You Are Not Alone
[Author's Note: This fanfiction may contain trigger scenes of depression, abuse, bullying, self-harm and possible attempted suicide. Reader discretion is advised.]
I – Repetition
Another normal day for you it seems. Well, as normal as it could possibly get in your eyes. It was always the same routine for you: Wake up, get yelled at by your uncaring dad, go to school, pray to god that no one there decides to be an asshole towards you, go home, eat, sleep, wake up. Rinse and repeat. At one point, you probably pleaded to whatever god was out there to give you a change in your life, maybe for your dad to tone down on his abuse or to not have to deal with bullies at school, but eventually you gave up because you got no answer. Honestly, you would be lying if you told yourself that you were getting used to it. Even if your days felt like a broken record of torment, it would always hurt you mentally, not that your tormentors even cared at all. Hell, sometimes you even thought that they would host a big damned party if they found out you died whether it be intentional or from an accident.
"OI! WHATEVER THE HELL YOU'RE DOING IN THERE, HURRY UP AND GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE!" You were suddenly snapped out of your trance by your dad's voice bellowing at you from downstairs. You had almost forgotten that you had ended up lingering in the bathroom and staring at yourself in the mirror. Appearance-wise, you didn't look too great, especially being given a nosebleed by one of your most worst bullies in your school. The only evidence of you having such an injury being the band-aid on your nose. On the plus side, at least it stopped bleeding but it seemed almost likely that one of them would notice that and "fix" that quickly. Putting away your toothbrush, you head for the stairs and soon find yourself in the living room. Your dad staring wordlessly at the TV until he glanced briefly behind himself.
"About time you got down here. Grab your shit and get the hell out of my sight." He spat at you. You didn't bother to argue since truthfully you just wanted to get away from him as soon as possible. If only you could get away from your own school as well. You grabbed your backpack and walked straight out to school. Luckily for you, your school wasn't too far from where you walked. A five minute walk at best. Along the way, you'd often glance at other people and anthros who paid no mind to you at all. Anthro animals were very common in your home town of Camden, London especially in your school so no doubt some of your bullies were in fact anthros themselves, probably because they thought they were superior to humans like yourself. It wasn't long until you were standing at the front entrance of Regent High School, many other students, human and anthro alike all passing by you without a word. You pulled out your school planner from your backpack and looked at what lessons you had today. Today was Wednesday which meant Math, English and Science. Out of all the subjects you were taught, Math had to be your least favourite. I mean, what good were things like Algebra gonna do for you? Especially considering the fact that your Math teacher was hell-bent on making sure every single line of your work was correct. One little mistake always resulted in a condescending lecture from the miserable old bastard. You sighed in reluctance before heading to one of your lockers and opening it to grab any essentials you may need for the upcoming subjects. That is until you felt a hand shove your head into the open locker followed by the metal door slamming the back of your head enough to cause pain. You grunt and rub where the door had hit you as you turn to face a Dobermann laughing at you mockingly.
"Oops! Looks like my hand slipped and aimed for your pathetic little face! Didn't think you'd come here after I made your nose have it's period!" He snarled sadistically before walking away without letting you even respond. Keith Baron, a real piece of work you had to deal with ever since you started your school year. It didn't help one bit that his treatment towards you rubbed off on some of the other students and that in turn practically made you the butt of everyone's cruel jokes. You of course did tell the teachers the moment it began to kick off, you should've expected them however to just sit there and not do jack shit about the situation. It's like even the teachers didn't care about you at all. Then again, when did anyone in the world give a rat's ass about you at all?
...Okay, to be fair, there was one person who did at least actually seem to care about you. A teenage Dalmatian called 'Dolly' whom lives in 101 Dalmatian Street, unsurprisingly not too far from where you live. The day you started this school, she was actually the first and only one there to talk to you. Considering that she was your only friend, perhaps the world felt only slightly bad for you and decided to throw you a bone but that was all you got. Supposedly, Dolly was the only reason why you didn't just give up and erase yourself from this life, because it just wasn't worth throwing away the only friendship you had for the sake of release from everything else because at the end of the day, she at least made your day somewhat better. Only problem was, you could never bring yourself to talk to Dolly about what you had to deal with everyday. Whether you didn't want her to worry about you and cause your dad to find out about your friendship and try to tear you away from her or for her to overreact to the situation and get herself hurt, you had no clue. At best, all you could was just keep it to yourself. You were lucky that Dolly never did come across you after enduring your worst injuries.
"Hey, dude! About time you got here!"
Speak of the devil. Your initial frustration from Keith screwing with you being replaced with relief upon hearing Dolly's voice as you turn to the source of her voice and find the lively girl jog up to you in her own choice of a school outfit you were familiar with: A white t-shirt with black sleeves, denim shorts and blue sneakers. Most prominent however were the set of three collars on her neck ranging from blue to orange to a lighter shade of blue from top to bottom. Her friendly smile upon seeing you suddenly distorted to a frown of confusion as she looked at you.
"Woah, you okay? What happened to your nose?"
Damn it, you had completely forgotten about your bandaged nose and hadn't thought about what to tell Dolly should she see it. Thinking quickly, you tell her that you tripped on some stairs and that you were fine other than a bloody nose. She looks at you still with that frown before smiling and patting you on the shoulder. You mentally sigh with relief that she didn't press you forward before she continued.
"So looks like you'll be seeing me in Science!" She pointed out with a smirk, most likely because she wasn't that big on subjects like that, being a more active and fun type of person, but the fact that you joined her on said subject softened the blow for her. You share a fist-bump with Dolly before she quickly heads off to her class whilst you went your own way. The sooner Math was over with, the better.
You take a seat in the classroom of your Math subject and wait quietly for your teacher to make his presence known. The ambience around you being filled with chatter from other students as you set up everything that would be essential for your lesson. Not a second later, and the elderly tutor, Mr. Sanford enters the room and stands behind the desk, holding a hand up as everyone went silent.
"Good morning, class. Open up your textbooks and prepare your pens. Today, we will be continuing our studies on linear algebra." Mr. Sanford announced as he wrote down a few equations on the whiteboard. If you were born with a major in mathematics, then this would have probably been child's play, but to you, even the easiest of algebra was like alien language to you that you just couldn't translate no matter what method you used. You hold back a sigh as you give one good look at the equations before looking over the previous studies written on your textbook to see if they'd help with your possible answers. But of course, one of the students behind you just had to make it harder for you as you felt something hit the back of your head, making you look down to see a paper ball. Not wanting to get in trouble, you decide to ignore it and resume your attempt on solving the problem. Not even a second later and you feel another paper ball hit you, landing on your desk next to your arm. You pay no attention to it and keep working. This time however, you can faintly hear paper being scrunched, implying that the student behind you was starting to get aggravated from you not giving him any attention he was trying to coax out of you as you manage to see another ball fly right past you, missing you at it landed on the floor in front of your desk.
"Ahem! I hope I'm not seeing any of you wasting valuable paper to use as cannonballs!" Mr. Sanford called out as he leered at everyone including you. Fortunately, you didn't feel or see any more paper balls after that, the student behind you must've been intimidated by your teacher enough to stop and get back to work.
An hour soon passed as the school bell rang, ending the lesson. You could only hope that your workings on the problems displayed were correct as you and everyone else left for a fifteen minute break. The school courtyard was bustling with other students as per usual, the majority of them tapping away at their phones with no regards to their surroundings. As you took a seat on an empty chair, you look around in hopes to see Dolly among the students. With fifteen minutes to spare, you might as well spend them hanging out with her.
"Boo."
You jolt with a yelp upon hearing the sudden whisper in your ear. You turn to see Dolly bursting out in laughter at your reaction, holding her stomach as she was sat next to you. You roll your eyes in response to Dolly's little joke as she soon recollected herself and sat upright next to you.
"So what's up? Mr. Sanford still being an old grouch as usual?" She asked. You go ahead and tell her what you had to sit through regarding algebra, leaving out the detail of one of the other students throwing paper balls at you. Dolly rolled her eyes with evident annoyance upon you mentioning algebra.
"Ugh, I know! Where do these guys get the idea to try to turn numbers into letters and how are you even supposed to know what 'A' plus 'B' even means?" She complained, earning a small chuckle out of you. From there on, your conversation with the Dalmatian mostly consisted of small talk including how Dolly was faring with her family. To say that your mind was blown when she revealed to you that she had ninety-eight siblings was an understatement. Dolly sometimes had even offered to invite you to her home so you could meet them but you always turned her down with a reason why. Truthfully, you did want to meet her family, but the idea of your father possibly beating you for getting home later than he'd expect always put you off the possibility. Of out them all, the only one you knew from her mentioning them alone were Dylan who was the same age as her and from what you recall hearing about from her was very house proud and an absolute nerd. Before you knew it, the bell rang once again and you exchanged farewells with her before heading back inside for your next lesson, English.
Truthfully, you weren't a big fan of English either, not because it was confusing and mentally exhausting like Math was but because of how painfully boring it was. Especially when the fact that a lesson where you practice words for a language you were native to was just basically pointless with the teacher teaching you synonyms and phrases like he was preparing you for your future presidential speech. Like you would ever had a chance to get that kind of role in the government anyway especially when you didn't care at all about politics.
"Alright everyone, settle down." The English teacher, Mr. Connor spoke out calmly as the students who were talking amongst each other obliged. "Now today, I'd like you to write an essay about the Battle of Hastings with no less than three hundred words. You're welcome to use any provided English history books, but do not blatantly copy anything from them. All of it must be in your own words." God, how you hated essays with word limits. Why did teachers feel the need to make you write pages of a topic with a restricted amount of words and expect you to know what to write without the other half looking terrible? With the other students having already grabbed the larger and more detailed books, you were stuck with the smallest book. This was going to be hell.
Finally, after an hour to trying to think hard on how to fully detail the topic given, the familiar sound of the bell rang again. Finally it was the lunch hour, another moment to hang out with Dolly before Science. You sat up and with all of the other students and made your way to the lunch hall. Honestly, thank god that schools provided lunch when your dad didn't care enough to feed you in the evening. Anything in the kitchen you needn't dare touch lest you piss off your dad for "stealing his edibles". You grab one of the provided grey plastic trays and head to the buffet area, the only thing that stood out from your cycle of routine was the food that school offered with it today appearing to be beef stew. Hey, anything beats the hell out of starving to death so you grab yourself a bowl and after a quick look around, you find Dolly at a vacant table and sit next to her, gaining a smile from her. More small talk about her family engaged with you, along the way as you ate, you learned about some of her other siblings including Da Vinci who seemed like to be a real prodigy in art that she must be the art class' favourite in wherever school she studied at.
"So what about you? Anything you have ace skills at?" Dolly asked you as you finished the last bites of your stew. As far as you were aware, nothing about you stuck out like a sore thumb. You scratch your head in thought, unable to come up with anything. She patted your back understandingly.
"Don't sweat it. Takes time for most to see what they're good at. Didn't know I'd be good at skateboarding until I was twelve." You didn't bother to argue with the fact that she only knows how to skateboard because she taught herself how to. Any advice she gave you even if it sounded odd was welcome to you. "That reminds me, I should brush up on my skills! See ya at Science!" Dolly waved to you before shoving the remaining beef stew in her bowl into her mouth before rushing off. You nod and get up from the table, about to put the bowl in the dish rack for washing when you felt a hard force shove you onto the floor. You look up to see Keith smirking at you with a bowl full of stew in his hand.
"I'd be careful around your precious "girlfriend" if I were you. Because I heard that you shit yourself so much that it gets all other your pathetic little face!" He snarled before shoving the bowl onto you, splattering you in the hot mix of gravy and beef. And then came the laughter from all the watching students, some of them pointing at you nastily. Some of which were even chanting at you: "Shitface! Shitface! Shitface! Shitface!" You hold back your anger mixed with sadness as you slowly get up and leave the lunch hall, the chortling from everyone not ceasing even after they could no longer see you. You entered the nearest bathroom and looked at yourself in the mirror to find your face coated in the brown that was starting to smell from exposure to the air. You wash off what you could of the mess with the sink before grabbing several paper towels to dry yourself. You just wished that Keith would just leave you alone and make your school day any less suffering. It was bad enough that you had to deal with your dad back at home. Your clothes were wet from trying to get the food off but at least you went with a black shirt so no one would notice.
Compared to your other lessons, Science was at least somewhat fun, especially when you got to spend it with Dolly. And your tutor, Miss Brown was more merciful than Mr. Sanford or Mr. Connor. Today, Miss Brown would be teaching you and Dolly how to make invisible ink, the idea sounding fun to the both of you, though judging by her smirk, she was tempted to make the class laugh by making her message be a rude word but she refrained from that possibly to stop you from getting into trouble. After being given the method, Dolly mixed a cup of baking soda and water whilst you thought about what to write your message until you realised that Miss Brown didn't say that you strictly had to write a message. You took a glance at Dolly before dipping a toothpick into the mix of soda and water before scribbling it around the paper. A while or so later and Miss Brown prepared the small vitrine of decoding stain as you watched the other paired up students show their messages. Some were simple words like "Hello" while one pair in particular however had decided to draw… a guy's 'you-know-what' which made everyone even you and Dolly snicker. The pair were no doubt getting a day of detention from the look Miss Brown gave the two. It was now your turn as you and Dolly walked up to the desk and the paper was dipped into the liquid. What was revealed was a simple drawing of you and Dolly in a friendly one arm hug. One look at the Dalmatian and you could tell she approved greatly of it. Miss Brown herself was impressed too, giving you and Dolly a good grade.
And with that, the school day was finally over. Dolly walked with you along the school hall until you both were standing outside the front.
"Hey… I really liked that picture you did of us. Was cool and real sweet of you." Dolly said before hugging you tightly. She then pulled out her skateboard and rolled her way home, waving to you as you waved back and watched her vanish. Your walk home from school was the same as you walking to school from home, no one paying any mind to you as you just focused on your journey home. As soon as you walked in, you heard sleepy groans come from your dad as he sat up from the couch and glanced at you tiredly.
"God, about time you got home. Get in the kitchen and make something for me. And if whatever you cook for me tastes like crap, you're sleeping outside." He threatened as you reluctantly obliged and made your way to the kitchen. You didn't have any culinary skills at all. At best, all you could cook without screwing it up was ramen from an instant pack. You reach into the fridge and take out one of the many microwave meals, reading the instructions as clearly as possible before putting it in the microwave, setting the timer and waiting for the appliance to do it's work. Not even halfway through the meal's cooking time and you heard your dad scream at you from the living room.
"WHAT THE HELL IS TAKING SO LONG?! GET YOUR FINGERS OUT OF YOUR ASS AND HURRY THE HELL UP!" You flinched as you heard your dad's voice boom out. It was taking every nerve in your body to hold back from snapping at him and telling him to be patient. A minute or so later, the familiar "Ding!" ran from the microwave and you took the meal out before returning to your dad and offering the meal to him. He took it without a word and is about to dig in until he glares at you.
"What the hell is this? Are you going brain-dead?! I MADE IT VERY CLEAR THAT I WANTED A CHEESEBURGER, YOU STUPID LITTLE SHIT!" You were about to stammer out that he never told you to specifically cook him a microwaveable burger but you immediately felt a sharp pain on your cheek before you could utter out a single word.
"I can't believe you! I give you a god-damn roof under your head and a bed to sleep in and THIS is how you repay me?! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY SIGHT! NOW!" Dad screamed at you as you tried to hold back tears whilst getting up and running upstairs to your bedroom. The first thing you saw was your bed as you ran straight for it and sobbed into your pillow. This was your life. A school full of bullies and a home with a dad who resented you to no end. The only thing that stood out positively out of all this being your only friend and even she was oblivious to how you were treated. You sniffled and wiped the tears away from your face, the stinging pain from your dad striking you across the face still lingering as you reach for your bedside cabinet and pull out an orange transparent canister with a white screw-on lid. The same kind of canister you find in any pharmacy that contains prescribed medicine. The medicine the canister contained was Fluoxetine, an antidepressant which you managed to get the school nurse to prescribe you with without your dad or Dolly knowing. The amount of stress that school and your dad caused you essentially made the little white and green pills crucial to keep your emotions under control. You unscrew the lid and take one pill, downing it before putting away the canister. You take one last look out the window to see it already getting dark. A decent view of the town of Camden. You only wished however that you could see Dolly's house from here so you could wave to her and hopefully see one of her siblings at one of the windows.
You slump onto your bed and pull the covers over yourself, hoping that sleep would help to wear off the pain your dad inflicted on your cheek.