Teddy bears and pacifiers (age regression)

Keep your head down, don't say a word

Prologue

Theodore hated the cellar. With it's grey concrete walls that chilled his small body to the bone. With the small light bulb hanging from the ceiling, it's light so weak it might as well not have been there at all. The big door at the top of the wooden stairs leading up to the main house. Murick always took care to throw him from the door every time, relishing in the thud Theodore's body would make as it hit the bottom. And the small lone window up on the wall, the room's only true source of light, glass and frame now doing nothing to keep out the chilling October air. The thick wooden beams in the ceiling creaking when Murick stomps around upstairs.

Theodore had been thrown down there yet again when he'd lost his grip on one of the many dinner plates he'd been ordered to wash. The yellow, ugly plate had slipped from his grasp and shattered against the stone floor, waking a sleeping Murick and alerting him of the boy's mistake. He didn't do it on purpose, he'd never dare, but he'd been so tired. His nights had been filled with nightmares and he hadn't been allowed to eat since the day before. He could scarcely keep his head up.

The old man had come to the kitchen fast, landed some hard punches on Theodore's arms and ribs, kicked his stomach when he'd fallen to the floor, before carelessly throwing him in the basement. The landing had hurt the boy's ankle, but he could do nothing as his foot started to swell and throb. Theodore was no stranger to bruises, it was Murick's favorite way to let off some steam. His body already small for his age, always hungry and always tired, he never had the strength or courage to fight back. Frankly Theodore could not remember a time when his body was not littered with bruises.

The other kids never intervened either. They lived upstairs with their shared bedrooms. And though their rooms were small and their beds creaky, Theodore always envied them. At least they had beds and a room. Nothing like the cramped cot he had, with only a thin, ragged blanket filled with holes to separate him and the floor. Well that was when he was lucky enough to have the privilege of staying in the 'room' given to him. For the cellar had become almost more his room than the cot. But even spending most his nights in the cellar with the rats, Theodore could never quench the fear of the dark. Of the cold and the tiny sounds from what he could not see.

The only times he got any real sleep was when he'd kept Murick happy enough, or more like gotten him mad as little as possible, to be allowed to sleep in his cot. The other kids rarely ventured downstairs where the cot was, so Theodore didn't see them often. Didn't even know most their names. They'd disappear before he could catch word of their names, adopted and free. Surely they loathed him like Murick, when they never helped him. When they'd avoid him like a disease, never so much as looking him in the eyes. The few names he knew was only acquired from snippets of conversations behind walls. None of them had ever spoken to him, but once in his life.

Surely someone had cared for him once, when he was a child. For he would not have survived if Murick had treated him this way as an infant. Though by the way Murick spoke of him it surely was not the brute who had looked after him those few first years. But Theodore could remember no such people, who must have fed him and changed him. They were long gone by the time the boy was old enough to store memories away. Adopted and away like the other kids living in the orphanage would be.

He was envious of them. They who had friends in each other. Who got adopted. Who never got beaten and yelled at. Who got three meals a day, who had beds and the occasional toy. Who had each other to teach until they where taken away by new families and sent to school. He was envious of them. But not mad. Yes you'd think he would be mad at them for not helping him, for not speaking to him or acknowledging his existence. But at least they didn't do him harm. No, he wasn't mad. He was sad. And lonely.