This is a story about love. A love between a boy and a girl. He was sweet, attractive and intelligent boy of seventeen. He was lonely and love deprived. He went to an all boys' private school. That was where he met her. That was where he met Monica. He met her in the attic of our citadel of a school. He was captivated by her power; he fell in love with her touch. He wanted her, needed her even. It was simply boyish love. A boy's undying love for his girl, his Monica. It was a match made in Heaven.or hell, whichever way you want to think about it. Sit down and let me tell you a tale of love.and obsession.

"I'm going to kill myself," he said, head bent back, blue eyes facing the fluorescent lighting overhead. His blazer falling loosely around his thin and fragile frame, exposing a starch white shirt and a crimson red tie. His mop of auburn hair fell toward the ground except for a few stray strands which held on to his forehead for dear life. His eyes, beauty only diminished by the thin panes of glass that shrouded them, stared emotionlessly at the wooden ceiling of Winchester School for Boys and he spoke once more, "I'm not shitting you, Vin. I'm actually going to kill myself this time." He sat back up in his chair and stared at me with those weird eyes of his, "I'm going back to my dorm and I'm going to get a knife and." he ran his finger across his throat, an evil grin melting on to his soft face. I cocked an eyebrow and threw a biscuit at him, hitting him on the forehead, knocking his glasses from his face, making his tanned cheeks turn red with anger.

"Stop threatening already, you sad sack," I said, picking up a butter knife from the table and handing it over to him, "If you are so set on doing it, then do it." He looked at me, eyes blinking rapidly without his glassed. He crossed his arms and clicked his tongue, closing those eyes finally. They gave me the shivers sometimes.

"I would if it was in a more romantic way." he grinned, "Like burning or drowning." I smiled at him, "Yes, that would be so shibby." I shook my head and stood from my seat at the cafeteria table, walking around and picking up his glasses for him, slipping them on to his face and then patting his head, wild hair falling around his perfect face. He opened his eyes and looked up at me, a frown taking the place of his smile, "What's this? All of the touchy, feeling head patting.you're not turning into a beaver leaver, are you?"

"Nope," I said, grinning and heading toward the door of the cafeteria, back to my dorm room to get a catch a few winks before my next class. He hopped from his chair and ran after me at full sprint, trying to catch up.

"Good, because you have been going to this shitter of a school for far longer then I have. You need to spend more time with the gashes, Vin." I socked him on the arm, making him cry out in pain. He wasn't the athletic type. I was, however. I was in loads of sports, rugby mostly. It was my sport of choice, "What? Am I lying?"

"You shouldn't refer to females as 'gashes', Jules," I said, my seriousness only hiding the humor of it all, "It's vulgar." He nodded and turned from me, staring into the garden, which we had passed a million times on our way back to our room. It was breathtaking to say the least, something from a fairy tale. I suppose that the happenings to come was fit for a fairy tale. Prince falls for maiden, maiden falls for prince, it was all quite simple. The gardens were the pride and glory of the school, home to hundreds of flowers and plants and shrubberies. Weeping willows wept in an arch above a cobblestone pathway adorned with flowers of many colours. The smell was that of a young girl's perfume and the sky danced with butterflies and bumblebees. It was out of a storybook. It was something to gawk at, to paint a picture of, to write about.

Julian was a writer. He wrote short stories of death and dying and all things gothic. He was a romantic, finding romance only in the pain of others. He was a genuinely interesting boy, but he was lonely and he wanted passion and love. It was about then that he looked toward the school building. I hadn't noticed it then, but I should have. The way those eyes widened and his slim body froze in place, looking at the top window of the castle. He began to walk toward it at an almost eerie pace, not speaking or looking back. He was headed off toward the attic, where he would meet the girl of his dreams, where he would meet Monica.

He introduced me to her late that same evening, when I was stripping out of my uniform into my pajamas. I frankly didn't give a damn about her, she was weird and she had an odor. I didn't like her the second I saw her, but Julian had fallen in love with her and it wasn't my place to criticize him or his new girl. She was missing both of her eyes. One had been stitched up with yellowed thread and the other had been left exposed, the socket so deep that I felt as though I could swim in it's darkness. Her hair, as black as night was pulled into two mops atop her tattered head, tied with torn, pink bows. Hair that had been taken from the rotting corpse of a horse's tail and then was died to a raven black. The colour had faded over time, as colours would, but the darkness was still unmatched by even the darkest nights. Her stitching was old and unraveling and her skin was molding and eaten. She was beautiful, she was hideous. He named her Monica, the advisor according to the Greek.

"She's just a doll, Jules," I said, looking at him looking at her, "And a fugly one at that. She reeks too."

"Belt up!" he said, those eyes filling with fury, "She smells beautifully!" How could he not smell that?! The rank and stomach wrenching aroma of mothballs and attic mold. She was rotting up our room.and he thought she smelt of peaches and cream? "And she's not ugly. She's amazing."

It was only the beginning of his obsession and it is far to long a story to finish in one sitting. I remember falling asleep that night, a disgusting feeling in my gut. You know what feeling I'm talking about. That feeling when you lie in bed late at night, thinking of life after death. That feeling of your chest closing and your breath growing short. The sweat pouring from your brow and your hands shaking. Oh my, that feeling was one I felt many, many night in the past and would feel every night to come. Monica made me feel that way.

He began to get withdrawn everyday he was with her and every night he slept with her. His grades improved because he asked her to improve them, his stories improved because she was his muse. He got into some bad trouble, sleeping with teachers to get recommendations, plagiarism on essays and cheating on tests. It was her way of improving his grades and it worked if you considered it literally. Yes, his grades improved drastically, but his social morals went down the shitter. He began to write of love and romance that ended in death and pain, because she wanted him to. She gave him the words and he scrambled them into mindless poetry and drabble. She was literal. You asked her for a dollar, she would take it from the hands of a homeless child with pneumonia.

And the smell! My god, the smell that she gave off!! He couldn't smell it, but everyone else and their mothers could. I remember walking in the hall with him one late afternoon, he was acting almost normal. He was laughing and making cynical jokes like he normally did when Emma Haswell, a young girl with plain brown eyes and plain brown hair walked past us, scrunching her nose and turning to Julian with a wide eyed innocence said, "What is that ghastly odor?" She flipped her hair and walked away, making Julian quake with anger. He pulled Monica from his backpack and clutched her tightly to his chest, stroking her head of horse hair.

"It's okay, my sweet," he said, speaking directly to her, "I don't know how she could say that!! You smell beautiful. You smell beautiful because you ARE beautiful.you know that right?" he continued to babble on and on like that for I don't know how long. I had walked away then. I couldn't take it anymore.

I had spent one more night in the same room as Julian. He stayed up all night, talking to himself, talking to his doll and writing his story. It was the last night I ever spoke with him. I awoke the next morning, packed up all of my stuff and headed down to the boarder, begging for a new room assignment. We would pass in the hall, but he wouldn't notice. He would just walk with Monica, talking to her, laughing with her and all of that good stuff. I mean, it is quite common when a boy falls for a girl that he forgets about his truest friends, right?

We both graduated, although Julian had better marks then I did. I went on to become a teacher. I taught psychology. It wasn't an exciting or amazing job, but it helped me cope with what had happened to Julian. And what ofJulian, my best friend of fifteen years? The suicidal writer who came to this school because his parents feared him, went on to become a just that, a writer. He made millions, writing romance novel after romance novel, all about a lover named Monica. He never spoke to me once we graduated, he never spoke to anyone. Only to Monica. It was Monica who gave him his stories and it was Monica who told him who to buddy up with to climb up the corporate latter. It was Monica who told him to tie a rock to his leg and plummet off of a high rising bridge one steamy July afternoon. He drown and I smiled when I read of it in the newspaper. He always wanted to kill himself and he finally did.romantically so. Oh, and what of Monica? She is probably still out there, floating around, in the hands of another young boy, helping him grow and succeed and taking every essence of his being into herself. I mean, she, like every other black widow out there had to feed.

The End