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This is only chapter 1/14, and I know it's very long, but please, please read it and help me! I really want to get published, but I don't seem to know how to go about it and I ahve to polish up the story and all that. The whole thing is about 63k words long approximately, but if anyone out there wants to read all of it they're welcome to e-mail me - Email Removed. I'd be eternally grateful to anyone who can give me feedback - as critical as you like, I can take it.
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PART 1: THE SINNERS

Chapter 1: A Short Trip Down Memory Lane
I The Persecution of Hans

It was a street, the place where the boy sat; it didn’t look like a street. More like a dump of pity, everything from money to furniture, from wallpaper to food, from human waste to unwanted animals, from the inhabitants and from strangers, was dumped along Rat Hole Way. It was a home for the ugliest, dirtiest, meanest creatures, which swarmed and stirred amongst the decaying bundles of the street’s furnishings, biting and clawing their way through the tide of mould. There was wet rot, dry rot, breakages, blockages, overstraining, unused chaos; throughout it, bugs of all shapes, sizes and habit crawled or flew lazily in germ heaven, snarling feral cats, vicious mongrel dogs, and scrabbling rodent vermin thrust their way through the turmoil, and pattered across the drunken bodies of the tramps, who were the only people who dwelt there.
But the boy was not a tramp, and not a stranger to the area. He pulled his black hat down over his almost-white blonde hair, as he sat, alone, in the small dusty space he had collapsed into. The tall mounds of filth kept him hidden from view, and covered his own, but he didn’t bother; he sat, his quivering fingers lightly touching his pale cheek, where deep bruises reminded him of terror. Like a small ghost, the boy sat, ice still, his quivering fingers the only visible movement.
No one would find him here, this boy:
Serge Grass. Fourteen years old. Pacifist. No money, no school, no dad, no best friend; too much had been lost in his life; there had been too much taken away.
“There are other ways,” he had said, softly. Ways other than physical violence, he had meant. “I could follow you wherever you go, like a shadow, never leaving you to peace. I could arrange some things to go wrong for you; how would you like to be expelled, or thrown from your home by your own mother? I could drive you mad, make a fool out of you, a spectacle – I know various ways. I could pass on a secret of yours which you think no one knows. I could put custard everywhere: in your clothes, in your home, in school, in your stuff.”
Serge breathed heavily, his mind spinning. They had ruined his life. Well then, if they’d ruined his, he should ruin theirs. Fair’s fair, thought Serge; he’d have revenge.
He’d just escaped from his supposed friend, Teddy; a difficult process, including finding excuses to leave the other boy alone for a while, and then not coming back. Serge was certain Teddy would pick up before long the fact that Serge didn’t like him. No twelve year old could be that stupid. And it wasn’t like Serge could act. He couldn’t pretend to like Teddy and he didn’t want to, he just wanted to come and sit here, alone, without his mum and her problems hounding him, without Teddy and without the boys who used to beat him up. Serge needed to hide, even though he knew he wasn’t being followed; persecuted.
Not like Hans.
There used to be a war between the two schools in the neighbourhood, Maxton Villa private secondary school for boys, and Vale High secondary school for boys, Serge’s own. Then, during their last ever battle, held at Serge’s school, someone had burnt it down, and Mr Cedrick Kobson, the headmaster, in it. This, succeeding the death of Sir Horace Bedievere, the Maxton Villa headmaster, and owner of the school, there was nothing much left of either institution.
It had been during the war that the persecution of Hans had occurred. Hans Denskok was Serge’s best friend a strong pacifist, and leader of the pacifist club, which had three members, himself, Serge, and Teddy. Hans had always had ambitions; he’d wanted, Serge thought miserably, to make the world a better place. And he had put up with persecution before. The house fire, which killed Hans’ brother and forced his family to move to this area, had been caused deliberately: a racial attack, they know knew, because the Denskoks were black.
So, who were Hans Denskok’s persecutors? Maxton Villa schoolboys? Anti-pacifists? Racists? Probably all of them, Serge suspected. He was going to find them, he was going to uncover the truth about who hurt his best friend Hans, and he was going to make them pay.
The first thing they had done, was the worst. Hans had a black Labrador called Mercury, whom he loved, and who loved him. He was a gentle, adorable dog, and the most important thing in Hans’ life. Serge didn’t know any dog and owner who had a closer relationship; there were no specie-difference complications; they understood each other perfectly. One night, however, Hans had come home to find Mercury hung in his back yard.
And that was the beginning. Then, secondly, Hans’ shed, which he had built himself, and where he stored his most precious possessions, and carried out their pacifist meetings, was burnt to charcoal and ashes. It was like burning a dream. Everything, now, which had meant anything in fifteen year old Hans Denskok’s life had been taken away in two, well-aimed blows. Everything, except his two friends and his parents. So that was where the persecutors struck next.
They weren’t afraid to murder anyone, but they never even tried to kill Hans. Why? Perhaps it was because (as Hans himself had suspected), alive, he could suffer blow after never-ending blow, sent his way. In death, he could only meet peace. However, by killing someone close to him, someone they could send to heaven or hell, or wherever anyone went, somewhere out of Hans’ reach, they could make Hans suffer more. Oh yes, they could make him suffer. They chose their victim; and attacked. Serge had been their victim. He felt angry, not just at what they were doing to Hans, but also that he was just a pawn in their game. They didn’t care if he lived or died, as long as Hans was alive to feel the pain of it. Luckily, his murder had failed. Somebody, or, as he suspected, although he never saw his attackers, some bodies, had come up behind him, and walloped him over the head. It had cracked his skull open, made him black out, but not actually killed him. They probably knew this, Serge realised, for they had dragged him into a nearby, shallow river, Parson’s Creek, and left him face down to drown. But it obviously hadn’t been a hard enough whack on the head, because Serge had recovered consciousness, got out of the river and found someone to get him to hospital, before he collapsed for loss of blood. Serge couldn’t say anyone else had saved his life; he had, all by himself.
And the persecution of Hans would have gone on, no doubt about it, Serge knew, if Hans hadn’t died a hero’s death. Poor Hans, such a good, good fellow, with plans and ambitions for the future: he’d wanted to be a doctor, and he’d wanted, too, to travel about England preaching about poverty, disease, famine, discrimination, drug abuse, global warming and all the rest of it. Hans had wanted to make the world he lived in a good one, and Serge had wanted him to make it a good one too, but then Hans Denskok had been snatched out of the world.
Serge leant on something which resembled a dilapidated armchair, running his quivering fingers over the wear-softened material. A giant, orange, rex rat ran out of a hole, over Serge’s arm and down his body, then away. He didn’t look at it, and he didn’t stir. He felt so miserable, so unhappy and angry. If he’d been someone else, he might have cried, but Serge didn’t cry. It wasn’t like he did it deliberately, stopping himself from shedding tears he needed to shed, he just didn’t experience sadness in that way. When everybody else howled, Serge’s face would become stony and still and he would say nothing, but he would think and, that way, feel things more deeply.
Serge wished Hans was still alive. Hans… He meant so much to Serge. Serge could never bear to let him go.
He looked up, and there, standing beside him now, he could see Hans, as though he was flesh and blood itself. His handsome, dark face was shadowed under heavy, thick brows, which could have looked sinister, if Serge hadn’t spent half his life looking into the twinkling, enchanting eyes beneath. Dark eyes, like Serge’s own, but, somehow, filled with the flickering magic which captured an audience when he spoke, and softened when friends were troubled. It was only when he was angry that the heavy brows had lowered further, so that all that could be seen of his eyes were two, black recesses. Hans, a year older than Serge, was a little taller, although Serge was tall. He had neat curls of short, black hair all over his head, and a strong, rumbling voice, which carried well. He was one of those people, who seemed born with a purpose in life; determined, irresolute, passionate about his pacifism. Hans was Serge’s own hero.
Hans smiled at Serge, and was gone.
Serge knew that he was mad. Serge knew that he was seeing things, and that Hans was dead; dead, gone, and lost forever. He didn’t care; he just wanted to see Hans’ ghost wherever and as often as his mind would recreate the image, and project it into his eyes. What happens when I grow older? Serge mused. Will Hans grow older too? But it was the fifteen year old Hans he remembered and missed, who had died and been taken away. And it was the fifteen year old body of Hans, which lay buried in the earth somewhere, rotting away to provide food for the plants. And, in the circle of life, those plants in turn would provide food for him, and for Hans’ killers.

II Kevin’s Sin

Serge got up, and went for an amble round town. His feet lifted heavily, as he trudged through the rubble, occasionally putting himself out to avoid a tramp, or feral cat’s litter of kittens. In a short time, he had pulled himself from the claustrophobic masses and heaps of rubbish, and stepped out onto the street where he lived: Rat Street. He chugged slowly along, and then, at the end of the fall-apart collection of smoke-damaged terraced buildings, turned onto the bright lights of Main Road. Main Road was a long, busy, thriving street, full of rushing people, huddles of meeting people and people carrying too many things. It was decorated mostly with shops and bars were scattered all along it; there were a few clubs, the casino and, further down, the Cellar, the place where Serge’s mother worked; Main Road was a place for going to, coming from, passing by and spending money at. Serge gazed in at the shop windows, looking wistfully at the expensive items he could never afford and the delicious food he panged to try. He felt hollow inside; he would have bought himself something to eat, but he didn’t have any money. Serge never had any money, it seemed. His mum didn’t really bring in enough and he didn’t know his dad (he’d been one of his mother’s customers).
Serge left the comfort of Main Road and walked up Devil’s Reject Road. He knew where he was going now. Walking, now, along the road he’d ran along, what seemed only yesterday, behind Christian and Lex, with them behind Hans, who was almost at the front, catching up with Kevin. They’d been trying to stop Kevin from committing suicide.
The road seemed much shorter to Serge today. When he’d run along it that last time, his head had been bandaged up after Hans’ persecutors attacked him, and he’d been awfully dizzy. He remembered perfectly how the road had whirled around him in grey spirals whilst he ran indirectly, stumbling, trying to detect where the others were, trying to get to them. And it had seemed, then, forever that he was running, painfully, up the street; the last runner in a race. Until…
Serge reached the end of Devil’s Reject Road, and turned the corner. To both sides, grey, deserted factory buildings loomed, menacing and memorable. Serge hadn’t looked up at them that other time he’d come here, he had been too busy trying to keep track of the fast-moving ground, keeping his balance and finding the rest of Kevin’s hunt. On Serge’s right, there was a dilapidated doorway, separated from the outside world by a chunk of disintegrating wood and a bundle of police tape. The police tape was new. Serge slipped under it and walked through the rubble, careful not to trip, and stepped under another barricade of police tape at the other side. The yard around him was empty, but Serge could hear a whistling sound from the shack there, which had used to be their school, Vale High’s, secret headquarters when and they were at war with Maxton Villa private. It had been Archie Rios-Burton’s shack, really; Archie was the best fighter in either of the two schools, a boy who was, to many, a god. But not to Serge. It was here where they had picked Archie up, and Teddy, of course. They had joined the chase too, and come to see the tragedy.
The whistler was trilling out a tune Serge recognised from somewhere.
Serge didn’t want to see who was whistling. It might be a policeman, anyway. He walked past and slipped under yet more tape, as he gained access to a factory which didn’t face onto the road. Slowly, he reached out a quivering hand and put it on the cold, metal handrail, then started climbing the uneven, rickety steps. Up and up he went; not as fast as the last time. There was no urgency, now; it had all happened and been cast afloat in history. Clamp, clamp; the heavy rattle of his footsteps reverberated and the stairs shivered more than his hands.
He reached the top. He was standing on a long, metal ledge, deliberately placed for observation of the machines below. There was only one machine left, still intact. Kevin’s machine.
There was no light sprinkling of blood now, no arm, lying where it had fallen, after being expelled from the machine, detached from Hans’ body. There were no heads, no headless, mashed up bodies lying in the machine, the blades of which were no longer covered in the bloody shreds from when they were in action. And Serge was alone; there was no Christian leant in wounded hopelessness against the bars, no Lex at his shoulder; there was no Teddy standing back looking distressed and out of place, or Archie, surprised and solemn. It had all been cleaned up; the scene of the accident had been cleared of information.
Serge whispered quietly to himself the lines from Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth.
“The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood,
Is stopp’d: the very source of it is stopp’d.”
That was what Archie had said after it was all over. That was all there really was to say.
Serge felt his body waver, and knelt slowly down, keeping his head clear.
It had all been Kevin’s fault. Kevin had killed a Maxtie named Victor Milnes, but he hadn’t known the name himself. There had always been killings between the two schools, but Kevin wasn’t the sort of guy who could hack it. He’s grown guilt stricken and paranoid. He had come to see the pacifists, Serge and Hans, for he used to be one, used to be Hans’ best friend, before he’d betrayed them by leaving the club. But Hans had refused to help him, quite rightly, in Serge’s opinion, not that there was anything they could have done to clear his conscience.
“Woe,” said Serge, in a choked voice, “to all those with consciences.” That was what he had told Kevin.
So Kevin had got worse. He’d started drinking and he’d not eaten enough; but when he did, he’d only bring it up again. Then he was in that play: Macbeth, and with that, making him think about guilt all the time, and everything, he had got really messed him up. He’d come to see them once more, to tell them that he was going to commit suicide.
It was a stupid thing to have done; tell his new best friend Christian and Christian’s little brother Lex, his ex-best friend Hans and him, Serge. They’d tried to stop him escaping from Hans’ house, but he had, so they chased him round to the factories, where he switched on this machine, ran up and jumped in. By then, they’d accumulated Archie Rios-Burton and Teddy the traitor. Lex had tried to turn off the machine, but Kevin had somehow blocked it. That was the sort of thing, mechanics, that Kevin was good at. Lex was good at it too, but not good enough. Not fast enough. For, when Lex did manage to stop it, it was too late.
Hans was a hero. Hans jumped into the machine to save an ex-friend, a traitor, a guilt-absorbed intently self-destructive murderer. First, he’d tried to pull the struggling Kevin out, and the big choppers had slashed down, snapped off Hans’ arm, and catapulted it over. Like a sick joke, to hit Archie on the head before it landed bloodily, like a death omen, beside them. Then Serge had panicked, screaming and yelling for Hans to get out, to save himself… But Hans was too brave, too good. Serge had fallen, dizzy; Christian caught hold of him and Serge had looked up into the older boy’s strained face. He hadn’t seen Hans’ last, futile efforts to pull Kevin and himself to safety. Hans was stronger than the almost-anorexic Kevin, but the blades had smashed down again, there was an even crunch, and both boys had been simultaneously decapitated.
Serge swallowed the vomit rising up in his oesophagus. He hated Kevin: the ungrateful little… Serge just felt hollow and ached to the core. With Hans gone, he was so empty and useless. It was all Kevin’s fault. But, with Kevin dead too, Serge couldn’t punish him for Hans’ death. Then, of course, there was Christian; Christian, who had encouraged Kevin to betray pacifism, but had betrayed his responsibility to his best friend, so that Kevin decided to commit suicide. Christian, who wasn’t too ill and dizzy to have helped Hans try to save Kevin, and who, if he hadn’t been running with Lex, his little brother, could have easily caught up with Kevin and stopped him before he even reached the factories. Hans had been delayed locking the house up, but Christian had no excuse; he simply cared about his little brother more. The cold of the railing dug into Serge’s head. And Christian was the nearest to getting at Kevin, because he’d been his best friend. So, it was Christian Serge would punish for Kevin’s sin.

III Teddy’s Sin

Serge sat, shivering, his eyes closed. In his head, he could see the eight year old Hans, half of Serge’s life ago. He remembered the day precisely, when his seven year old self had tripped over a potted plant, at lunch time, and been sent to welfare, because his knees were bleeding. He’d had them bandaged up, but the blood just kept on coming, seeping relentlessly through the layers of material, and into his trousers. The nurse had given him a glass of water, and told him that since he wasn’t in much pain, he should just stay there until the bleeding stopped.
Serge had sat, tapping his glass of water, eyes darting around the small, uninteresting welfare room, and hopefully back towards the nurse. It was then that Hans had come in with a severe nose bleed. When the nurse had sorted him out, he sat down beside Serge, pinching his nose, and said, “terrible thing to happen my first day here, getting punched in the face.”
Serge, happy to have someone to talk to, looked into the soft, brown eyes beneath the harsh brows, and said mildly, “terrible thing to happen anytime. You’re new?”
“Yeah,” Hans replied. “I just moved here, Kiler’s Court, because some racists burnt our house down and my little brother in it.” He sounded annoyed, but Serge could detect a hint of sadness in his rich, pleasant voice.
“That’s horrid!” Serge looked at Hans’ dark, handsome face, he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to kill this ordinary, young boy, especially just because of the colour of his skin.
Hans grinned, pushing the seriousness away. “I’m Hans by the way, Hans Denskok. I’m eight.”
“Serge Grass,” replied the other. “Seven years old.” And, indicating his bloody knees, “tripped over a potted plant.”
Hans guffawed with laughter, “no?”
“Yes!” Serge smiled. “I’m accident-prone, my mum says.”
“How’s the plant?”
“I think they’ll have to chuck it out.” Serge grinned ruefully. “Why did someone punch you, anyway?”
“I asked them to.”
Serge frowned, “Why?”
“Well, it’s not quite like that,” Hans laughed. “They were calling me names because I’m black, again,” (Serge hadn’t wanted to ask him what) “and one said ‘answer me or I’ll hit you’, so I turned round and told him to go ahead.”
“Did you hit him back?” Serge asked.
“No. Don’t see anyone else here, do you?” Hans asked, gesturing about the cramped little welfare room.
“You could have been an awful fighter. Like me,” Serge admitted. “I’m no good at fighting, and I hate it. It was good of you not to retaliate.”
And that was where it had all begun. Hans was a year older than Serge, and already friends with a boy named Kevin Paccleton, but, he was happy to have Serge around too, and, together, the three of them swore never to use violence again, or agree with anyone who did.
Serge thought wistfully back to those times of childhood. A time when most things seemed right in his life, and future promise-breakings, persecutions, and death this silly and fairy-tale-like. Serge wished himself back then more than anything else. If only he could start from when he was seven, and have that part of his life over and over again, always stopping before all the bad stuff happened. Put into plain terms, Serge would rather cower in a dream he knew impossible, than face crude reality.
Looking, now, at what had been the scene of to horrific deaths, Serge felt that reality had been squashed from it, when it had been cleaned. He tried not to imagine the blood and shredded corpses back, in case he was sick. He got uneasily to his feet, and, holding the metal handrail bar securely, Serge made his way back down to ground level, where he began to find his way out of the factory. As he left the memories behind, he was able to walk without holding onto a wall or something, and the little colour, which he ever had, began to reappear in his face.
The year Hans and Kevin moved up to secondary school, Vale High, and became involved in the war, was difficult for Serge. He felt awfully lonely; he didn’t have, in his own, junior, school, any proper friends. But then, he could always see them in out of school time, and, when, eventually, he did move up to Vale High, he joined the beginnings of the pacifist club.
The pacifists had all made posters, advertising their pacifism, and asking others to join their club. Unfortuneately, they were always having to re-make the posters, because anti-pacifists were forever tearing them down, or vandalising them, usually by spray-paining them with insults.
They held their pacifist meetings in Hans’ shed, Hans’ haven, which he had built himself when the Denskoks moved there, which meant a lot to him. It was a small, three by two metre, wooden-walled room, crowded with the flowery sofa Hans had taken from a skip, the towers of boxes, and the walls decorated with posters of famous pacifists, diagrams, quotations, and notes of Hans’. The walls were well-sanded and varnished, but the scrap wood Hans had used still felt rough at touch. The door had two bolt locks on it, and fitted snugly into its fame. It was a great achievement of Hans’, just like the ones which happened within it. But now, Serge thought miserably, it was gone; burnt to ashes to fine to hold. The only thing…
Serge stopped outside the factory doorway, reached into his pocket, and clasped the cold metal of half a bolt lock. The only remaining fragment has had found intact, in the burnt wreckage.
Returning to two years ago, Serge felt the anger rising up inside him. It was during Serge’s second year at Vale High, that he met his first large barrier in life. That Kevin accomplished his first sin; that Kevin committed treachery. They had just been starting one of their weekly pacifist meetings, when Kevin had got nervously to his feet, and said he had something to tell them. They’d never dreamed what was to come.
Clearing his throat painfully, Kevin mumbled anxiously, “I don’t usually think about things much, I tend to make spur-of-the-moment decisions. But, well, this time it isn’t. What I’m about to say is going to hurt you both very much, but I’ve got to say it. I’m not a pacifist. I’m a coward, but I don’t believe in non-violence. I’m going to leave the club.” There was a brief silence, then Kevin whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Hans exploded like a ton of dynamite, “GET OUT,” he yelled erratically. “GET OUT OF MY SIGHT YOU TAITOR! GET OUT; I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU EVER AGAIN. Do you realise what you’ve done? To us, to your own life? GET OUT OF HERE AND NEVER COME BACK, YOU YELLOW BELLIED LIZARD!”
Kevin’s lip trembled, and he looked like he was about to say something; but Serge was sick of the sight of him, his pathetic excuses, everything about the thirteen year old traitor. Leaping to his feet, Serge unbolted and opened the shed door. He pointed a shaking arm out into the grey world and spoke in a voice that defied objection.
“Go.”
And Kevin went, leaving them alone.
Hans had cried then. Cried and cried, and Serge hadn’t known what to do. Hans, so proud and invincible, so proficient and passionate about his pacifism, crumpled into a little ball on the floor, head in is knees, crying away and away, an unceasing waterfall of sorrow. Serge had knelt beside him, watching and, behind his own, dry eyes, feeling much the same pain as Hans did.
Then Kevin was gone. He never spoke to them until the visit a few months ago, when he begged them to help him with his guilt. He stopped coming to the pacifist meetings, or sitting with them in school, or doing things with them at dinnertime and out of school. He became friends with Christian Henderson, and some other boys, and disappeared from their lives.
The proceeding year, when Serge was thirteen, an eleven year old boy named Teddy Sunturn, who had just moved up to Vale High, approached him and Hans.
Serge could remember Teddy’s exact words, “I’m afraid to fight,” he’d said. “I want to be a pacifist. I saw your posters, and I want to join your club.”
Serge could remember, also, the warm feeling those words had given him. Another friend, an ally, a third pacifist. He’d held out a thin, pale hand to shake Teddy’s sturdy, smaller one, then Hans had shaken hands too. He’d been so happy, Hans had been so happy, Teddy had been so happy; they felt that their club was expanding, that pacifism was really rearing its head in the world. A year later, he knew that he was wrong.
Teddy had joined the pacifist club through fear, not belief, as Serge had once pointed out. Kevin may have been, and admitted to being a coward, but Teddy was one too; a bigger one. And Teddy hadn’t known about Kevin, he hadn’t been warned.
Though Kevin had hurt them, he had, at least, done so by admitting that he was a traitor to their faces; Teddy, however, just disappeared. One pacifist meeting, they waited, impatiently, for his arrival, but it never came. Teddy never stepped into Hans’ shed ever again. Serge had suspected then; he had always been wary and suspicious since Kevin’s treachery.
He could remember how Kevin had said things, like he really meant them, and how his face had glowed in favour of their pacifistic deeds, as though he felt the same understandings in his heart as Hans and Serge did. Teddy had been just the same; just as taken in by himself, and his want to believe, but Serge, had still been suspicious. Then, when he vanished forever from their trust… Hans, of course, had been scared, and angry about Serge’s accusations. He wouldn’t talk about Kevin, about why Serge’s fears might be more than just fears, but Serge couldn’t blame him.
It hit him hard when Teddy left. Harder than ever, because it wasn’t the first time. He felt deceived, as did Serge. Teddy had hurt them both almost as much as Hans’ persecutors hurt him.
They didn’t see Teddy after that. He avoided them at school, and missed their pacifist meetings. The two boys hung on to frail hopes, willing Teddy to knock on Hans’ door, and come in, apologising for being ill, or going away without telling them.
Eventually, though, it became too much for Serge; he had to know.
Ducking under the police tape, Serge reappeared in the yard, again, behind the factories. The whistler had fallen silent. This was where he had come, and met Archie-Rios Burton, head of the fighters, and anti-pacifists. And this, here, Serge moved to the spot, was where he had stood, hearing the worst. He hadn’t known where to look; he couldn’t stand the sight of Archie’s grinning face, and he was determined to ignore the hut-thing, where, out of the corner of his eye, Serge could see Teddy watching them, guiltily.
“Teddy’s one of us, now,” Archie had explained. “He came to me, begging me to help him mend his pacifistic ways, to guard him from you and your kind. I don’t need to hit you now, Serge Grass, to show that we are superior. Teddy barely knows me, and yet, he traded in his two best friends to come under my protection. Think about it, dove.”
Had Serge not been to furiously bitter, and mentally pre-occupied, he might have found this insult, in kin with his physical appearance funny. Tall, thin, with almost-white blonde hair, dark eyes, shabby, feather-like clothing and bruising, similar to what the dove from Noah’s Ark must have suffered, after being sent out over the oceanic blizzards, searching for dry land. None of this occurred to Serge, however; he just stood, glaring at the triumphant Archie, feeling utterly defeated feeling that he had lost Teddy. Teddy… Teddy… the Teddy who had been his friend, the Teddy he had loved, was lost forever.
Now, Serge only hated Teddy.