His World

Summary: All in all, he had to admit his world sucked.
Warnings: Mentions of child abuse!

Gregory sat in his small room, staring into nothingness. Wet tracks on his cheeks showed where tears had been falling a few minutes ago. Tears, which had been spilled in secrecy. If he had caught him crying he would probably be forced to sleep in the yard again. Or maybe the ice bath. He shivered involuntarily. Of those things, he definitely preferred the former.

He flinched as his fingers found the bruise on his cheek. He knew it hurt, but he couldn't help it. It was as though his fingers were drawn towards, like he wanted to make sure it was really there, even though he knew it was. He knew the location of every single one of them, both in English and in Latin.

It was this... this 'unmanliness' that was his intelligence. His weakness for books, learning and music. It was that his father tried to squash out of him by hurting him like this. And it hurt. It wasn't just the bruises. It was a pain, deep inside him.

And with his luck it would probably never go away.

He looked around, trying to find something, which would distract him from these thoughts, but the room looked just like itself. Dark green walls. A table and a chair. His bed. And a small bookcase stuffed with books. Most of them were army manuals and books written by 'real men' as his father called them. Books about the tough life as a marine in battle. He had read them all to please his father, but they all bored him. You can say a lot about those books, but they weren't exactly Shakespeare.

But there was one book, just one book, which had caught his attention. One book he had read so many times, the binding was nearly falling apart. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Surely, that would be the distraction needed to get rid of all the thoughts in his head. The only thing he wanted was his brain to shut up!

He carefully opened the book and tried to focus on the words, but his brain did not want to be distracted. Thoughts kept going through his head with 120 miles per hour, and they weren't happy thoughts.

He didn't have any friends at school. Not that he needed them. They would probably move soon, maybe to a different country again, and without friends there was nothing to leave behind and feel sad about. Besides, they all thought he was weird for being as intelligent as he was, and if they didn't tease them, they left him alone. So he sat on a bench though all the breaks, watching friends play with each other, his heart definitely not bursting with jealousy.

This, he thought, was his world. No friends at all. Always being tormented and abused by his father. And he would always be in pain.

His world sucked.

The end