I, Mutant

I, Mutant Chapter Eleven
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… Feeling better? InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink, Dracena and Greywolf are loverly and wondermous for archiving/hosting. J ProPhile: I reserve the right to a question later lol. Morgan: *gloke * Readers/Reviewers: Thank you so much for reading/reviewing as you can! The ducks appreciate it…




She pressed her lips into a thin line. He knew she was not happy with him. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t mean it…”
His mother threw the damp dishtowel down, fisting her hands on her hips as she towered over him. “You’re worthless, you little shit!” She grabbed up the wooden spoon on the counter and swung wildly, the hard implement making contact with his face, his neck, his ribs. He yelped and leapt back, his hands coming up to shield himself. “STOP IT!” she screamed, grabbing his wrists with one hand and striking him with the spoon in the other.
He cried out, unable to hold back, crouching under the rain of blows. His back arched as he tried to curve and protect his stomach. He knew what came next. He knew what happened to filthy children, abominations sent by God.

“Did you just eat that?”
“No…” He rubbed his hands on the legs of his jeans, as if he could scrub away the years of poverty and neglect. He felt dirty, body and soul, next to the pretty blonde siblings who always sat in front of him on the bus. “It flew off.”
“Right,” the one on the left, Sarah, snorted. She rose up on her knees in the seat and, flashing a cruel smile at him, shouted “TODD TOLENSKY ATE A MOTH!”
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew!” The bus exploded in noise, raining down on his ears as everyone, it seemed, stood or knelt, staring down at him. “He’s so poor, he eats bugs!” someone yelled. “He’s so poor he eats dirt!”
Todd cringed, but he would not cry. He knew what happened to boys who cried. His mother told him that often enough. “I didn’t eat it!” he snapped back. “It FLEW AWAY!” Someone hurled a wad of paper, wet with Lord only knew what, at him, making it stuck to his neck. He snarled, his fragile temper breaking. He could not fight his mother but he could fight these people, close to his age, close to his size… Kinda.
“Shut up, shrimp,” one of the older boys chided. “Baby gonna cry?” The bus had stopped. They were in front of the middle school now and the bus driver, oblivious as always to the plight of the unpopular kids, was already getting off to get some coffee in the teacher lounge, just past the double glass door of the massive entry hall.
“No,” Todd replied, mustering all of his twelve year old courage and standing up, sliding his skinny body into the aisle of the bus. “I’m gonna kick your ass. And don’t call me baby…”


Todd slid down in his seat, his large eyes hooded. He did not feel well, to say the least. He was starving—he dimly recalled scrounging some oatmeal from the cafeteria the previous morning, and the handful of insects from the house. They were a delicacy in Africa, he kept telling himself. It made the crunching more palatable, less gag-worthy. Protein, he had insisted silently. I need protein. I have to do this. His mother was quiet. She had not spoken to him since the day before yesterday and he knew she was passed out in her room; the pile of empties that morning had attested to that. Going home in the middle of the day was always awkward. He got looks from the bus drivers, from the guy on the subway, from the doormen of the buildings he passed. He clutched the slip of paper from his principal tightly in his right hand, the strap of his backpack tightly in his left. Suspended for fighting on the bus. Fantastic. His mother would be thrilled. The bruises on his back were healing but his skin still had an odd hue to it, one the principal demanded he wash off. He threatened to call Children’s Protective Services but Todd wormed his way out of that, wriggled free of the threat of public interference. He hated his life but he did not need help. He did not need anyone butting in and taking him away, making him live with some snotty family in Westchester who wanted to show off to their friends by fostering some low life kid from the inner city. Todd unlocked the door to their small apartment with a twist and a shove, slamming it behind him. “Ma!” Silence met his call. He threw the book bag down on the sprung sofa and rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand. Flies buzzed around the sink, gnats swarming the dish of half-eaten, congealed ice cream sitting on the milk crate coffee table. “Fuck it,” he muttered, abandoning the brief idea of straightening the place up. He’d be damned if he did anything to help her, not after what she had done to him. It was like a tiny thread snapped in his brain, severing any ties he might have felt to the woman who gave birth to him. Being on the bus, that had been the final straw. He was tired of living in filth, tired of being sick all the time, of starving. Idly, he scratched his arm, the skin flaking and peeling. Cheap soap, he thought, bitter. Just once he wanted to have a day where being poor wasn’t written all over him in huge neon letters, where his skin wasn’t ashen and gray-green from the cheap soap and dirty apartment and grubbing in dumpsters, when his stomach didn’t lurch sickeningly at the mere thought of real food, when he didn’t want to be childish and cry when he thought of people with a real family, a real home. He let the notice from the principal float to the ground, rubbing his hands on his shirt as if the paper had dirtied him. “Ma!” Moving further into the apartment, he wrinkled his nose. Something smelled worse than usual. “Ma?” The buzzing of the flies grew louder the further into the apartment he went. Something, he thought dimly, was not right.

“Liar…”
“I swear to God,” Todd replied solemnly, holding up his right hand. “My mother killed him.”
Amara raised a brow, uncertain. Lance had told her about Todd’s past, what little he knew, and it had not included this tidbit. “So that’s the day you became Toad, huh?” She rolled her eyes. “You’re lying.”
“I’ve always been Toad,” he shrugged, stretching out his long legs and eyeing the worn toes of his sneakers. “That’s just the day I figured out I could jump far.” He smiled crookedly, winking up at her. “Leapt out the window when the cops came and ain’t never looked back.”
“Liar.”
He shrugged, laying back in the grass, listening to the buzz of the crickets in the warm summer sun. “Whatever,” he called after her retreating form. He closed his eyes, feeling the prickle of the sundried grass on his arms and neck. The lake smelled green and wet and that made him smile. His mother, wherever she was, would never understand. Her dead lover deserved it, he was sure, even now. But he, Todd Tolensky, was meant for bigger and better things. Things where his nature was appreciated. Things, he thought lazily, his tongue snapping out to capture a passing dragonfly, where he could be himself.