The Patron Saint of Monsters

Chapter Eleven Part Four

"Well I hate him." Ian bitterly screamed in reply, as if his feelings actually mattered to anyone in the room aside from him.

"I love Trent. I love him. I truly do, but I hate him too Ian. I hate his rotted guts or whatever the hell they are because I know, I can feel it coursing through my veins that what's inside of him is nothing like what's inside of me. But I need him in me nonetheless. And beyond even that, no matter what I do he's inside of me. I couldn't even that boy out if I tried, and I'm never going to try because I don't want to. I can't be bothered to care about morality. It's total depravity what's between Trent and I. It's strange I'm aware, trust me I get it. I'm choosing to give in to it all." Oleander replied with a voice that almost resembled a shrug of slight shoulders. Her admissions were sobering and she could not stop her mouth from airing her thoughts of cold clarity.  

"I hate him for how much I love him and I hate me too for it because I should love you I should love me. Trent should not encompass everything in my life, he should not be the sole object of my desires and affections but he is. It's all Trent and anything that isn't him is for him. I would choose him over anything. Every time. Trent. Trent. Trent. Trent. I've said his name so many glorious times now that the word should have lost all meaning, because that's what happens to all the other words. Nothing means anything if you say it too much. But I could never utter another word besides his name for the rest of my life and it would still make me shake with need and want and love. His name tastes better than happiness. Your name is acrid on my tongue, like pure salt or maybe too much sweetness, sweet to the point where it stops being what it is and becomes the opposite. Your name burns me and his soothes me, yet then again his burns me as well. I've just grown addicted to that sting. Ian," Oleander's voice cracked, "it's like your fingertips pour hatred into me with each careful caress. At first you made me careless but now when your laying hands on me even in the kindest of ways I hate you for it. I want to scream and cry. I want shove you off of me and then beat you to death, I want to hurt you and then bash my head on the corner of my nightstand. And that's not normal or good or right. But I can't keep hiding and lying about it anymore because hurting you emotionally isn't enough anymore and I'm scared that if you ever touch me again I'll go crazy." 

Ian deep brown eyes shown with a teary darkness that Oleander had never before witnessed. "You are already crazy Oleander."

"Maybe." Oleander said so slowly that it turned the response into two words, it was as if confessing everything she had been smothering within her thoughts had caused molasses to stick her tongue to the roof of her mouth and weigh down her limbs. She could have sworn that even her brains' synapses had been firing at a softer pace. "But I think that perhaps that's what real love does to you. It ruins your life and drives you insane. It's a lot like hate you know and equal and opposite reactions. Physics and shit, my love for Trent and my disdain for you have caused all the same responses and consequences." Oleander sat down on her large bed as if to signal that the argumentative conversation was reaching a cease. Ian turned and stormed out with the sad sounds of his heartbreak lightly trailing behind him. In the seconds hesitation before Ian had moved to face the door, Oleander had almost his swollen heart crawling up his heart, replacing his Adams' apple. She silently wished to herself that she had possessed the gall to throw a punch into the esophagus trapped heart she knew she had just broken. With each of Ian’s exiting steps reverberating throughout the house Oleander became less and less aware of her surroundings. It began to feel as if she were floating, even though she was certain that all she had done was lay her back on her bed. She believed that she had seen the three girls she had once called friends slowly walk away, as she thought back on her the mental images morphed into less blurred pictures. Rebecca walking with her head down as Valerie aided in keeping her on her feet and Trina trailing behind like before all of the things that had altered them so severely. Oleander knew deep within her that the girls she had never really much cared for were now just burdens. Hurdles in her thorny path that led to being with Trent. Everything was a hurdle, she wished her existence was more similar to his as she drifted off to sleep with his arm lazily strewn over her.

Oleander remembered the six month period in which she spent the majority of her days draped across her large bed, languish and in anguish, in her room blaring morose nineteen eighties English rock bands wishing that it rained more often in their drearily idyllic and perfect little town. She thought heavily about those days as she watched droplets of rain bash against her bedroom window. She was singing along to her stereo about heavenly ways to die whilst Rebecca sat crossed legged next to her immobile body, towering over her in an attempt to explain why getting rid of Trent was the right thing to do. Valerie and Trina had decided not to accompany her.

"You also think that being with Ian is the right thing to do, so excuse me if I take issue with your opinions of righteousness." Oleander murmured.

“Things with Ian are lot easier than being bang mates with the monster under your bed.” Rebecca reminded her.

“Easy does mean it’s better and it doesn’t make it right. It’s just easier. It would have been easier to just leave you alone while you were in the midst of your little breakdown. It would have been easier to let the cops have you when you murdered Izzy but I didn’t do the easy thing, I did right by you.” Oleander replied angrily. “Everyone always acts like it isn’t the right thing to do unless it’s approved by moral majority or whatever. Screw that. I did what was right by you and now I’m going to do what’s right by me, even though in all reality it doesn’t matter. I said so last night, I don’t care about right or wrong or morality. I care about Trent. I care about him so damn much that it has just sucked everything else right out of me. There is no more room in my body for me to care about anything except him.”

“Well right by me wasn’t right by Izzy, and right by you isn’t right by anyone. It isn’t even right by you. And whatever none of that with Iz was my fault. Trent was what drove me crazy! He snuck into my room and warped my brain. I remember it.” Rebecca responded.

“He didn’t. You were insane! Can you really trust what you remember?” Oleander said defended Trent.

Rebecca rubbed her hands over her arms nervously, “Where is he?”

“Downstairs don’t worry about it.” Oleander hissed. “He isn’t going to hurt you so stop acting like it! Stop acting so scared of everything, you’ve been like a child all day and it repulses me. I want to slap the scared right out of you.”

“You know what I remember? I remember him driving me crazy and I remember killing Izzy. I remember wanting to devour your brain and your heart to absorb your power, I wanted to do that to the whole group, Ian included but I also wanted to peel off your skin and consume your sinned flesh so that my stomach acid could wash over it and erode away the taint of Trent. I wanted to purify you.” Rebecca whispered back with a palpable shame.

Oleander was silent in thought for the first few following seconds before she answered the confession with, “I wish that you would have.” Rebecca is stunned silent for she was unable to fathom a reason as to why Oleander would wish something like that had happened. Rebecca’s descent into madness had been so sudden and so blatant that she did not know how to recognize the change that had occurred in all the others. Rebecca still saw everyone for who they once were, she had not yet noticed that Trina had grown bolder, or that Valerie had learned to stop seeking unattainable perfection. She recognized that Ian would be sadder, but she was blind to the darkness that was enveloping the insides of Oleander.