Jack fled in such a rush that he forgot his book. By the time he made it to his room, he couldn’t breathe. His hands curled into fists as he silently punched his palm. Jaw locked tight, he trembled with rage, stilling whenever footsteps passed in the hall.
He knew the cadence of the chancellor’s heavy footsteps and could tell them apart from any other person walking through the halls. Pounding. Pursuing. Determined. Sometimes, he approached in the middle of the night, heavy, thundering footfalls that made the chandeliers tremble and Jack’s heart stop.
The waiting was almost worse than the rest.
Almost.
During the warmer months, he liked to hide in the gardens. He’d watch the rabbits nibble and play. Sometimes they froze when he was near, and he hated thinking that he might scare them as much as the chancellor terrified him.
Prey.
Mr. Carrow had taught him about the food chain, explaining which animals were predators and which were mostly prey. It mostly came down to size.
As the years went on, and Jack continued to grow, he dreamed of a day he would no longer run and hide like prey.
The chancellor was bigger than most men. And while most cowered in his presence, some swarmed him like maggots crawling through feces. Jack hated the maggots. They were mindless, brainwashed drones who would do or say anything for the smallest scraps of attention.
All while Jack spent every waking hour of the day trying to escape the chancellor’s notice.
They didn’t know what he was really like. They were too ignorant. But Jack knew. The chancellor always kept score, and he never forgot a single word or action against him.
“Why do ignorant people follow bad men?” Jack asked Mr. Carrow one afternoon.
Although caught off guard, Mr. Carrow put great consideration into his answer, always maintaining an unspoken respect for truth. “No matter how intelligent a person is, Jack, we all have an innate desire to belong. Outliers, or people with little status, feel this sense of longing most of all.”
Jack knew what it was like to want to belong, but he still didn’t understand. “How does it happen?”
“Same as any group bonds. There has to be a common interest. In the case of bad men, the process is usually sped up by identifying a common enemy, typically a smaller group with little to no representation. It starts by taking sides.”
“But don’t they realize they’re on the bad side?”
“That doesn’t matter. Not to them.”
“Why?”
“It’s like a ladder, Jack. In order to move up, there has to be rungs below. When people have no status, socially speaking, and they realize they can establish rank by simply disparaging another group of people, it seems like the easiest fix in the world to their problems. It gives them someone to blame, and just like that—” He clicked his fingers like a magician performing a magic trick. “They feel elevated.”
“But nothing’s changed.”
“That’s not true. Their thinking has. And as their thinking shifts, so do their words. They become more vocal in their hate as they find more people to agree with their views. And every time they exclude another group, they add another rung, thereby climbing the ladder.”
Jack frowned. “But they’re not better if they’re only full of hate.”
“Correct—according to society’s views. But any living thing can be consumed by rot. It spreads easily when the truth isn’t properly guarded.”
When Jack returned home later that week, he thought about what Mr. Carrow said. The chancellor twisted the truth, creating endless sources of rot that attracted maggots who fed off his lies, multiplying from his festering waste until a mindless infestation occurred.
He saw it in the history lessons Mr. Carrow taught, and he saw it every time he returned to the chancellor’s estate. More lies. More maggots swarming the chancellor. More festering rot.
“Jackie!” his mother snapped, startling him from his thoughts. “I’ve been calling you.”
“What?”
Now, when she looked at him, it was not with sympathy or compassion. “I can’t find my matches. Go down to the corner pub and find some.”
No more kisses. No more hugs. No more hope. This place was no longer his home, but it was still where he dreamed of returning whenever she sent him away.
Survival was easiest when others underestimated the presence of a threat, so rather than argue with his mother or tell her to stop plunging medicine into her veins, which only made her sicker, he silently went to fetch her some matches.
