Zach - Chapter II
#1 of Zach
So, here's the next chapter in Zach's story. I know, I know, it's mostly a flashback sort of deal, but I wanted to show how Zach came to be in the park and why he was so tense and disshelved looking. I will do this from time to time, give full on flashbacks into the kitten's past to avoid drowning you in purely dialouge-based exposition. So, anyway, here's Chapter 2!
DISCLAIMER: All of the characters within this story are of my own creation, please do not steal.
WARNING: This chapter alludes to rape and abuse scenarios, so do not read if you don't like.
ZACH
Chapter II
The boy shook visibly in the cold rain of the November night. The streets of London were unforgiving at this time of year, in this weather. The ground was muddy and grimy, buildings of dull colours or grey and white. A completely uninspiring view to anyone, even the most unobservant of passers-by. He saw figures walk by holding flashlights, searching for him. His jade green eyes watching from the dark alley between two large apartment complexes, put together for reasons that the feline couldn't quite fathom, but he was grateful nonetheless.
"He's got to be here somewhere. Where the hell would the kid bolt to? He don't have no known family..." One of the figures said, one of the others shrugged.
The third and final figure sighed in annoyance. "I swear, I'll kill him if I get a salary cut from this shit." He said and the others just chuckled, as if he'd told a joke.
The boy saw a crack at the back of the complexes and bit his lip as he considered moving. As the figures got closer to where he was, he decided there was no choice. Slowly, as to not show too much movement within the darkness, he shuffled into the crevice and out on to a patch of grass in the apartment building's backyard. He leaped over the wooden fence and outwards towards the street.
Lady Luck was not on his side, however, as he kicked a can causing a tumbling series of clangs as it rolled away.
"Hey, there he is!" One of the three said and the tabby soon went into a sprint as he heard the patter of wet footsteps from behind.
Sadly, the tabby was nowhere near as fast as the full grown men and he felt himself tripped, his face colliding with a puddle and the hard concrete asphalt it covered. He felt himself turned and his eyes tried to focus on three blurred figures clad in white. He felt a warm liquid trickle out of his smooth, pink nose and down his muzzle. His mouth was soon filled with the metallic taste of blood.
"Shit, the kid's face is busted." One said, with slight worry. The worry was for his job and standing, not the tabby's well-being, the feline wasn't that dense.
"Ah, fook da lil' shit, we'll jus' say some 'ooligans were fucking 'im up." Another said, the only one yet to talk. His voice had a heavy British accent that the feline couldn't quite place and had never been able to.
"Come on, let's take him back to-" The third figure was interrupted by a girlish shriek.
"You monsters! Beating little children!" The female bypasser said.
"No, no, lady, you've got it all wrong. We wo-"
"I'm going to call the police!"
"Like 'ell you are, you bi-" The female screamed before the heavily-accented of the three could finish.
"HELP! POLICE, ANYONE, I'M BEING HARRASSED!" The female shrieked loudly and the boy suddenly managed to focus to see the heavily-accented bulldog grasping the arm of the female fox tightly, keeping the mobile in her paw from her.
The feline scrambled to his feet and ran amidst the distraction and ran for a while before realising they would still be able to catch up to him if they got past the female who had distracted them or when they explained themselves to the police, if they could.
The park, he realised, would be his best bet. It was full of cover - trees and shrubs littered among with actual litter surrounding them. The unappealing surroundings of the shithole of a public place would probably throw the workers off - unless they were really determined to catch the feline, which he hoped they were not. So, seeing the closed entrance to the local park, he climbed the gate and ran, diving into a shrub not far from the entrance.
His hopes were confirmed when he peered through the leaves of the shrub to see the workers look briefly inside from the gate, shake their heads in disgust and walk off, so, that's where he stayed, for days upon days upon weeks. One night in the winter he had been searching through the trash for thrown away food when he heard rowdy cheering and mumbling - the slur of drunken men walking into the empty park. It was, after all, way too cold for anyone to want to be walking outside.
"Hey, lookit this little kid." One slurred, his voice cracking - an indication that he probably wasn't of legal age to be drinking alcohol. The tabby turned to see three underage boys standing right there. A hyena, a fox and a panther, the third one being so drunk he looked like he was about to fall on his ass and collapse into a drunken, probably post-vomiting, slumber.
"Yeah...hey, I've got an idea, Red." The hyena said before leaning in to the fox's ear and whispering. The fox's eyes widened and he looked at the now cackling hyena with a bewildered look.
"You fuckin' freak, Sheen!" Red said, sounding both amused and slightly perplexed by the hyena's suggestion. The tabby felt his gut sink, sure he should be running by now but his feet felt like they were frozen all of a sudden - they just wouldn't move!
"But, Red, you're the one complaining about not getting any recently." The hyena said and suddenly the panther broke into a grin, the idea registering into his mind. "Come on, no one's here - who the fuck's gonna know?"
"Fuck, I don't know Sheen..." Red said before the panther walked forward, surprising his two friends and further making the feline's gut plummet.
"Well, if you guys won't, I will...fuck I need to relieve some freaking tension." The panther said.
"James, dude, seriously!" Red exclaimed in shock but the panther just chuckled as his paw went to the zipper of his jeans.
What came next the tabby tended to revisit in all of his wildest nightmares. The pain, the agony, the fact that it tore through him and persisted even afterwards. The teens had their way with him and planned to dispose of him, as he heard through the pain of the aftermath but, then, one of them had a strike of moral standing.
"Guys, come on, that's a bit twisted. Besides, who's gonna believe a stray if he blabbers?" Red said as he pulled his trousers up to dangle just below the lining of his boxers. The other two mumbled a hesitant agreement and they left the kitten to crawl in pain back into his shrub, his small fortress of solitude - although it felt just as impenetrable now as he had felt since the boys began their ravaging of his small frame. The tabby lay pathetically in a foetal position and cried himself to a cold, uncomfortable sleep.
How he woke up the next day he wasn't sure but he stayed in the position he woke in, the position he fell asleep in. He cried as the rain poured even heavier outside than it had the night he had run out to find solitude in the park, the park that now felt just as twisted and dark as the place he had ran from. Suddenly, a soft voice called out to him.
"Hey, you okay in there?" Despite how kind the voice sounding, how genuinely concerned it seemed, he locked up in fear.
"Go away...I don't have anything!" He shouted in defiance of a repeat of the previous night, trying his hardest not to cry - showing weaknesses would just make it more likely to happen again.
"I'm not here to hurt you...I heard you crying, I just wanted to see if you were okay?" The voice said, still sounding genuinely concerned. Was the man taunting him, or trying to be nice? Against his brain's advice, he crawled out in the remnants of the clothes that were savagely torn from him by the rowdy teens. Just a pair of jeans, torn and muddy.
"Holy shit, kid..." The man muttered, the tabby just hearing him. He could now see a grey wolf with sharp, but still somehow comforting golden eyes. The kitten wasn't sure why, but he found himself trusting the canine under his concerned gaze. "What the hell happened to you?"
"Why do you care?" The tabby asked suspiciously, but then he sighed, realising the cold shoulder approach wasn't going to get him anywhere...what was the point anyway? If the canine wanted his way with him, being rude would just make him more aggressive. "Just...don't hurt me...I don't have anything..."
"I don't want anything." The canine said, trying to assure the feline of his lack of ill-intent and the feline found himself relaxing, but only very slightly. "Why are you hiding out in a shrub anyway? Shouldn't you be getting home? You'll catch pneumonia like that."
"I...don't have a home. My parents...are gone." The tabby said, deciding to be truthful with the canine - maybe it would gain his sympathy. The kitten's eyes grew wet at the memory and he rubbed at them with his arm. Well, that made the sympathy more likely, at least.
"Man, kid, that's rough..." He heard the wolf say before the feline, eyes blurry from tears, heard the shuffling. Well, so much for...
The fear that welled up from the shuffling sound deteriorated as his eyes focused to see his bare chest now covered in the wolf's trench coat.
"What's this for...?" The kitten asked in confusion. He was still a little bit suspicious, but the tension was quickly fading.
"Not sure how much it'll help but it's better than nothing, right?" The canine said, shivering a little now without his coat as the cold rain splashed onto his shirt. "Keep it, sell it, whatever. You probably need it more than I do. Wish I could do more, but I have to go." The wolf said, almost nonchalantly, as if waving off the fact that he was now vulnerable to the rain.
"Hey, wait!" The kitten called out meekly, with still some semblance of fear, as he watched the canine walk away. The wolf turned to look at the kitten, who now wrapped the coat tightly around his small, fragile form. "Thank you..." He said with a small, appreciative smile. The wolf smiled back before heading on his way.
The feline was absolutely bewildered. That was the first act of kindness he'd ever gotten from anyone besides his parents. The workers at...that place and those teenagers had only caused him suffering. There was also that woman who distracted the workers who had caught up to him, but if she knew the truth would she have done that? Probably not. But, then, why was that wolf any different, would he be the same? For some reason, the tabby couldn't imagine the wolf turning him in or letting him get hurt. All of the fear and suspicion towards the wolf had vanished when he gave him his coat as an act of kindness.
Maybe the tabby was being foolish and naïve but, now, he wanted to follow the wolf - to see if he could, at the very least, find a small amount of refuge with him for a little while. He felt like it would work, that the wolf would oblige and be kind to him. Or, perhaps, he simply hoped that that would be the case? Either way, the feline's mind was made up and he waited, hoping the wolf would appear again and, some hours later, he did and the feline followed silently, trying not to arouse suspicion or bring any unwanted attention towards himself.
"...how would you like to stay here with me?" Zach's eyes nearly popped out of his tiny skull. Was the canine serious? He would become, although illegally it would seem, his guardian? The sheer amazement the tabby felt at the question and his lifting heart overcame the doubtful thoughts that entered his head as he hugged the wolf tightly, causing the canine to chuckle.
"Is that a yes then, kiddo?" Jeff asked in a joking manner only to be met by an enthusiastic series of nods. He chuckled again a lifted the feline up, the feline who beamed a little in happiness but the wolf could still sense doubt within him, which made his next words harder. "Now, you have to understand I'll have to take this to court, even if you have no parents, right? Otherwise, I could be arrested and put away for a long, long time."
The tabby's smile faded, but he still had some confidence in the wolf - or hope, at the least - and so he simply nodded to show that he understood. The wolf smiled a little and put the feline down.
"Alright, good, now...we have to lay some ground rules, 'kay? I know, they're boring and stupid, but I do have standards. I'm not going to let you run amok." The feline nodded in understanding. "Cool, now, number one: no mess. Like, seriously, clean up after yourself, alright? Two: no walking around past 11 PM. You can stay up with me if I'm up, but then you go to bed when I do if that's the case." The wolf then thought but shook his head. "Actually, in all honesty, that's all I've got."
This really shocked the kitten. No rules on making his bed, cleaning the house or being quiet? No limitations of television viewing? He could stay up to 11? It was exciting, a feeling of, not total freedom, but a larger dose of it. It made the tabby feel...happy and yet confused on the question of how he would spend his larger amounts of free time.
The canine noticed the wonder in the feline's eyes at the lenient rules he had set up. He was mainly doing it for the kid, giving him some freedom, some time to have fun and be happy which he knew the tabby wasn't getting on the streets outside.
"So..." The wolf began, getting the tabby's attention. "Why don't we see what's on the tube? No more cartoons though, shit, my mind will break down." Jeff was pleased when his attempt at humour got a chuckle out of the feline and he walked to the living room, closely followed by the young tabby he had just allowed into his home.
Hope you enjoyed! Catch you next time!