Alex's New Life: Next Generation Chapter 4
Ok, so it's time to find out what's been going on in the past with Nick. Just a little warning though, there will be mentions of domestic violence in this chapter so be prepared for that. As always donate to Nifty to keep reading this and other stories by going here https://donate.nifty.org/
Chapter 4
It's not easy growing up as a disappointment. The only thing I did right in life was being born male, but even that didn't work out well for long. My dad had been disappointed with me before I was even born, can you believe that? For years I tried to earn his approval; I was constantly confused about who I was or what I liked because he was so determined to mould me into his ideal son and, try as I might, I just couldn't be what he wanted. My mum always accepted me for whoever I wanted to be, but even she couldn't prevent the onslaught of verbal abuse and mental torture I endured for all those years.
Three names haunted me throughout my childhood; Anderson, Conway and Draper. My dad was obsessed with them. From what my mum told me my dad, the Anderson twins, Alex Conway and his "fag husband" had all been to Emberville Academy at the same time. Mum didn't start dating my dad until a few years after school but I'll go back to that later.
Dad didn't have much to do with those other guys at first but when Alex transferred to the school he got straight on my dad's bad side. I don't know the full details besides what little information my mum learned from his ramblings over the years but I know a few things that happened. My dad was one of the star athletes at the school, at least he was for his first few years there; he seemed to be a natural at most sports and filled the school's trophy case almost singlehandedly, some of those trophies are still in there to this day. After Alex arrived though something seemed to spur on one of the Anderson twins to get more into sports. Over the last couple of years at school a bitter rivalry developed between Luke and my dad, a rivalry that my dad ultimately won. Unfortunately that was what sent his life, and ultimately my life, into a shitty downward spiral.
The reason why the rivalry came to an end, at least the sporting rivalry was because Luke chose to put his school work above his athletic achievements. My dad only knew sports; he wasn't the smartest guy and his grades were awful, but he was determined to make it into the bigtime and show everyone at school, particularly Luke Anderson, that he was the greatest. He had dreams of having big houses, fast cars, money to burn and the adoration of people around the world; all the things he knew Luke wouldn't have since he'd stopped focusing on sports.
Along with Luke becoming more of a rival, Alex and his boyfriend Josh seemed to be getting gradually more muscular over the years and became really popular among the other students. Dad hated that they were so perfect for each other and dated a string of hot girls to try and improve his own popularity. What really pissed him off though was seeing his rival with a girl on his arm and he made it his mission to woo any girl away from Luke, usually in a way that would break his heart, just to add insult to injury.
After they all finished school and went their separate ways my dad started to focus more on his career. He mostly forgot about his school days and tried to become the rich sports star he'd always wanted to be, there was just one problem. Out in the real world he wasn't as great at sports as he thought. He had some success in local competitions but just couldn't compete on the national stage. Couple that with his terrible grades and eventually he ended up in some dead end jobs before training to be a mechanic.
A couple of years later the rivalries were reignited, strangely enough by a pair of underwear. He'd gone out clothes shopping one day and noticed something familiar about the model on one of the brands of boxer briefs. Standing on the packaging, semi naked and with a body most men would die for was Alex Conway. My dad looked at the picture then felt his own swollen abdomen and right there he knew he couldn't let this slide. He joined a gym on the way home and for months he trained like a mad man to get his body tighter and stronger, all the while searching for any information he could about Alex Conway and Luke Anderson.
It didn't take long for him to find an announcement about Alex and Josh marrying, as well as a few modelling shots of Alex, a gallery of sculptures created by Josh and he even went as far as checking out their property from Google maps, just to see where they were living. He was horrified to see that their home was quite large, while he was living in a small house in a shitty part of town. He also looked up his old sporting rival but didn't really find much besides his social media profiles, until one day a story popped up in his local news feed about a new comic store opening in town. As soon as he saw the name he knew it would be something to do with Luke and he wasn't wrong.
One thing he also noticed on Luke's profiles were a few photos of him with a girl on his arm, that girl was none other than Summer Taylor, my mum. They'd been in the same school but as she was a little younger they never spoke to each other, it wasn't until she went to college that she met Luke and they started dating. My dad became obsessed with her and decided he was going to take her away from Luke. Mum said he used to pop up at random times, but always when she was away from Luke, looking back she said it was almost like he knew her routines better than she did. Over time he charmed her and manipulated her by causing friction between her and Luke, sometimes in subtle ways by making her late for her dates with Luke, other times by spreading lies about him or their relationship which caused more arguments between them. Eventually they started sleeping together behind Luke's back, which culminated in me being conceived during one of their flings.
Luke was distraught when he found out that she was having another man's child and broke it off with her. She decided to stay with my dad out of loyalty as she was carrying his baby and they even married in a surprisingly quiet ceremony, considering Alex and Josh got married with all the trimmings. All seemed to be going well for a while as she did genuinely care for him, but then Alex posted some news on his social media sites. He and Josh were expecting twins. Not only did that piss my dad off because two gay guys were having kids but also that they'd trumped him by having two at the same time instead of one. That was the first time I disappointed my dad, and it wasn't even my fault, the second time was when I was born two months after Ben. It was almost like he blamed me for coming into this world in second place; thankfully the twins were born later so at least I could claim that small victory for him.
Over the months and years that followed my dad waged a one sided war over social media. He was obsessed with following Alex, Josh and Sam to see how their kids were progressing. If they learned to walk or talk before I did he became frustrated and tried forcing me to be better. I remember his excitement when I lost my first tooth as the others hadn't reached that milestone at the time, although my mum thinks he cheated by yanking the tooth out when it started to get wobbly, thankfully I don't remember that. He only seemed to care about anything posted about Lucas as, being female; he didn't see his sister as competition for me and I never heard him mention her. Naturally as I was growing up I was constantly compared to Lucas or Ben and I began to hate even hearing their names.
When school started my dad demanded that the principal keep Ben and I in separate classes so we couldn't become friends, little did he realise that I was feeling nothing but hatred for Ben at that time so did everything I could to avoid him. All through those first years of school my dad was trying to get me into sports and he drilled me day in and day out to catch, kick or hit balls, to run as fast as I could or jump higher and further than anyone else. I was always so tired in school that my grades suffered and I grew to hate anything physical.
My last year in Emberville was horrendous. At the end of the year we had our sports day and all the way up to it my dad was training me up to win every event on the day. I was nine years old being fed foods I hated to give me more energy and being made to do drills to make me better. I'd see kids eating junk food and running around the park having fun, while I was made to run laps and eat healthy all the time. I had no friends because my dad said they'd drag me down and take away my focus so I spent a lot of time just lying on my bed listening to music as I was too exhausted to move. Any time I didn't perform as well as he wanted he'd berate me and make me feel small and worthless. I tried talking to my mum about it but she just gave me some sympathy and said he was just trying to do more father/son things with me.
It was only recently I found out he was being abusive to my mum around the same time as well. He blamed her for every little thing that was wrong with me, every achievement that Alex or Ben accomplished that I hadn't was always her fault. He made her feel like she should be grateful that he was with her and that he was trying to raise her child to be the best he could be. I often heard them having aggressive sex, even though I didn't know what it was at the time. He dominated her in the bedroom and chastised her whenever she tried to get him to back off me. I also noticed she started to wear makeup more as well which she said was to keep him happy, it's only now that I realise it was to hide some of the bruising.
When the sports day finally came around I found I'd been entered into every event. I did really well in the first few but as the day wore on I was just getting too tired. I looked around and saw all the other parents cheering their kids on or congratulating them just for taking part but my dad just seemed to get angrier throughout the day. I came second in one event and third in the last, luckily I'd beaten Ben in the two events that we'd been in so that made him slightly happier. The final event of the day was the father and son three legged race. All the other kids were giggling away as their legs were tied to their dad's and they were just enjoying the atmosphere. My dad tied the restraints really tight to make sure nothing went wrong and told me in no uncertain terms that we had to win this race, all the while looking over at Sam and Ben like they were something on the bottom of his shoe. I looked over at them as well to see them laughing and joking as they tried to tie their legs together which made me hate them even more.
When the whistle sounded we started off pretty well, but as we neared the finish line I couldn't keep up and I finally felt my leg fly out from beneath me. That didn't stop my dad though, even as I hit the floor he carried on surging forward, dragging me behind him like a dead weight until he finally crossed the line in first place. He quickly untied our legs and went running over to grab our trophy, all the while I lay on the floor seeing stars, with blood pouring from a cut on my forehead. My mum and a teacher came to help me up but my dad couldn't have cared less as he ran over to Sam and Luke with his prize to rub it in their faces that he was the greatest.
That summer my mum managed to find my dad a job in a town called Little Goscote and we ended up moving there. Her hope was that he'd be less competitive and focus more on us rather than what was going on back in Emberville. It seemed to be the right move for a while but I could tell there was still tension between my parents. I was never able to make any real friends as my dad was still trying to make me into the next big sports star, even though I had no desire to be. All the time he kept putting me on guilt trips saying I didn't love him enough to do anything with my life, or I should be trying to get on a better path than him rather than settling for a shit job. He didn't like me doing school work as he said I could learn more from sports statistics and making me watch videos of sportsmen (never women) winning and showing how proud they were, especially if you could see their parents cheering them on.
I was desperately trying to win his approval and I tried to do what he wanted but my heart was never in it. I remember one event where I was on the relay team and I was the one who should finish the race but I was so scared of messing up that I dropped the baton when it was passed to me, then as I tried to retrieve it I accidentally kicked it away again. I could hear people in the crowd laughing at my mistake but finally I was able to grab it and run for the finish. By then though it was already too late. I could see the fury in my dad's face as the people in the stands around him were still laughing and when we got home he lashed out at me, whacking me round the side of my face and then throwing me onto the stairs, winding me in the process. That was the first time he ever hit me and it wouldn't be the last as he now seemed to think I should be old enough to take it.
I never told my mum what happened that day as she'd been working and had missed the whole thing, when she asked why I was in pain I lied and said I ran into another kid in the race and that was why we lost. I never showed her the bruising on my back but I couldn't hide the bruise on my face. Over the next year I grew increasingly miserable and distant from people at school, I was always hiding bruises as my dad had started taking his anger out on me more frequently and by this time he had been training in the gym for years so he was much bigger and stronger than me. The school started to get more suspicious of the way I was becoming more withdrawn and less engaged in class but before they could do anything he moved us again.
As I grew older and we kept moving from town to town, I started trying to rebel more. I was never able to make any friends as I never wanted anyone to know about him or how he treated me so I just kept pushing people away. I began to hate doing sports and deliberately sabotaged events so we'd lose and I'd get kicked off the teams he forced me to join. My dad could see that he was never going to get his sports star so eventually he gave up and started drinking with his buddies in the local pubs until the small hours before coming home to have noisy, aggressive sex with my mum. I grew more distant from him and started to find my own interests, including music, and I was so happy when my grandparents bought me my first guitar. I took to reading quite a lot as well, especially some comics but I wasn't really interested in the character's super powers or heroic feats; I was much more interested in their relationships, especially seeing how proper families interacted. I collected quite a few comics over the years but always had to hide them from my dad. I hated having to be so secretive all the time but as I started to rebel more he became increasingly hostile.
I'd been really careful for so long but I accidentally let my guard down one day a few weeks before I turned fifteen. I was lying on my bed reading some new comics when I heard him come in from work; I jumped up and tried to hide them in one of my drawers as quick as I could before he could see them. Unfortunately he burst into my room just as I was closing the drawer and I spun around to face him. The look of fear and guilt on my face told him I was hiding something and he stormed over to the drawers, throwing me onto the bed as he went. I leapt up to stop him and he punched me in the stomach so hard I nearly threw up, and then collapsed back onto the bed. It didn't take him long to find the comics and throw them all out on the floor, screaming about I'd given up being a sporting hero to read bullshit about super heroes, then he suddenly turned very quiet as something seemed to catch his eye in the mess on the floor. He reached down and grabbed one comic and I could see him physically shaking with rage as started yelling "How dare you bring this into my house!!"
He tore the cover off and threw it at me, literally foaming at the mouth because I'd bought one particular comic, it didn't make any sense why he was so irate. It wasn't until I had a good look at the cover that my heart sank and I realised my mistake. There, in bold letters it clearly said "Artwork by Alex Conway." I hadn't paid any attention to who wrote the comics or did the artwork; I just knew the characters and stories I liked. He started tearing up all the comics and yelling about "those dirty fags," screaming about how he never wanted anything to do with them in his house.
I thought it was finally over when he quickly left the room so I started to pick up the scraps of my favourite comics but then just as quickly he reappeared with a can of red spray paint from the garage. He started yelling about me wanting to spend money on something created by "a fag" then he started spraying the words fag lover, no queers, kill the poofs and any other gay slurs he could think of all over my walls, ruining some of my favourite posters in the process as he went on his rampage. Every time I tried to stop him he'd hit me again or just threaten me so I'd back off, but then the worst thing he did was when he used some wire cutters from the garage to snap all the strings on my guitar, knowing that I didn't have any money to get new ones. By the time he was done my room was completely destroyed and I sat on the floor in tears as he just threw the spent paint can at me and left the house.
My mum came home an hour later to find me sobbing on my bedroom floor; she looked at the scene of devastation around me and just held me tight. We talked for a while about why he hated me and how much I disappointed him. She told me not to worry and that she'd sort things out but I didn't know how she could make it all better. Over the next few weeks I tried to avoid my dad as much as possible but we had to see each other sometimes. When we did he would alternate between making snide comments or straight out hitting or pushing me around. I still had to live in that room, covered in those vile insults as he wouldn't let me clean them off. Mum knew what was going on but she told me to just stay strong for a little longer and it would all be ok.
Finally a few weeks ago the single worst day of my life happened. I was woken up one morning by someone pounding on the front door, and I heard a voice from outside say they were bailiffs here to evict us. My dad shouted at me not to open it and I could see he was seething with rage as he turned on my mum before I could do anything. He started hitting her and calling her a bitch for not paying the bills, even knocking her down the last few stairs as she tried to escape him. She could hardly move as she'd fractured her ankle and I tried to stand between my parents to stop him attacking her but he just threw me out of the way. My only choice was to open the door and let the bailiffs in to help out and thankfully they did. Two huge guys barged in and pinned my dad to the ground, ordering me to call the police.
By the time the day was over we were homeless, my mum was badly injured and my dad was in police custody. Little did I know this was, at least partly, my mum's plan. She knew that in order for us to be rehoused we had to be evicted first so she didn't pay any bills for months. She hid the court demands from Dad so they'd have no choice but to throw us out but she also made sure everything was in his name so he would be saddled with the debts afterwards, leaving us free. Lastly, she made sure that the divorce papers were going through before the eviction and used the evidence from the bailiff's body cams to prove there was domestic violence in the relationship to hurry it through.
The money my mum saved from paying the bills gave us enough to rent a house back here in Emberville where she knew we would be safe from my dad as he never wanted to come back here, but just to be sure my mum was clever enough to leave little clues in the stuff we left behind to make it look like we'd left the country to stay with my grandparents in Spain. The bailiffs didn't allow us to take much from the house but we were able to bring along whatever clothes we could carry, and I grabbed my guitar as well, even though I couldn't play it anymore.
All I wanted to do was get away from him and make a fresh start, but I don't know if I can do that here; there are so many reminders of him and how bad he made me feel. I spent so long without friends, with no one to talk to or hang out with, and spending all my life hating Alex, Josh, Sam and Luke for making my dad the way he was just makes me feel so frustrated. I don't know whether to be mad at them, try to get to know them or just ignore them. They probably had no idea the effect they had on him and on my life and it just messes my head up to think about it. I just want this nightmare to end and live a happy life, is that too much to ask?