The Patron Saint of Monsters

Prologue Part 2, An Experiment.

Trent Matheson resided at home with his parents, he thought himself to be quite the average eighteen year old male. He had all the average desires and needs, the only thing that he felt set him apart from his peers was sadness. It was an unbearable ache seated deep inside his chest, he was more than sad, he was heartbroken. Heartbroken by the thought of how things should have and could have been.

the heartbreak of expectation.

Sadness, pain, and heartache are the purest of feelings that a human can feel, but most humans were unaware of that fact; for they have a demon inside of them who spits lies into their bloodstreams, lies which are carried into their beating muscle called a heart. The lies poison and clog their organ, until they die unsatisfied and borderline broken. This demon is named "Hope." No other living organisms in all of the other galaxies are forced to suffer through hope, some of the Guardians believe that possibly the humans are being punished by their earth bound lives and that perhaps they are correct in their beliefs that Epeace is a better place for them; A safe haven with a name that at some point in "time" was lost in translation, or as others think, humans are just unintelligent semi sentient things that they are being forced to tend to.

Trent like all of the other humans was blissfully unaware of these things, as blissful one can be when also heartbroken, he was devastated to the glorious point in which hope dies and one feels as if they have nothing to live for, Trent was suffering from the purest form of heartbreak one can have inflicted upon them, not a heart broken by a lover, but one shattered and ripped and scared from life itself. The thoughts of what could have and should have been his life plagued him in a seemingly ceaseless manner. It was the cruelest of tortures and he was doing it to himself without being able to stop it. That it is where the beauty lie. Sadly, Trent was unable to see the beauty and on the twenty seven day of the twelfth month of his eighteenth year, (December 27th 1992) he placed his mouth around the barrel of one of his fathers' guns and pulled the trigger, the blast shatter most of his teeth and there was the pop of brains and such spurting through a rather small cranial hole and then the thud of his body hitting the shiny white tiling of his bathroom floor, the blood pooled around his carcass and spread to under the claw footed tub, his parents had to move shortly afterwards as the mother was convinced that she could still see bloodstains in the grout and the self inflicted death of ones' child is widely considered quite distressing on Earth.

A few moments after his death he was faced with the Guardians, the two particular Guardians who greeted him, Sydney and Hilden are the closest words to the proper pronunciation of their names in the English language that is fairly prevalent among Earthlings, were amidst a debate about happiness on earth, Sydney convinced that it was there and Hilden adamant that humans were simply incapable of feeling anything other than content, content which in his opinion was truly just a brighter shade of discontent, when Trent appeared looking as he had before the rather appearance ruining incident with a firearm, but still blatantly sad. Sydney looked deep into his eyes and tried her hardest to speak to him in words that he was able to comprehend, "You caused your own death, did you not?" She stammered.

Trent was shocked to see angels because he had been an avid atheist in life and was fairly certain that suicide cases did not get to languidly lay around Heaven in their afterlife but was willing to take such an existence, but he sheepishly shrugged and nodded his head in a way that resembled a child, while gazing down at his thumbs.

"Because you so severely lacked happiness?" Hilden asked in an accidentally booming voice, speaking an Earth language instead of singing in his native tongue was quite difficult and awkward even.

"Yes." Trent whispered, almost ashamed of his sadness but not regretting his action.

"Then you shall return to Earth, and you shall stay in the place there that you once lived, and you will exist once more but not be alive, and it shall be your duty to make one of the new human creatures who lives there happy. You will be bound to a child. You will accompany her everywhere for as long as she shall life." Sydney stuttered but eventually said.

"Is that a punishment?" Trent questioned.

"No," Hilden answered, "It is a test to see if happiness can be achieved by a human." And before Trent could respond he was back in the house of Meadowlark lane that he had been raised in, in the room that he had called his except that the room was different. It was without all of the decorations and knickknacks that had made his room his, it was barren lacking even a bed. Unbeknownst to him at that moment, it was many minutes after the time of his death, it was the month known to the Earthlings as "April" on its third day, in the year coming directly after his eighteenth year of existence (April 3rd 1993)