Jade's Sanctuary

Life at the "Dursley" House

"Get up!" A shout came from downstairs, waking Jade from her slumber. A similar shout, with the addition of some very colorful words, came echoing through the medium sized house that Jade called Hell.

"Okay," Jade muttered to no one in particular as she slowly rose from the old, thin, battered mattress that she  slept on at night. The old mattress was all she had to sleep on with a very thin pillow, and a dirty sheet to keep herself warm. There was no support for the mattress; there was no base board, bed frame, or legs to hold it above the ground. It was just an old mattress on the floor of the tiny room that Jade could call her own.

"GET UP!" The voice bellowed. Jade flinched, but thought nothing more of it. This was her normal routine; getting shouted at to get up, actually get up, get dressed with what little clothes that she had, go down to cook breakfast for her "parents", get beaten after they find something that they don't like about breakfast (or any meal for that matter), and finally, go to school and lie about the injuries to the little amount of people who talk to her. Every day, nothing changes, no one knows the truth.

Jade walked to the very small closet that contains her minimal amount of clothes and picked out her outfit for the day; a long sleeved black shirt with a small bird design on the bottom left side, black sweat pants, and black worn out snow boots. Mr. and Mrs. Manson never bought Jade any jewelry and weren't really big on buying her any clothes either, as they thought it to be a waste of money. Jade didn't mind though; she wasn't really big on jewelry. She was really more of a tomboy than anything, and she hated anything girly.

As she put on her black knit hat that her eighth grade health teacher had given her two years ago, she heard a loud bang followed by a shattering sound come from downstairs.

"DAMN IT!" Jade's father shouted from downstairs. "Jadelynn, get your ass down here, NOW!" Jade knew better than to keep her father waiting, so she booked it downstairs, through the hall, and into the kitchen, where her father was.

"Y-yes, sir?" the nervous girl asked her intimidating father carefully, making sure to not make him any angrier than he was. Mr. Jack Manson was a chubby man who hated Jade, or any children for that matter, with a passion. He had shoulder length hair that he absolutely refused to cut and a slight mustache. Jack was in his early thirties, but he looked to be about fifty.

"Clean that up!" Jack shouted at his daughter who meant nothing more to him than a slave. Jade looked at the mess that she was supposed to clean this time, and only saw colorful, sharp shards of glass from blown glass. A mixture of red, blue, and purple glass fragments decorated the floor dangerously, but somehow, the tiny, colorful fragments looked all too familiar. That's when it hit her: This was her great grandma's special Japanese ornament!

"B-but... isn't that great grandma Keiko's?" Jade asked to no one in particular, not exactly realizing that she had spoken her thought out loud. Her great grandma had died when Jade was only eight years old. Keiko had developed a brain tumor over her last two years, but finally gave up two weeks before the Christmas of '05. The memory of great grandma Keiko still brought tears to Jade's eyes. Keiko had been the only family member who had ever been nice to Jade and didn't beat her black and blue.

SLAP

"It WAS, and now it's trash! That's exactly where I was taking it when it 'slipped' from my hands." Jack told her deviously with no regret shown on his face. He had never really liked Keiko for the simple reason that she had been nice to Jade. There was still a stinging sensation lingering strongly and still spreading across Jade's left cheek as Jack continued shouting. Although, Jade's mind was at a blank. Not because she had been slapped, no, she had been used to that. She was in shock; blocking everything out while trying to comprehend the thought of Jack, her father and her great grandmother's grandson, throwing away Keiko's special ornament. Both Jade and Keiko had decorated the glass ornament that Keiko had brought back from Japan together with special paint before the brain tumor had claimed her.