Hate Me

By LiLin

Chapter 1: Who Needs Love?

"I love you – those three words have my life in them." – Alexandrea to Nicholas III

RAYLIN

Love. What is love? Some people say love is when you just want the person you love to be happy. Some people say love is when you feel a constellation of conflicting emotions, filled with profound affections. Some people say love is everlasting. Yet almost everyone says that love, is something that cannot be described with words.

What I really don't get is why people say they love one another, when it all ends in heartbreak. Take for example, a mother tells her son she loves him dearly, but she passes away. Did they not say that love is when you want someone to be happy forever? Yet when she passes on, what the son feels is not happiness. What he feels is ultimate sadness and betrayal. Think about it, is that love?

Lovers insist that they love each other unconditionally and they give their all up for just this one person. They get married, thinking that they love each other whole heartedly and nothing could tear them apart. However, why is it that so many divorces exist? Otherwise, couples break up because of petty quarrels. What happened to 'love is everlasting'?

I bet all of you are staring and wondering, just who the hell this bitch is to ramble on as if she knows everything about love. Well, considering the fact that this bitch is only seventeen years old that is. Let me enlighten you then.

Imagine having a happy, 'loving' family for seven whole years. Then one day, your screwed up father claims he 'loves' another woman. What do you think happens? Yes, your mother is extremely irate and she cries her eyes out nightly. Your father leaves all the same with that other woman he 'loves'. Your sister and you are whisked off to a whole new world with your mother.

Flashback

"I don't get it, Darren! You have the perfect family and you're leaving us for that bitch?" A voice rose to a shrill, accompanied by falling chairs.

"No, YOU don't get it. Emily, I really love her. She's… she's… I just love her alright?" a male voice replied, as he tried to dodge the pots and pans being hurled at him.

Two pairs of frightened green eyes peered out from between the stair banisters. The elder girl put her arm around her sister's shoulders and whispered comfortingly into her ear. Her eyes widened in further horror when her father turned and threw the front door open, turning his back to them forever. She ran down the steps and threw herself into her mother's arms. Tears fell from her mother's gray eyes as she clutched at her two daughters and sobbed her heart out.

End of Flashback

A whole new world where your mother has had countless boyfriends in those ten years your parents were divorced. They ranged from doctors to mechanics to gardeners and even the plumber who came to fix our leaking pipe. I've used up all my fingers and all my toes and still, I haven't come to a total number. That, is how bad everything has become. She claims she loves every single one of them. Every single one of them claims they love her. So can someone please explain to me how come it all comes to an end? Face it, people. Love does not exist.

Hello to all of you, I'm Raylin Lachey, seventeen going on thirty and cynic extraordinaire. I cannot deny the fact that I am a total perfectionist (taking into consideration the facts that I organize my closet by color and my books by alphabetical order). I say I'm seventeen going on thirty because ever since my mother delved into her own little world of weekly romances, I have been the one to do the household chores, pick up my younger kid sister from school, and coax my mother to sign the bills. Sometimes I wonder if I can safely say I love her without my brain working out all the reasons why love does not exist.

My little sister is the worst struck. She never knew our father, and now, her mother is a wreck who barely spares her a second glance. Rayne is the prettiest twelve-year-old you can find in this district. I've always enjoyed brushing her silky red hair just like our mother's (a contrast to my jet black hair), and she has taken to wearing it past her shoulder blades. Her emerald eyes glint with amusement at almost everything. I would say I love her but I don't want to. Someday I'm going to have to leave too and I don't want her to be hurt the way I was. All I can say is that she's my everything and I would simply die if I lost her.

Either way, I hate love, love hates me and I enjoy our current relationship tremendously.

VIPER

Love sucks. End of story. Look, what I don't get is why people claim that love is the sweetest thing that He bestowed upon us. How can they say that when all it causes is ultimate heartbreak and ridicule?

Flashback

"Mummy, why're you lying in bed? Do you want me to get Daddy?" A nine-year-old boy with blonde hair and angelic blue eyes clung tightly to his mother's frail hand, holding his younger brother with the other hand. His eyes peered out the hospital room's window as he searched for his father.

"Mason, mummy loves you and Melvin," a whispered voice came from the woman lying upon the hospital bed. "Look after your brother alright? I'll always be with you. Tell your daddy, I'm sorry I never got to say goodbye to the man I loved…"

Her eyes dulled and shut as the machine gave one loud, final beep, her fingers still entangled with her son's. A tear fell from the boy's eye and landed on her finger.

"Mummy…" he whimpered. "Why did you leave me if you loved me? Why did you leave me when you said you'll always be with me?"

End of Flashback

My mother was truly beautiful with her river of dark, dark hair and sparkling eyes of dawn's clearest, darkest blue. Every time she hugged me, I could smell the fragrance of the apple shampoo she always used. And every time she bent to brush her cheek against mine, it felt smooth, flawless. The neighbors remembered her as a beautiful woman who never hesitated to help, regardless of what the problem was. She volunteered at the dog pound and was in short the perfect mother. She cooked delicious dinners, she kept the house wonderfully clean, she looked after us well and brought us up as polite, loving children. It all changed when she left. I honestly loved her, and I thought she loved me too. If she really did love me, why did she leave me behind?

My father – the man I used to adore and admire, he soon transformed into a monster I can barely recognize. When my mother was around, he was the perfect husband and the best father. His hair, just like mine, was almost combed neatly, and his shirt was always spotless and clean. He doted on Melvin and me, bringing us out to fish and to cycle. He concerned himself with all our school work, thus resulting in our exceptionally good grades. He was the chairperson of a company, dressed impeccably in suits everyday except on weekends. His colleagues claimed that he was the best worker they had ever seen. They praised his responsibility and his efficiency.

That was when my mother was still around. That was then. When she left, all he did was thrust us into a relative's hands and walk away, to drown his sorrows in drink. We stayed with my aunt for two whole months while he recollected his senses again. I got regularly picked on by the neighborhood bullies and in the end, I taught myself how to fight, pummeling and kicking my uncle's old punch bag. My father did collect us back in the end, although I rather he didn't.

Now, all he ever does is to drink and hurl abuse upon us. Once, when I was twelve, I returned from school to see a drunken man lying unconscious in his own vomit and my own eight-year-old brother crouched, shivering in a corner. I did the only thing I could think of, I brought him out of the house and implored a neighbor to clean up his bruises. I blamed myself for it all. If I had been there, he would never even have the chance to touch my brother. The monster had hit him so badly, bruises the size of his fists were all over his body. I swore to myself then that I would teach him how to fight well, and I would protect him for as long as I lived.

Father? What father? The only father I had, died when my mother died. What makes it most ironic is that they both claimed they loved me.

I spend my time in my room drawing and sketching. I really don't mean to brag but I can turn just a few strokes of a pen or pencil into a picture. An accidental swipe from my pencil on a piece of paper can be transformed into a magnificent ship with billowing sails.

I have always used this gift to amuse my younger brother. All over my walls, I have tacked up my favorite drawings – almost all of them consist of hearts being mutilated. I suppose you can guess why, can't you?

That one single incident when I was nine changed my view of love forever. And nothing can ever make me change it again. Because I'm no longer Mason Gray, the mama's boy. I'm Viper, the one all the students feared. I'm the one who beat up everyone who ever dared to make a passing comment about me or my brother, and Melvin has turned into a regular little menace to the teachers at thirteen. He is however, pretty friendly with some of the students, quite unlike me. But I want him to have a real education, and not stone his way through his schooling years just like me.

Let me get this straight one last time, love does not exist so quit waiting for your one true love to come.

A/N: This is the first chapter of my newest story - Hate Me. Do review after reading alright? (: So that I will know whether to upload the next chapter or not.