powerful enough to break his silence a second time.

All of that pain just to dance, it's a tragic way to go. He's dancing himself to death, but the worst part of it all is that he chose to endure that secret alone.

The paramedics told us that, because he'd stayed quiet about it for so long, it may be too late. They can just about save his life, but he shall not dance, and when I think about it, about everything that I've seen Harry do, to hang up his ballet shoes will be a far greater pain than death.'

Louis stopped writing and stared at the paper for a while, scenario after scenario running through his head until he had to sign his diary quickly and hide it beneath the pillow before he could imagine anything more disrupting.

He sat in the dark for a while, letting the dim lights outside cast their faint glow on the old poster that was taped lopsided onto the wall. In Louis' hands were his ballet slippers. He found that, in his room, he was always subconsciously holding onto them. They were battered, now, not shiny and clean like they'd been when he first put them on, and the fine pink silk that covered the tips of each shoe was torn and beaten from hard work.

Louis hoped that Harry would return soon, that the paramedics were wrong and that he'd dance again. The show had been cancelled once because a ballerina had fallen, it could not happen again. Not after all of the work and love they'd all put into it together. Harry wouldn't allow it, Louis knew that. No matter how much pain he'd endured over the past months, he'd always returned to the ballet studio, and it was strange that no one but Louis seemed to realise how unstoppable he was as a person. Even in his weakest state, as long as Harry could breathe, he'd continue to dance.

*

With love, Lucy. Xx