The year was 1964 and William was now 17 years old. His father had remarried after his mother, Jennifer passed away. Her name was Lacey. She was very nice and not very evil stepmother-y at all. It was her daughter Veronica who was evil. Any chance she got she would bully him and Vincent because they were two years younger than her. William and Vincent had tried to get their older brother David to help but he was 19 and didn’t want anything to do with his younger brothers. Finally one day Veronica shoved him down the stairs and he grabbed onto her shirt as he fell bringing her down with him. She ended up crying to their father and telling him that William pushed her down the stairs not the other way around. Oscar ended up taking her side and punishing William brutally by lashing him with a whip across the back.
That night his stepmother came in and helped bandage him up. She told him she knew what really happened and that she was sorry that she couldn’t stop his father from lashing him or stop Veronica from pushing him down the stairs. He told her it wasn’t her fault. She would try to discipline Veronica but his father would always say that she was a little girl and she couldn’t be mean then take her shopping and spoil her. William looked to his stepmother and told her he wanted to run away but he was scared of what his father would do. She listened to him and helped him to pack two bags. One with clothes and the other with food. Neither of them were big on keeping things simple.
Veronica knew how bad her daughter was to her stepson but no matter what she did Oscar always undermined her and spoiled the little girl. After William was ready he left the house in the dead of night with only one person who knew. He ran into the forest near the estate as he had many times before but this time he didn’t want to go home. Once he got tired of running he found a nook in a tree’s roots and curled into it using his bag of clothes as a pillow and protecting his bag of food in his arms.
The next morning William woke with a boy standing over him. He looked no older than William himself, around 13 or so. He was around the boy’s height but the boy had golden blonde hair with unnaturally bright purple eyes that held hypnotic spirals that seemed to turn if you looked long enough. William blushed but his parents always told him boys couldn’t like boys and that it was wrong. Was it wrong? It felt so natural for him to look at a boy and see that he had sunkissed skin with freckles covering his face. Or that his lips looked soft and kissable. Or even that he had a gap in his teeth that whistled when he spoke.