Killer Love

He was sitting on Mama’s front porch the first time I came home crying. I had just finished high school and was a few weeks into my new job. Girls can be so cruel to those they don’t know. They can make you feel like you’re nothing more than scum. They made comments about my parents, who were both gone by the way, said I was the most disgusting thing they had ever seen and would have ran just like my parents.

It didn’t hurt so much because my parents and I were never that close. It hurt more that they knew nothing about me but were so quick to judge by what they heard. I loved that about Azrael. He never judged me even when I was a pitiful mess and had every right to. He just loved me to the bone and I soaked in it.

He sat brushing my hair back while I lay my head on his lap crying my eyes out. Mama made me some green tea and let us sit there in her living room. “They just feel that they have to belittle other people just to make themselves feel better. You have more than they do, Allison. Don’t you dare forget that!”

Looking back I see that Mama was right. I had a family, both Azrael and Mama. It wasn’t much but through all of the hard times they were there for me. When that idiot at work who started all the talk about me got pregnant her perfect boyfriend left her for a younger girl. She got stuck on welfare and struggled to get to work every morning. Pitiful.

After a few weeks of me coming home teary eyed he started to get real quiet and would just stare at the ceiling in our room while I lay next to him. I tried my best to be strong and not cry but there was something about him that made me melt and all the tears would rush out like a river. It was like he was a magnet and attracted all of the negative away from me into him and held it up on his shoulders so that I didn’t have to.

There were times when I felt like I would burst from the pain but a hug from him would calm me like a drug. The way he brushed my cheek to wipe away the stray tears made my heart fill with hope. I would feel like giving up, like throwing in the towel but he was there in my corner cheering me on. Just one more day. Just one more, ok?

Then it happened. He came home one night went to our restroom and sat there. I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first so I just went to sleep. In the morning, he was still there still staring at the floor, unmoving. I knelt down in front of him and stared into his face. Then he reached up cupped my face with his hands and smiled. Not a creepy ‘I just killed someone,’ kind of smile but one that said, ‘This, my Dear, is my gift to you.’

I didn’t know it yet but the gift was freedom from the taunts, Freedom from her making my life a living hell. When I got to work the police were there. Her friends were crying sharing everything that they thought might be able to help out. I had to piece together what had happened. Someone snuck into her house, killed her. They had left no evidence, no nothing. Then I realized what that smile was about.

I felt bad for her family but I was at peace because I didn’t have to deal with the mental breakdowns. I didn’t have to hear that I was a disgusting mistake and that I should have been drowned so that no one would have to be bothered with me. You wouldn’t even be able to imagine that someone as pretty as her would say such putrid things. How could someone even think to throw things like that at other people? Why would anyone want to hurt someone that bad when they knew nothing about them? She only knew bits and pieces, not the whole story, which were hardly even true at that. She never once asked me if what she heard was true. She just assumed she knew everything.

I had a lot of people like that come into my life like my old baby sitter. She would know bits and pieces and tell all of her other ‘friends’ how my parents didn’t want me and she got stuck with me. She made it seem like she’d rather die a horrific death with nail ripping, skin peeling torture than watch me but she did it for the money. At least they paid her good she would say.

I started on my work quickly and tried my best to not get in the way. They couldn’t possibly find out. Azrael was too good at cleaning up after himself. Nervousness filled my stomach after being in there a while and I had to go to outside and breathe. They asked if I was ok and I nodded. “I’m just scared.” I told the police. “It could have been anyone.” They looked down and nodded saying it was ok. They’d find the jerk that did this. I hoped that was not so.