The Shocking Truth Book 1
Copyright© 2025 by somethin fishy
Chapter 1
1 August
Alexander looked up at the sky and sighed. It looked like it would be a wet day, and he was being dragged to the pool for his sister’s birthday party. Despite being four years younger and a foot shorter, his father always forced Alexander to go out with his sister to keep an eye on her.
As one can imagine, neither sibling liked this at all. Elizabeth, Alexander’s sister, strongly preferred not having a pesky little brother spying on her. Alexander hated the almost constant abuse he had to endure, not only from Elizabeth but also from her rich, spoiled friends. Both siblings understood why their father had done what he did. Elizabeth was irresponsible, but was the apple in her father’s eye, while Alexander was irrelevant and disposable. In other words, they were as opposite as two people could be.
What made matters even worse for Alexander was that everyone strongly suspected he wasn’t his father’s son. While Tom Armstrong had black hair and brown eyes, Alexander had straw blond hair, blue eyes, and faint freckles across his face.
If Alex’s day couldn’t get any worse, he knew Elizabeth’s friends would be at the pool, meaning everyone would see how small he was. It was sure to get him plenty of verbal abuse and probably some physical abuse as well. At one time, Alex would have tried to fight back, but all that got him was an ass-kicking from the kids and a few hours of his mother and father lecturing him, telling him he had to behave and that fighting was bad.
Alex’s parents were extreme pacifists when it came to physical violence. Erin, Alex’s mother, pounded into his head that physical violence was a result of toxic masculinity. Since Alex was a white male, he was automatically assumed to be guilty. He had to constantly apologize and make his presence smaller while ensuring everyone around him who was “disadvantaged” had the upper hand over him. It didn’t matter when his sister was the one who caused most of the physical abuse Alex suffered. She was female, so if she said she didn’t do it, she didn’t do it.
By the time Alex was eight, he had learned to never fight back and to swallow his anger, which naturally led to a deep reservoir of resentment. After all, despite anger being a natural human emotion, Erin claimed it was a form of toxic masculinity. Tom backed up everything Erin said. He was so high up in his ivory tower that he needed a high-powered spy satellite to even see the ground.
Alex trudged out of the house wearing his trunks and a T-shirt. Under his trunks, he ensured he wore underwear because it was inevitable that someone, probably Elizabeth, would pull his trunks down. Of course, Elizabeth would complain to their mother that Alex was flashing everyone, and she would accuse Alex of being a sick pervert like every other male on the planet.
When they got to the pool, Alex was horrified when he saw the sheer number of his sister’s friends in attendance. That meant the abuse he would be subjected to would be far worse than usual. To make things worse, this was the first party where Elizabeth was allowed to invite boys, and she was very popular among both boys and girls in school, in bed, and in the back seat of cars.
Alex was further shocked when he arrived at the pool and discovered that his mother and father would be in attendance. Of course, that didn’t mean the abuse would lessen since Tom would be chasing barely nubile girls while Erin would be after some of the parents in attendance, since Elizabeth went to a private school where many high-ranking politicians, lawyers, and successful businesspeople sent their children. Erin chased them for the same reason Tom chased the girls; both had fetishes and wanted to fulfill them. It didn’t matter if they were married or not.
Alex suspected he was the result of one of his mother’s successful power pursuits. While his father was attracted to young teenagers, especially when he was their first, his mother took pleasure in her partner’s power. It didn’t matter if the person was male, female, or anything in between; Erin was attracted to them if they had political power.
Walking into the pool room, Alex ducked behind some other people to escape. There were times when his small size was an advantage. By looking like he knew where he was going, Alex reached another set of doors and slipped out. Alex kept going until he found an unlocked door and entered a storage room where he could hide.
There, he found a corner behind a mop bucket and slid down the wall until he sat on the floor, where he could wrap his arms around his knees. Finally feeling secure, Alex began sobbing. His sister had all the advantages in life. She attended an elite private school, while he attended the state’s worst public school. She attended parties and was friends with everyone. He never had a party and doubted his parents even knew how old he was. When Elizabeth went out, she was given plenty of money, and Alex had to “watch” over her; after all, he was a male, and that was his job, at least according to his father. While watching Elizabeth, Alex was expected to pay for everything the two of them bought with what little money he had. Again, the male paid for things, even though Tom seldom bought Erin anything.
This party was the last straw. He had plans to watch a live science seminar and had already paid for access. Now he couldn’t enjoy it, was broke, and forgotten. The tears streamed down his face as Alex wondered if anyone would miss him if he ended his life. It was not like his family would care, and he had no friends at school. Almost the entire school was black, and he was the only white face in the crowd. Even the few Hispanics ignored him while the rest of the students and faculty went out of their way to make his life miserable.
He couldn’t report the abuse at school because the one time he tried, his mother spent three hours calling out his “racist behavior” and explaining in excruciating detail why he was to blame for everyone’s behavior at school. After Erin was done, Tom piled on, accusing Alex of embarrassing him with his racist behavior. Alex was confused. He had never held anyone in slavery and had tried to treat everyone with respect. Why was he guilty?
Alex looked around the storeroom. There were enough chemicals to make killing himself easy. Alex grabbed a bottle of bleach and looked at it with a sigh. ‘If I kill myself here, then someone innocent will have to clean up, and my family will get away with everything,’ he thought. Then Alex had an evil idea. He would kill himself at home and ensure he died on the carpet his mother loved so much.
Before committing suicide, he would send some anonymous emails. The FBI would learn everything she helped her very wealthy clients hide. The university would learn of his father banging underage girls, and if there were any doubt, Alex would include pictures. To ensure the university did something, the pictures would also be sent to all the girls’ parents. Several of whom nobody in their right mind would anger. With their parents going to prison, Elizabeth would be in foster care, but that wasn’t good enough. Alex planned to send pictures of Elizabeth having sex with several of her friends’ fathers and her doing lines of drugs to everyone in her address book.