Alex Foster chapter 16

Six months later, mum got out of jail, I guess she was pitied and actually her only crime was to do nothing. Still, I couldn`t understand how she was able to get custody of Nika, even though Nika didn`t trusted on her even the little bit what he trusted on me, and refused to speak or listen to the mum. In a week, it became clear that it didn`t work. Nika didn`t obey mum at all, and hung out in the city late in the evening unless I asked for him to come home and sometimes in spite of it. Mum still treated me like a ghost, if she didn`t yell to me about Nika`s behavior. 

In the school where I had went for three months, I faced name calling, laughing, spitting and beating for both of us. I didn`t care what they thought of me, they despised me without knowing me, knowing what I had experienced, but I didn`t let them hurt Nika. 

But classmates were not the only ones who gave me black eyes and broken noses and ribs. Mum had of course not stopped running at pubs and brought home the same sick bastards as before, I guess no one else would have even looked at her. Mum thought they were dream-come-true princes and didn`t believed they could have hurt Nika. The matter was not helped by the fact that Nika didn`t say anything, so both at home and at school I tried to defend Nika and tell about bullying and abuse, only to hear that I was a liar and picking a fight. 
  
It was a cruel and cold world, people didn`t care a shit about what happened to the poor brat, and Nika was not able to defend himself. I had to watch when he fucked up his school, and how the scars appeared in his wrists. The worst part, however, was when Nika three months later, in his 12th birthday, appeared late in the evening in my room completely drunk and tried to kiss me. I tried to forget what had happened a year ago, I pushed gently but firmly Nika farther and locked in the bathroom. 

I listened to almost half an hour Nika`s shouting, swearing, crying and confessing his love behind the door, until he finally passed out on the hallway floor. I carried Nika to our room and tucked him in the bed, and I realized that things couldn`t go on like this. When a couple of days later, Alex came to ask Morpheus` contact information and told me about his escape, I knew that it was our only chance to escape this life that wouldn`t lead to anywhere but to the bottom, to dead end from which the only escape is death.