Author's Note: Hey kiddies, I'm back. With another story. I know, I have story ADD. It's not my FAULT. I swear. But I have a favor to ask of anyone who reads this. If you have any good Toad pics, could you email them to me? My email's in my profile...won't let me write it out here for some reason. My computer has recently crashed, and deleted all my pictures. And you know how hard it is to find them, all scattered over the internet in obscure little sites. The thought of doing it again is making my eye twitch...

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One

“Shadow thought there was a lot to be said about bottling up your feelings. After a while, there came a point where you just couldn’t feel anymore.” ’American Gods’ Neil Gaiman

You ask me why I can’t trust you. Why I can’t just 'start over'. You come down here every day, and you try and talk me out of it. You just don’t get why it’s not going to work.

See, despite what you think, you and yours aren’t the first to try and ‘heal’ me. You’re treading on used ground, Chuck, and it’s best you know that. I’ve already been given a second chance. Third chance. My number’s up. It’s time you got that.

Some of us just aren’t worth saving.

Twelve Years Earlier

London, England

Central Youth Shelter

It was winter. The shelter was full to the bursting; cots lay out on almost every single square foot of ground. The shelter violated more than its fair share of fire safety laws, but seeing as it was either this or put the kids out on the streets, the fire department put their blinders on.

All the food was stretched out, children given the most meager of servings—but at least everyone got something to eat. Everyone, except for a thin child near the back. Despite the lack of space, there was about a foot between his cot and the others. If it had been anyone else, the aides would’ve complained and ordered the children to pull their cots back in to line, but they knew full well the reason this child was isolated. And they gracefully pretended that he didn’t exist.

The boy wasn’t referred to by name by the staff, simply for the reason that they didn’t know it, and didn’t care enough to ask. The children had never asked his name either, but had devised one by themselves.

He was their form of entertainment on rainy mornings, or on the unfortunate days when the teenage gangs stole the swings from their play park. He was their whipping boy, their punching bag, and their sole outlet for rage. And the best part, the aides never stopped them. In fact, they sometimes joined in the fun as well when the children weren’t looking. He was barely a boy in their eyes. He was an animal. He was the Toad.

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I knew I had to be quiet, see. That was the only way I could survive. Sometimes if I just stayed real still, they’d forget about me. Pick on some other unlucky sod or try and get out past the gates to talk to the older kids. They were always trying to that…talk to the older ones, anyway. The more chummy you got with them when you were a runt, the more likely they’d recruit you when you got to fifteen—that was the age that the shelter put you out.

I didn’t know what I was gonna do when I was fifteen. I knew I could probably stay for a few extra years- I looked young for my age, but beyond that, I was stuck. The only place orphans like us were wanted was for stealing. Grunt work, stuff like that. And no gangs wanted me.

Well, that’s a lie, really. One did.

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They had beaten the Toad badly that day, what exactly he had done was never determined, but no doubt he deserved it. He always deserved it. He hadn’t enough energy to drag himself inside, and no one had bothered to haul him back in.

The sun had set, and it started to rain in that quiet misty non-rain that commonly frequented London evenings. The mist and cold made his head swimmy, but dulled the pain from his wounds, and he was thankful for that. He was leaning heavily against the chain-link fence, hardly conscious, when he heard a pair of dainty, catlike steps behind him.

His pulled his knees up to his chest, and sheltered his head with his hand. But no blow came.