Our Love Is Tainted

Chapter 6: Social Problems

I sit quietly in my room with my laptop, scrolling through Facebook. I don't know what's gotten over me, I swore to myself that I wouldn't ever come back to this, but boredom led to it all. No doubt, most people think someone has hacked my account, they all think I'm still 'running away' with my younger brother. That was a year and eight months ago, I think so anyway, you lose track when you're dead. I stare at the many different websites, all titled with 'Help Find Violet Harmon', surprised by the number of people that are still trying to find me across the country, too bad they're looking in the wrongs places. Hell, Leah, my frenemy, is looking for me, and she hated me, with an absolute passion. Even if they were to find my body, they would still look for Jeffrey, but they would give up eventually, that's the thing about authorities, they always give up at some point. That's when I begin to look up Tate, just to see if he had an account right before he died, but that's when it hits me, he died in Nineteen-Ninety-Four, Facebook didn't exist until Two-Thousand-And-Four. But something does appear, something I should have expected.

A Facebook page, with a disgusting title, stares at me innocently, right in my eyes. 'Tate Langdon, The Monster Who Massacred Westfield High In 1994', the title makes me feel sick, both in the heart and the stomach. Tate isn't a monster, what he did wasn't right, and I treated him like absolute shit for the things he has done. But after learning the truth about him, the life he had to live, the things he had to deal with, the fact that he has a split personality that makes him do things he doesn't remember doing, you can see the justification of his actions. His life, has been full of death since the beginning; Moira told me Constance murdered both her and Tate's father, who he hardly knew at all, Larry mercilessly murdered sweet and beautiful Beau, the loss of Tate's innocent brother must've driven him to the point of that day, and Adelaide, she accidentally killed herself in the car accident, which is something that I'm sure completely destroyed Tate. All three of those deaths, he doesn't speak about them, ever. In fact, unless he's at the point of another heartbreak, he doesn't speak about any deaths that have occurred in his life, not even the deaths he caused. The thing about Tate Langdon is, he's always been broken, always tortured by his mother from a young age, the drug abuse, his entire life has been a freak show. And this Facebook page, exploits the truth, and moulds Tate's soft personality into what is depicted as a devil, a merciless killer, when all along, he was suffering, Taint, was the one in control.

The anger begins to sink in, and I begin to enter the message side of the Facebook page, and I begin to type, type like I never have before in my entire life. The hate in my writing is consuming, I can't stop myself from writing the nastiest words, the angriest sentences, and eventually, the cruellest paragraphs. I'm enraged, to the point of nearly crushing the whole laptop with my ghostly strength, and breaking my teeth as they grind together aggressively. That's when I look at the message, admiring how creative my, naughty, language can be, I've never used curse words I way I did in those paragraphs, but that's when I begin to have a long and hard think about what may happen if I decide to send this message. I'm dead, well, I'm classified as missing, and if a missing seventeen-year-old girl sends a very aggressive message to a page about a boy who killed students in Nineteen-Ninety-Four. It makes no sense, and better yet, if they track the message back here, sure, they won't find me, but they will find all the nice stuff we've had delivered here last Halloween. I back away from the laptop, turning it off in a second and slamming the screen down, any harder, and the screen would have smashed to a thousand pieces. Thank god I just did what I did, because permanently deleting the message I almost sent, felt like less weight was being put on my shoulders.

"Violet," a soft voice says from behind the door, almost whispering.
Is that Tate?! No way, it can't be, can it? I fling myself off of my bed and head straight towards the door, nearly falling over the mess Jeffrey made when he was playing in here. I stop at the door, wondering if I'm just hallucinating, but I can't be, I heard it quite clearly. Please be Tate, please be Tate, please be Tate, please be fucking Tate. I open the door, seeing nothing, nothing at all, already feeling the amount of disappointment literally draining from my eyes. I turn the corner, seeing it, not what I want, but certainly something interesting. The attic entrance is swung down, allowing the perfect entrance, but who opened it? Is this some joke Patrick might be committing himself to, he certainly has a terrible sense of humour. But curiosity gets the best of me, and I slowly walk towards the unknown, wondering who or what could be the one hiding in the darkness, waiting for me. And the same thought does not leave my mind, not even in the slightest, please be Tate, please be my Tate.

I come across the direct entrance to the attic, and stare up into the shadowy abyss, wondering if Tate could be staring back at me. As scary as that sounds, I'm comfortable with it, because it's him, and I know he won't hurt me, Tate Langdon would never lay a hand on me. I take the first step up, noticing the chills down my spine, but I keep going, no matter what, if it is Tate, I need to see him. I rush up the attic steps, turning on the torch on my phone, lighting up the claustrophobic attic to its former glory. But something about this clearly isn't right, and that is; no Beau. People have claimed that he hasn't been seen in a long time since my dad told Tate to leave, Beau has ceased to exist. I wonder what happened to him, but I have a feeling Tate knows if only I could actually ask him. My whole body finally reaches the attic, and I feel like all of my energy has been wasted, because suddenly, it's silent; no Tate, no sign of the voice, nothing. The truth really does hurt, the fact that I have been the hallucinating the whole time, makes me collapse to the ground, in an uncomfortable amount of tears. I haven't cried like this before, even through all of the heartbreak, this feels different, like my heart was literally torn out of my god damn chest. Tears flow out of me like a river, which feels like the worst thing in this world. That's when my thoughts are broken by the sound of something moving in the darkness, which makes me nearly jump out of my skin.

I shine my torch over at a certain corner of the attic, but there's nothing, that's when the notice the attic window and the amount of moonlight that begins to shine through it. In a flash, its there, he's there, not who I expected, and definitely not who I wanted to be in my presence on this very night. Thaddeus, the Infantata, sits perched in the moonlight from the window, gnarling and snarling like a rabid animal. I try to shine my phone torch on him, but the battery runs out, making me want to scream, I haven't been this close to the Infantata since Leah's traumatic experience with it, and I never planned on doing that again. But here he, or it is, staring right into my god damn eyes, licking its very dry-looking lips, which gives me the idea that it hasn't fed in a long time. Ghosts can't die, but we can still bleed, so, I'm guessing, he wants me to be his next meal. It begins scattering around, directly at me, like a dog with no leash. I scream as loud as I can, using my legs to kick him to the ground, trying to scurry to the attic exit, but that's when I feel the cold claws jag into my leg. Tears flow down my eyes again, knowing that fear is only the first stage of what's about to happen, I'm about to be feasted on by Thaddeus, and nobody can help me.