**This chapter could be considered as mildly dark. Viewer discretion is advised.**
[Frederick's POV]
"Idiot."
"Trash."
"Piece of trash."
"Useless piece of shit."
All these insults were hurled at me as they kicked my frail body curled up on the ground.
Crack!!
I felt by ribs break as they stomped on me like I was a rodent, a leech to society.
But through it all I never begged, never pleaded and never cried.
Not because I wanted to hold on to something as feeble as pride, no.
It was because I wanted to save energy.
These people wouldn't stop if they saw tears.
They wouldn't stop if they heard my pleas.
No, they would stomp harder, kick fiercer and beat me with bigger sticks, my pain fuelling their sick pleasures.
And so I stared.
Not at the crowd, but at the one man who could make it all end.
My uncle.
My father's only relative, and also the one who benefited the most from his untimely death on his business trip.
Unfortunately, our mother had died the year prior and now my older sister and I were left to our own devices.
The day of our father's funeral, after paying our last respects to him we returned to the house tired, only to find a few of our belongings scattered in the compound.
There stood our uncle, Theodore West, with a few unruly looking gangsters around him.
We were evicted from our own home, all our valuable belongings like our cellphones, perfumes and my sister's jewellery, all taken.
Given a warning not to ever return, my sister led me to her boyfriend's place, supposedly our new home.
For 5 months we stayed there, though with each and every passing day I could feel the tension worsening, my food portion reducing while theirs remained the same.
But I survived through it all, not letting out a single peep even when I saw them going on countless dates in the nearby expensive restaurants.
Then one day, before I woke up, they vanished, rooms wiped clean of thei belongings. I saw a note on the dinner table saying,
'Brian and I have moved to France, his work relocated him there. Sorry for lacing your food with melatonin. Didn't want you to wake up and delay our flight.
With love, your sister Cara.
Ps. The rent is paid till the end of the year.
Pps. Go get a job or something.
Reading my sister's loving note, I felt some anger rising within me.
How could they leave a 14 year old boy alone.
Why didn't they leave any money behind, or at least show me where to get a job.
But like everyone had done to me, I let the anger go.
I went to the kitchen and found out that I was running low on food.
Half a box of cereal, a loaf of bread and a tin of sardine.
I ate only a few slices of bread and went out in search of a job.
I eventually found one as a loading boy in a factory.
3 years had passes since then.
My once big frame had been replaced by a scrawny one.
It wasn't the best pay, but I survived.
Living frugally everyday, I saved whatever I could, setting it aside for the eventual rainy day.
And it came, in the form of Brian.
Apparently the land, the house, everything was his.
He was the landlord who I had been paying rent to all this time.
And he had sold the house, even though the rent I had paid for the year hadn't been used up.
I found out about my sudden eviction in the form of a notice on the door, his name signed at the bottom.
I quietly packed the few belongings i had. Old clothes, a second hand phone guven to me by my boss as a bonus for my overtime and a picture. One taken before our mother died and the world went to shit.
I left the house, looking for a new place to live when all of a sudden a sack was put over my head and my body was thrown into a car.
The next thing I know, I'm at my old house.
My eyes roamed the once prestigious mansion, now a crackhouse with both drugs and half-dressed people, mostly women, lying about, loud music in the background.
Then my eyes finally landed on the hideous body of my uncle.
His pig-like face twisted in pleasure as a hooker serviced him, barely hiding the disgust on her face.
When he was done, he motioned them to drag me closure, shoving my face close to his.
"My darling nephew, how've you been. You look like you're eating well. See I have a problem. Your lazy ass father didn't work hard enough and now the coins he left behind are about to finish. Say, you wouldn't happen to have a million dollars on you would you. I need it to pay all these kind gentlemen or they'll kill your old uncle Theo. You wouldn't want that, would you?"
As I listened to my bastard of an uncle, I felt myself growing angrier and angrier until finally I snapped and did something I wasn't supposed to.
I bit him.
Hard.
With all the compressed fury from the past 3 and a half years.
The anger of being kicked out of my own home, being left behind by my sister, my pay being reduced at work with no tangible reason given.
The anger of living in darkness since I didn't earn enough to enjoy the luxury of electricity.
The scorn in the eyes of society when I passed by, like I was a plague to be avoided, just because I couldn't bath everyday.
I channeled all of that anger and pressed my teeth down.
Across his thick sweaty neck till I eventually tasted blood.
The next thing I knew, a stick hit my back.
Then the beatdown began.
Sticks, feet, kicks, stomps, whacks.
I felt it all.
But the feeling of happiness that welled up inside of me as i watched that fat f*ck screaming his head off overcame the pain.
'Ah shit. I'm probably gonna die and my organs are gonna be sold. Eh, this world was shit anyway."
As I resigned myself to my fate, the world which had been silent to my suffering so far finally responded.
[DING! THE AWAKENING HAS ARRIVED ON THE PLANET #45643/3 KNOWN BY NATIVES AS AURTH.]
And with just that line alone, I knew my life was about to change.