This story follows Quasi's Valentiine and Quasi in Hades.
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It was a long, lonely drive home. When I had driven out, I had been with the love of my life, Gloria. We were heading to her sister's wedding, where I was going to meet her family for the first time. We were in love.
At least I was.
I'd never really been in love before. At least not since Junior year in high school, when a chemistry experiment had exploded in my face. Since then, girls, boys, women, men, dogs and probably even alligators, run away screaming, when they see my face. Strangely, cats seem to be attracted to me. Go figure.
Gloria had been different. Sure, she screamed and slammed the door in my face the first time she saw me, but later, when she got to know me, she said my scars really weren't that bad. That surprised me, because I had to look at them whenever I passed a mirror, and I think they really are that bad. Worse than that bad.
But then a miracle happened. Gloria said she loved me. She held me, kissed me, and eventually took me to her bed. I had given up all hope of ever losing my virginity, but Gloria stripped it away and came back for more. For a year and a half, my life was paradise.
I had Gloria.
Then I met her parents and her sister, Judy. Oh, they were nice to me. They did a good job of acting like my face wasn't hamburger meat. They managed to even eat dinner with me at the table. Believe me, that was a major accomplishment. Walter and Rose Madden were very kind to me.
Judy, Gloria's sister? The best I can say is that she tried. But she couldn't help cringing whenever she saw me, and I think she had as much food on her plate at the end of the meal as she did in the beginning. She'd shoved it around the plate a lot but had excused herself before really taking a bite.
Of course, that didn't matter. Gloria loved me, and with her love I could take on the world. No one else mattered when she held me in her arms. I was loved. I WAS LOVED.
Then I overheard her sister talking to her. Judy didn't want my ugly face in her wedding pictures. It would ruin them, and she wouldn't be able to ever show them to anyone. At first Gloria stood up for me and my heart soared, hearing her expound our love.
Then Judy started reciting the times when Gloria had postured as a caring person in order to get attention, in order to be admired as such a loving person. A blind girl who she had "given up her own play time" to shepherd around, only to drop her when the attention lapse. Or the wheelchair boy she had taken to prom but never dated again.
I knew, deep down inside me where my insecurities dwell, I knew just like Judy did, that a girl as beautiful as Gloria could never love a freak like me. I had always known, feared, that something was off and now I knew. I thought of the attention we'd gotten on campus, the people who wondered aloud what she was doing with me, and her telling her friend how she was the lucky one because I was with her.
Me, Quasimodo, Scar-all. Hamburger Face. The Freak. She was lucky to have me so people could admire what a truly deep and caring person she was, able to see past the scars.
I ran. I packed my bags, told her father that my mother had an emergency, and drove home. I couldn't breathe. I had to constantly pull off the road and wait until the tears stopped. I cried, thinking how I had believed I was loved.
Who could ever love me? How stupid was I?
During the drive I indulged in a flood of self-pity like I had never done before. I pulled up each one of my fears and insecurities and found that Gloria had played or rather preyed on each one. I was that pitiful, I now recognized.
As I pulled into the driveway, my mother came running out of the house, her face showing her distress. "What happened? Why did you leave? Gloria's been calling and calling. She said I had an emergency. What's going on?"
I knew my mother was going to be hurt by this. She loved Gloria, maybe as much as I did. She never thought that her son would have a woman in his life, especially one as beautiful, graceful and intelligent as Gloria Madden. I think she could have burned down the church lighting candles, giving thanks for her son's happiness.
When I told her what had happened, she refused to believe it. She insisted that Gloria wasn't that way, that the girl really loved me. I could see that my mother thought the dream was slipping away and I couldn't convince her that that dream was just another nightmare in my life of horror.
I tried to explain it better, but I couldn't. Now, at home, in my mother's arms, I broke down. I sobbed. I wailed. I cried. I was broken; brokenhearted.
Mom tried to get me to talk to Gloria when she called. I wouldn't get on the phone. My mother told her what I had overheard and told me that Gloria said that it wasn't like that; that she loved me. My mother said that Gloria was crying, that I had broken her heart.
My mother didn't want to let go of the dream. She wanted to believe. I locked the door to my room and ignored her, my phone, and the world at large.
I ended up staying at my friend Bruno's cabin until school began, because my mother wouldn't let it go, and Gloria started trying to corner me. It made me angry, her crying and wailing at me in public. I had always tried to avoid attention so people would leave me alone. So, kids won't throw rocks at me. So, women wouldn't have their boyfriends chase me away.
Now I had to run away to avoid Gloria, and the questions people shouted at the monster, "Hey, what did you do to that girl?"
Why couldn't she leave me alone?
When classes started back up for our senior year, I changed my course load. We had planned to take several classes together, but I dropped those and changed to night classes. I changed any class that I knew would put us in the same vicinity. I did everything I could to avoid crossing paths with her.
And I was successful, and Gloria finally got the message. On the rare occasions when we saw each other, I would hurry away and after the first few weeks of school, she gave up the attempt to follow me. I don't know if she stopped talking to my mother, but Mom stopped mentioning her. I felt bad because I knew Mom was crying in her room again, like she did when I first got burned. I knew my life broke her heart, but she had been coming to terms with it when Gloria came into our lives and gave us both hope again. Now, she was as heartbroken as I was. I think this destroyed Mom more than the destruction of my face had. It hurt my soul to hear her sobbing quietly in the night.
Damn Gloria. I hated the woman.
But at night, in the dark, when I can forget my face, I remember having her in my bed, in my arms. I remember her kisses, her caresses, and the loving. And I would have to fight back the tears. I'd never cried much before, not about my loneliness. I'd just accepted that I would be unloved, that I would never have someone to love and to love me.
But now I knew just what I would never have again, and I would lie in the dark and think about just ending it. What was I living for? What future did I have? Why should I continue to exist?
Of course, I couldn't do that to my poor mother. I think she suffered more from my life than I did. She was the one person I loved and who would always love me.
Things settled down to a quiet life of misery for me. I was pretty much shunned at school, but not much worse than I was before Gloria. The Pi Phi Pi fraternity seemed cooler to me than before, but that might be because no one needed me to tutor them anymore. I stopped going to the frat after I was attacked there by a goddess.
Penelope. She was the goddess, a figure of physical perfection and a caring creature. I had worshipped at her altar my first two years of college, after she had touched my cheek when she first met me. She was the first girl, the first person other than Mom and my doctors, who had ever voluntarily touched my face. Just to be around this goddess, I had done things I regretted while doing them. I would have sold my soul just to bask in her aura.
When I allowed myself to fall in love with Gloria, Penelope had receded into the background, an unimportant piece of the landscape. Ever a goddess, don't get me wrong, but not one I was interested in. After Gloria, my interest had not returned. I think I was through with women, goddesses or not.
Oh, and Pen was Gloria's roommate.
I was moping around the Pi Phi house, pretty much ignored by everyone, when I was accosted by Penelope. "Here you are!" she said icily. "I thought you were a good guy. I felt sorry for you and the things you've gone through." She stood over me, hands on her hips. "I would think that your misfortunes would have made you a caring person, but you are just an asshole, aren't you? How could you hurt Gloria like that? She loved you, asshole."
I was embarrassed, with everyone looking at me, and others coming into the room to see what the commotion was. I was mumbling, "No she didn't. She was just..." when Penelope jumped down my throat again.
"She did, you fucking jerk, although no one but her could understand why." She clenched her fists and trembled in anger. Suddenly, she burst and whacked me on the side of my head, so hard I fell sideways on the sofa.
She glared at me and pointed her finger at my face. "You going to regret hurting that girl the rest of your life." Her eyes flared in fury.
Then, she collapsed in tears and ran out of the frat.
I was dumbfounded.
"What did you do to her? What did you do?" my frat brothers were angry that I had hurt that celestial being, the woman of all their dreams. I just shook my head and left.
