***
Nothing mattered.
“You’re a liar and killer, and you’re manipulating me!” I finally snapped at him. “I don’t believe you! This must be some kind of cruel trick!”
Tears watered in my eyes.
“Use my mom’s voice, my First Mother’s voice? Good trick, Ollie, really great job!”
“This isn’t some stupid trick, you stupid idiot!” he shouted cruelly.
It had been some time since he’d openly mocked me like this.
“This is real! This is what you are!”
I noticed he said “what” instead of “who.”
“So I’m just special enough to make me different, huh?” I asked, crossing my arms.
Ollie scowled that hateful scowl he had when he’d first arrived – and it broke my heart because, like before, it was suddenly directed at me.
“You think I’m happy about this?” I asked him tearfully. “That this is a good thing?”
“It’s not a good thing,” he snapped. “Your existence is…you are an abomination. All the death that’s followed you? That is on you.”
And I had to look away from that scowl now. It had grown in intensity so much that I barely recognized him, and I definitely didn’t recognize that harsh tone. Even at the beginning, he had never used it on me. He spoke to me like I was the dirtiest thing in the world.
And it hurt so bad.
I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off of my fingers then and how much they hadn’t told me in the years I had been alive. Or was I even alive? Could everything have been a lie? Could I even die? I could feel pain, but I hadn’t died where I probably should have. It made me wonder and cry a little bit. I should have died. I deserved to die. I wished I could die in that moment. The only people that had ever loved me were in the Kingdom of Heaven. I bit my lip so hard tears fell for it.
“I don’t want to be around you anymore,” I whispered, incapable of stopping the tears.
“Too bad,” he shot back. “I think that this is a conversation that we finally need to have!”
“We do? Or you do?”
I looked in his eyes now, and an unfamiliar slushy liquid began to churn from the bottom of me that very similar to wrath. If he made me ache, I wanted him to watch it eat at me. I wanted him to see the things he made me feel.
“Bad People are killers,” I whispered to him. “They’re monsters.”
“Yes,” he snarled.
“And I am a monster.”
“You are an abomination!”
The look in his eyes was oh so telling.
“You blame me for your problems?” I shouted. “Me? I did not even know of this until you just told me! How long have you known? Months? Longer? Did you know that I was here? Did you come here to kill me specifically?”
“I can blame you for whatever I want!” he shouted back. “You’re wrong! Everything about you is wrong! You live here and you shouldn’t! You help and you shouldn’t! You protect and smile and laugh when you shouldn’t!”
“My mother and father lied to get me here!” I shrieked. “My name isn’t even real!”
A sense of loss inundated me.
“I don’t want to hear about how wrong I am – or special! I’m normal!”
“No, you’re not!”
“Yes, I am!” I protested weakly.
“NO!” he roared. “You will never be normal!”
“I want to be!” I shouted, covering my ears. “I don’t want to be special! I want to be normal! I want to be human!”
“Shut up!” Ollie shouted.
“I have heard and felt and noticed by entire life how different and special I am! Why can’t I be? Why not? Why?”
Anger grew at my center, and I turned up to him.
“Because of you!” I shouted.
“ME?” he shrieked, shoving me hard.
“Yeah, you! Why do you want me to be so unhappy?”
He opened his mouth to say something, but he hesitated now, unsure.
“You are…” Hatred powered me, suddenly. “You are a catalyst for everything! What did I do to you? Or is it just because of the way I am that you can’t even look at me right?”
He didn’t want to answer.
“I don’t need to answer this question!” he said dismissively, waving his hand.
“Yes, you do!” I shouted at him. “LOOK AT ME!”
He did.
“What do you want to hear?” he shouted. “That I prefer to cause you pain? That I enjoy it when you cry? That I take pleasure every single time you start to bleed? Because I do!”
This wounded me.
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why do you feel like that? Why is this your problem? So I’m a Deviant! So what? What does it matter to you? It isn’t like I chose it! Will you hate me just for that?”
“What are you talking about?” he asked with a glare.
His voice sounded angry and wary, but I knew he was ready and gearing for a fight. I would sure as hell give him one.
“I think you know what I’m talking about, Ollie.”
The tears that fell from my eyes burned my skin, and I clenched my fists to prevent them from causing him harm.
“No, I really don’t,” he said evasively.
“What are you hiding from?” I shouted. “What aren’t you telling me? I’m a Deviant! Great! But what does that make you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Or is it common to practice bigotry in your land?” I continued, as if I hadn’t heard him. “Maybe it is. Maybe you hate me just because you’re attracted to me. Maybe you’re not even attracted to me. Maybe I’m just blind.”
“Shut up!”
“Why am I afraid of you, Ollie?” I asked him plaintively now. The anger had fled. “Why do you want me to be afraid? Why can’t you even look at me?”
He seemed breathless.
“I –”
“Why do you hate me, Ollie?” I demanded an answer. “Why?”
“Stop interrogating me – I don’t need this…”
He tried to turn away but I grabbed his wrist. He moved his eyes dangerously down to my hand. The still was venomous, silent in the most satisfying way.
“Let – go – of – me,” he ordered, more forcefully than I had ever heard him.
“What are you gonna do, Ollie? Break my arm?”
I pushed him a little. It felt good to push him, I realized.
“I’m considering it!” he shouted. “What makes you think you have the right to question anything I do? You’ve killed loads of people – Evergreen, Skate, whoever the hell your aunt is, that girl Fade! You think you have a right to question me? To investigate? Not everyone gets to be the plucky girl who endures through incredible circumstances! Some people really are just bad!”
“Oh?” I taunted. “You mean like you?”
This did it. Something in his eyes finally fell away, and a monster unlike any I had ever seen came forth, willing and able to drive me into the ground.