The Patron Saint of Monsters

Prologue Part Six, Monsters

The Guardians remember every single moment they have ever experienced, they rarely use their memories has they lack sentimental attachments, but when they need to remember something they can easily do so. Humans cannot recall with such ease, but they can be triggered. Sights, sounds, and smells and cause a human to feel as if they have traveled back into a moment of their past, or to relive an emotion. Trent emanated a peculiar smell that was quite unlike the putrid odors that true Human beings exude. It was a smell similar to burning sage with an undertone of clover, it was the scent that would coat Oleander Jameson’s baby blankets and one that she would find herself comfortingly enveloped in, for Oleander it was the fragrance that she would associate safety and security. Trent was a permanent fixture in the life of the six year old girl, he was always around. Protecting her and keeping her company, he never once refused to attend one of her tea parties and he never minded reading stories to her in a late night whisper when it was far beyond her bedtime. She was not entirely sure as to why no one but her could see Trent, who was a tall and thin boy with dark hair that was slightly too long by conventional standards and ways always in oversized sweaters with threadbare spots and distressed jeans that were slung a tad too low.  

Oleander’s parents referred to Trent as her “imaginary companion” but she had been reassured by Trent that he was quite real and was not going to abandon her the way that actual imaginary companions did. Trent was going to be there forever. Oleander with the innocence and gullibility that came along with childhood believed him.

Trent adored Oleander, the moment he first saw her which was in the hospital the moment she had been delivered even though she was coated in vernix and producing an obnoxiously high pitched wail, he loved her and he knew that there was nothing more he wanted than to keep her happy. Trent speculated that maybe Oleander was why he never once regretted his death, even before he had been aware of how much he would care for his charge  he had never questioned his actions. He had always just felt unreasonably content with his choices. 

Trent could not explain his feelings toward the small girl, he wasn’t sure why but he felt adamant that he was the only one aware of what was best for her. He considered her parents to be neglectful, he was not sure how the girl would have survived if it were not for him, he often prepared the girl food and he was the only one who paid her any attention and spent any notable amount of time with her. He felt his animosity towards her parents was totally justified, especially when they began to attempt to persuade their doctor to abandon her overly-imaginative ways in favor for more “normal” and socially acceptable things, like tea parties and play dates with actual children and not with invisible persons who may or may not be real. 

It was on summers’ night when Trent became so infuriated with the two elder Jameson’s  that he decided that they had to be punished. He was going to teach them a lesson for trying to separate Oleander from him, and for trying to fill her head with thoughts of him not existing. Oleander was asleep in her bed when Trent stood up from the chair facing her bed that he always sat in, and he silently padded across the hardwood floors, and opened her door and crept out of her room and into her parents’. 

Trent knew that all he had to do was project himself in a different form and to awaken the slumbering Jameson’s and to tell them that the needed to stop trying to convince their daughter to grow up. He knew that if he did everything properly they would simply think that they had each had a nightmare and subconsciously cease their unwanted behaviors. However, poor Trent did not realize that Oleander was so accustomed to his watching her sleep that the moment she felt his gaze leave her sleeping form, she had awoken. She had quietly followed Trent into her parents’ room and she watched as he shifted from the young man she had known into a hideous monster, Oleander let out a piercing scream and her parents sat up immediately, her father growling for her to go back to bed in her room and her mother saying that she had just had a nightmare and that whatever it was that had frightened her hadn’t been real. Oleander ran back to her room and hid under the blankets, she refused to uncover herself even though Trent pleaded tearfully apologizing for scaring her, but Oleander was confused and scared, she didn’t know what to believe but she knew that she certainly no longer trusted her faithful companion, and that was when Trent went from her beloved and possibly imaginary companion to the monster beneath her bed.