Love

    "So why'd you do it, Yamato? What did she ever do to you to deserve that, hm?" the burly man asked, putting out his cigarette on the solid metal table. Oscar silently looked up at the one way glass from his hunched position, his reflection very telling of his stress levels. His usually neat hair was messy, his eyes ornamented with dark bags, and his wrists growing increasingly sore from the handcuffs. He sloppily slouched back down in the uncomfortable chair, not wanting to answer such a stupid question. The man, probably feeling ignored, in one swipe with his hammy foot kicked Oscar's chair from out below him, resulting in him colliding with the floor with a resounding "thud". The worst part was he couldn't even rub the pain in his bottom away.
     "Don't ignore me Yamato! Is that what you like doing when someone says something you don't like? Do you ignore them?? Did you ignore that girl?" the man bellowed.
     "Stop it," Oscar grumbled, feeling his eyes water up.
     "When she screamed and yelled when you took her from her home, did you ignore her then too?" he inquired.
     "Please, stop it," Oscar pleaded, hunching up into a ball.
     "When she begged you for days to let her out of that cage because she had friends, family, and people she loved, did you ignore her all of those times as well?" the man roared.
     "No no no! She didn't need them! I would've given her enough love to make up for all of them!" Oscar blurted out, finally breaking down into tears. The man looked at him, tsking before lighting up another cigarette.
     "If that's what you do to people you love, I'd hate to see what happens to those you hate."
     Oscar looked up at him, fawn skin test streaked and coffee brown eyes puffy and red.
     "The only person I hate is myself," he quivered, choking up again and slouching in the wall behind him. Normally he'd be absolutely embarrassed for crying in front of anyone, never mind the top detective in their district, Detective Johnson, but at that moment in time he just couldn't help it. He missed her dearly, and he was sure the feeling would never go away. To work so hard to get something, only to have it taken away was absolutely soul crushing, and they had just sucked his out of his body. Now he was where he began before he met her: an empty carcass of a human being. And that was how he'd remain, until they gave her back.
     "Well, there's no point in crying now. You've already been apprehended. All of the evidence points to you, Oscar Yamato. Mine as well just man up and confess," he suggested, once again putting out his cigarette.
Man up? I am no man. I'm nothing, Oscar thought. Not wanting to inhale too deeply because of the stench of the smoke, he calmed down enough to be able to form a coherent sentence.
     "I didn't mean to hurt her. I... I just wanted to protect her," he explained, sitting with his legs folded and staring at his knee caps.
     "So what? You wanted to be a knight in shinin' armor o' sumpthin??" Johnson scoffed, folding his hairy arms over his chest. Yes, that was exactly what he wanted to do. Her curly red locks, freckled face, and lime green eyes - he wanted to protect all of it. By any means necessary.
     "So how did you and Miss O'Reilly meet?" Detective Johnson asked, sitting down and offering Oscar his back. He refused.
     "She was a classmate of mine. I talked to her in fifth period," he replied. But she was much more than just a classmate, in his mind at least. He was a loner, but he never minded that much. Living by himself with no friends didn't help with his social inadequacies either, and being awfully shy, people either left him alone or didn't notice him all together. But she did. And he loved her for it.
     "Can I borrow your pencil, Oscar?" she had asked politely. That was the first time anybody had addressed him directly by his name, which caught him off guard, even more considering they had never spoken before. Silently handing it over, he watched her left hand scribble her name on the paper.
     "Melrose O'Reily?" he asked aloud unintentionally. She shot him a friendly smile, and he swore his heart fluttered like a moth caught in a lamp cover.
"Yep! That's me alright!" she chirped.
"And I instantly knew she was a blessing," Oscar sighed happily.
     "So that's when you started stalking her?" Johnson asked, rudely interrupting Oscar's flashback.
     "I wasn't stalking her. I was just researching things about her so I could be more prepared in our conversations. Just like... studying for a test," he corrected, twiddling his thumbs as he felt his cheeks burn.
     "Stalking, research. Potato potato. Then what?" Johnson asked.
     "Nothing," Oscar replied. "We just had fun times." And that was true. He always had fun when he was even around her. He couldn't remember a time he had been happy if it wasn't spent with her. She was nice, caring, and pleasant to be around, which weren't words he could use to describe anybody else. He generally loathed humans, but she was an exception most definitely.
     "Sure I'll be your friend! You didn't need to bring flowers though! That's so formal, haha," she commented, thanking him and wrapping the flowers snugly in her sweater. "I'll put these in a vase and keep them safe, okay?"
     "But you wanted to be more than friends, didn't you?" the detective assumed, scratching the bald spot on his head.
     "Of course I did. She was, and still is, the only thing that's special to me. I wanted to settle down, and have a family with her," Oscar informed, twiddling his thumbs more furiously.
     "Is that because you didn't have a family Oscar?" the detective inquired.
     "I don't want to talk about it," Oscar quickly spat out. The detective silently smirked. He had Oscar right where he wanted him. Reaching into a box on the left side of his chair, he fumbled around for a bit before pulling out a pale blue file.
     "Welp, that's fine. You don't have to. This file will do all the talking," he sing-songed before opening its contents.
    "Don't do this," Oscar begged. "I'm already telling you everything."
    "I wonder how many times that girl pleaded with you," the detective wondered aloud, and began to read the paper.
    "Subject name, Oscar Yamato. Case #200747. Subject found with a broken left ankle, lacerations all over feet and back, burn marks on fingers, and bruising on both wrists," he read aloud.
    "Stop it!" Oscar exclaimed, hunching back up into a ball and trying his best to cover his ears. Unfortunately for him, that was nearly impossible with his handcuffs.
    "New open wounds over old scars. Multiple years of abuse suspected," he continued, despite Oscar's constant pleads to cease the reading. Oscar desperately tried to find anything to take his mind off of memories that began to resurface, and to no surprise to him, found himself thinking once more about Melrose.
    "So where are your parents?" she inquired, fluttering her eyes as a way to convince him to answer the question this time. Apparently she had caught on to his constant maneuvering around the question, which he wasn't surprised by at all. She was a smart and observant girl alright, but he was smarter.
    "They're back in my home country of Japan. I came here on an exchange program, remember?"
    "Oh yeah! You did mention the exchange program. It's just you always seemed to dodge that particular question is all," she mentioned. He shot her gentle smile.
    'You silly girl!" And then they both laughed.       

He laughed  as if nothing was wrong. Laughed as if his parents didn't have the temper of a wild boar. Laughed as if he wouldn't get beat for spilling milk because they didn't have the money to waste food. Laughed as if he wouldn't get burned when he wrote his kanji incorrectly. Laughed as if they wouldn't hang him from the ceiling like a disco ball and whip him until he sung his ABC's correctly. Laughed as if they never made him stand outside in the rain until he collapsed. Laughed as if he had never found their lifeless bodies, them taking their own life as the result of becoming overwhelmed with fear and not wanting to be arrested in a foreign country. Because such things did not matter at all, when he was with Melrose.

Melrose, Melrose, Melrose Melrose Melrose, he made himself think, until finally Detective Johnson had finished reading the file, and threw it down on the table with a plop.
    "Is that why you were so desperate for a family. Yamato? Is that why you felt the need to force one out of her?"
    "I wasn't forcing her!" Oscar burst out, and felt his eyes begin to water up again. "I was just helping her realize how good a life together with me would be!" he defended. And he believed that whole heartedly too.
    "Do you think I wanted to have to bind her up and put her in some cage?! Like some sort of animal?" he spat, peering at the detective with hate filled eyes. "You wouldn't understand my love for her!"
    "I guess it's not your fault fo' not knowing this, but what you did to her was not love. It was controlling, manipulative, and deceitful. It's was anything but love," Detective Johnson explained. But Oscar knew better than to listen to him. He had given her all of his love! She's the one who betrayed him. She was the one that didn't understand love.
    "Oh, but Oscar, I don't have those types of feelings for you. I'm sorry, but you're one of my best friends. I hope it stays that way," she said, giving him one of her lovely soft smiles. Except this time it wasn't lovely. It was condescending, patronizing, and mocking him. It said, "you'll never get love from me or anyone; you don't deserve it, just like your parents said." And he hated it.
    "I used the safest drugs on her I could get," he admitted, slinking down into the palm of his hands. "I wrapped her in my softest blanket, and made sure to drive down the smoothest road. The cabin was the best cabin I could afford, and even when she kept running away, I made her cage as comfortable as I could, with teddy bears and books and everything. She didn't feel a thing."
    "And neither did you, Oscar Yamato. Neither did you." And with that, Oscar was left in the interrogation room all by himself, left there to ponder why his love could never be reciprocated.

(A/N: This is a short story I wrote for my honors LA class. Everyone loved it, and since I haven't updated anything in like a year, I decided I'd post it here for others to possibly enjoy.  And before you ask, no, I have no idea what's my deal with mentally unstable Japanese school boys in my story.  ┐('～' )┌ )