Beaten and the Damned.


My name is Christopher Perry. I live with my Uncle Richard. He used to be a nice guy.

Used to be.

I'm sixteen years old, almost to the day. And I've lived with my uncle for seven years, and I've lived through nine years of abuse.

It was never like this at first, when I spent time with him and my dad, we used to get on really well, my mother and his wife cooking while we worked on a car. Now, it was different. I lost my parents due to a car accident, a car ramming in to the side of our car, and caused a car to roll several times. My dad died instantly, he had slammed his head against the steering wheel, the impact that bad that the paramedics had no chance of saving him. My mother had suffered for two days, before she had coded, while I had escaped with a few broken bones. The cause of my parents death left me to go live with my aunt and uncle. Barely three months later, my aunt had passed away suddenly, with no cause known. From then on, my uncle had become harsh. He started to hit me, before he would apologise. As I got older, I started to get punched, and kicked, for no reason. He would always apologise eventually, and would try to make it up to me with buying expensive things.

People say that I'm lucky, that I got everything that I wanted, when I had nothing that I wanted. I didn't have my parents anymore, my uncle beat me and tried to make it up to me with expensive things, and sometimes, for no reason, I feel like curling up and dying.

My uncle used to be a compassionate man, he still is sometimes, but not as much to me as anyone else. As a mechanic, he was well known amongst many people. My friends often would go see him to get a discount off of their own cars, and when they did would always remark to me how kind my uncle is. I never get to see it.

I fear my uncle, some days he will yell at me, scream at me, others he will physically abuse me, or mentally, or even isolating me from the outside world.

Now that I've gotten older, I've gotten less apologies, but more bruises In the past years. I haven't been checked out, but I think, that my ribs might have been broken once, and healed incorrectly, because I feel a weight on my chest, and it gets hard to breathe.

My uncle notices, but never says anything. I think he feels guilt about causing all my problems, considering before my parent's death, we were rather close, and my father and uncle were the best friends, two brothers that were inseparable. Now that my father is dead, that the bond is broken, and now my uncle is angry, almost all the time.

There's one day a year, that my uncle and I can actually talk things over, and that's the fourth of November, the anniversary of my parent's death. I used to tell him on that day about how I felt about the way he was treating me, but that stopped when I was thirteen, figuring out no matter how much he would tell me that it would stop, it never did.

My uncle is probably the only adult I've ever been disappointed in, a man that had problems with dealing with death, worse than an eight year old could.

Sometimes, I wonder how much my uncle cares about me. He says that he does, but the way that he treats me proves that he really doesn't. I want to know what he would think if I ran away, or if I died, if he'd notice or even care.

If I'm even worth caring about, which, I doubt I'm not.

I've been sent to several in-school counsellors, the teachers realising things that even my friends or uncle haven't. After three or four sessions, I stop going, besides for one, a group therapy that I go to, finding that it's so much easier for me to cope, to listen to other people's that aren't mine.

I never say anything in the group therapy, choosing to stay quiet. I get asked to say things, but never pushed, and I appreciate that. I seem to always have an adult named Lucy sitting next to me, talking to me quietly. She's a counsellor as well, but I seem to get along better with her than anyone else in the group.

She always brings me a new book to read every session. Reading is my escape, and my uncle refuses to buy me books even though he would happily buy me a laptop and a flat-screen TV. Each session, she would talk to me about the book, asking me questions that I wasn't expected to answer, and when I did, she never seemed to be taken a-back.

I appreciate the little things that she does for me, the books something that I'll always be thankful for, one of the only things in my life besides my friends that I can be thankful for.

I only wish that I could be thankful for my uncle taking me in, which I was at first, but now, I resent him, wish that he had let me be taken in to foster care.

If I had gone to foster care, I'd at least have a better life, even if it was in a minor way.

But, I try to be optimistic.

I'm living with some of the last of my family, my grandparents dying before my parents. I have no cousins that I know of, and I have an uncle, who had moved to Australia and that I haven't seen since I was about four. I could be living on the streets, or I could be dead, there are much worse possibilities, even though, I wish to be dead some days.

Those days are the hardest,

It's the days after my uncle beats me and then apologises, and I just have a sense of being unwanted before I feel numb.

And feeling numb is worse than feeling anything else.

I had felt numb after my parent's death, and I suppose anyone's death that you know will do that to you. Where you cry so much before you just feel so numb, and then you can't shake the feeling for days.

That's the feeling.

I can't say I feel I fit in to school, I'm different, not In the way of race, age, look and personality, but I just feel unfitting.

Strange about my situation is that I don't want anyone to know, to make my uncle look bad. I mean, I'm not in love with the guy, but I don't hate him, and I don't want to. I still want to be with family, even if it's living with minor abuse.

I'm not usually open and talking about my life, but I recognise some stories need to be told to get past them, and I'm trying hard to tell other's my story, but as soon as I open my mouth, I lose the words and fall silent again.

I wish I could tell someone my story though.


A/N: I am so sorry it took me so long to get this written. Also, this is the only chapter that will be written in first chapter, besides maybe the epilogue. This is un-beta'd because my beta had disappeared and I was getting impatient. If people are unaware, this is the re-write to 'The Safety of Promise is Undelivered', which will soon be taken down. I hope this chapter lives up to your expectations.