Finding Home || bxb

10

"Well, if it isn't the ginger fag," Henry sneered.

"Piss off Henry," I sneered back with the same amount of venom as I pushed him off of me.

Henry had been another one of the foster kids in the group home. I used to make excuses for him in the beginning attributing his behaviour to be a result of another traumatised kid without parents or with parents who didn't want them. But Henry was 18, and had been for months, so I wasn't going to let myself feel bad for him anymore, not when he made it his prerogative to make everyone's life hell however he could. Even before he turned 18, he chose to be a little shit.

"Heard you got yourself a pretty new family," Henry said ignoring, for now, the fact that I'd pushed him. "Do they know they let a fag into their house?" His friends, other kids that had once been from the home, that had unfortunately followed in his footsteps, snickered behind him.

"Yeah, they do actually. Even that couldn't stop them from accepting me, unlike you who can't seem to find parents anywhere. Even your own ones didn't want you!"

Maybe I was being harsh, but I felt no guilt at what I'd said to him. Why would I feel guilty when he had never once spared me the same feeling? After a year of getting physically and mentally abused by him for months after he joined us in the group home last year, I'd decided I had enough of his torment. There was a time when he pissed in my bed while I was still sleeping and then woke up everyone in the nearby rooms to tell them I'd wet myself, and another time he'd spat in my food when it was his turn to bring everyone their dinner to the table. There were countless other occasions on which he's made not just my life but others' too a living hell in that place

"You little shit," he said seething with rage as he fisted my hoodie and pushed me back against the gate. "I doubt your new family will want you when I send you back to them black and blue."

Soon I felt a punch flying my way and my face slammed into the gate at the force of his fist on my cheek. It stung like hell, and I was starting to regret talking back to him. I was never going to regret trying to defend myself, but I should have been smart about this. It was dark and I was on a slightly unfamiliar road as I didn't have much reason to go this way to anywhere in the past. It was also a Sunday night, so it was quiet. There weren't going to be many people out on this suburban road so there would be no one to help me take on the three bullies that I was now going to have to fight on my own.

Still, I wasn't going to just sit back and take their punches. I wasn't going to let them win. I'd decided that the first day I'd stood up for myself against Henry. It was on the date that marked my parents' death and he's had the audacity to tell me that if they'd known how I'd have turned out (gay) then they never would have loved me. It was so worth the one month grounding to see Henry have to walk around the group home with a swollen black eye that I'd given him.

Before Henry could throw another punch in my direction, I pushed him again and threw a punch back before he or his friends could react. If they were going to beat the shit out of me, I was determined to get a hit or two in there myself.

"You fucker," Henry shouted. "Grab him," he instructed his friends and I soon had both my arms held behind my back to restrict me.

I tried kicking my way out of their hold, but Henry punched hard in the stomach which had me keeling over. Then he did it again and his friends let go off my hands but all I could do was collapse onto the floor. I thought, I hoped, they would just leave, but instead they all took turns kicking me wherever their feet could connect with my body.

"Talk back to me again and I'll kill you," Henry threatened when they'd stopped their assault on my body.

I was clutching my ribs and on the verge of tears from the pain, but I wasn't going to give them any satisfaction in what they'd done. So, I laughed at them.