Squidward's Backstory

Part 2: Teenage Years

Warning: This story contains mention of domestic and sexual abuse, suicide, and murder. Don't say I didn't warn you. 

When he was 14, Squidward successfully ran away. This was the turning point of Squidward's life. He'd taken his sister's advice. This was her final wish. He ran far from the town he'd grown up in, seemingly in one day. He got three towns over before he stopped running and went to the local orphanage.

"Hello?" Said a sweet voice from behind the door as Squidward knocked. "Who is it?" She opened the door and looked down to see a dirty, scuffed, and tired Squidward. "Oh dearie, come on in, I can see you need help."

"Th-thank you..." Squidward said. He'd developed a speech problem from his father's drunken rages.

"So who are you? No need to rush dearie, if you think you can't speak too fast."

Squidward shakily told his story.

"Oh, dearie... It's alright. Granny May's here now, Squidward." She hugged him for several minutes. After Squidmelia's death, it had been so long since he'd had a nice hug. He sobbed into 'Granny May's' shoulder for a solid minute.

Granny May was everything Squidward's parents weren't - caring, sweet, and nice. Squidward often called her just Grandma. He never had an actual Grandma, she'd died in his early years.

Besides Granny May, other children were at the orphanage as well. These became his first real friends since Squidmelia, and he finally felt safe here. He even was able to enroll into a local high school, and was doing fairly well in grades.

That was, until his parents caught up with him.

He was about 16 now, and he was in his bed at night in the orphanage, thinking about schoolwork, and high school drama, like his crush, Squidmantha, and how much she reminded him of Squidmelia, when he heard a bang at the orphanage's front doors.

"LET ME IN YOU LITTLE SHIT" He heard in a familiar voice. Although it had been 2, nearly 3 years since he'd seen him, Squidward knew this was his father. He heard Granny May open the door, then her quiet voice say something, but was unable to finish her sentence as she was interrupted by a loud and unsettling bang.

Hard and forceful footsteps marched up the stairs to his room on the second floor, sounds of children falling down them and crying also being heard.

Squidward had locked his door, since he was 16 now and needed his privacy, and it was this fact that may have saved his life.

He lived on the third floor of the building, and knew he his father wasn't able-bodied enough to leap down nearly 3 storeys downwards, so he decided to quickly gather his essentials (clothes, food scraps, and a picture of Squidmelia) and jump out his window into what he hoped to be a soft landing in the garbage bin below.

He gulped as he stood on his windowsill and remembered Squidmelia's note as he heard the door's handle be shot off and opened as he dived straight into the trash. Luckily, he was not seen by his father in this short interval.

In the trash bin, Squidward closed the lid and pulled out his nearly-a-foot-long cell phone and dialed the police.

About an hour of hearing his father shoot more and more children when they wouldn't give him information about Squidward later, sirens pulled up. He heard his father curse loudly and police enter the building forcefully. He couldn't pay his way out of this one.

Despite being able to turn himself in, the father rather forcefully yelled he did not want to be caught, and jumped out that same window Squidward had. Unfortunately for him, he did not have as good as aim as Squidward did, and ended up landing feet-first into the concrete below, launching many of his vertebrae up his spine, crippling him. As he lay on the floor, groaning, Squidward lifted the trash bin's cap up a bit to take a peek at his now-disabled father.

"HEY, I SEE YOU, YOU LITTLE FUCK!" Screamed his father as he pulled out his pistol he'd used to kill Granny May and some of the orphans. He took a wild shot, but missed and hit the metal part of the trash bin instead, causing his bullet to ricochet off of it, then to the ground, off of some other alleyway things, and eventually into his upper spine, now crippling him from the neck down.

As he screamed in pain, cautious footsteps were heard approaching the alley. Squidward's father looked up with what little energy he now had left.

"Squiddy, my boy," He said, trying to act sincere. "Vouch for me, and I'll get you anything you want! Remember that puppy you always wanted?" Squidward never said anything about a puppy. Squilliam was the one who wanted a pet. "Look, son, I know I haven't been the best father... But I've given up drinking, I swear!"

Squidward could almost smell his lies and alcohol breath from where he was. He shed only a single tear as the police rounded the corner and apprehended the maniac. He felt it was safe to get out of the trash bin now, revealing himself to the officers.

As two officers pulled Squidward's father's limp body away, he screamed to Squidward, revealing his lies.

"I'LL KILL YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH! I'LL KILL YOU!"

He was silenced by a police officer's strike to the back of his head.

After several long days in court, Squidward's father was finally found guilty, not just of abusing his child, but of murder as well. And not even just for Granny May and the children - after Squidward had ran away, his father had brutally killed his mother as well.

With his father now crippled and in prison, Squidward thought it right to check up on Squilliam.