Oleander: A Great Expectations Reimagining

by Scarlett Drake

It occurs to me suddenly that I’d never once come in through this door. I’d always come in through the back entrance, the service entrance, every time.

But no, Gideon wasn’t the knife; Caspien had been that. Gideon, the hand that wielded it. Me, the soft, yielding flesh.

I’m certain if I strain my ears hard enough, I’ll hear his voice somewhere.

Certain that if I inhale deeply, I’ll still be able to smell him. He lives and breathes in these walls still, and I can’t fucking bear it.

The piano sits where it always has, where I’d first heard Cas play it, where I’d held and comforted him. And later, where I’d kissed and pleasured him, where I’d felt the sharp pieces of him break apart under me.

It’s taken me years to hear a piano played and not feel like my heart was being torn from my chest. Now, I watch his videos online to feel that very thing because something is better than nothing at all.

“It was a lie, Gideon. He was a lie, as were you.” I give him a pointed look.

“No. You were the truest, most real, most untainted thing he ever had.”

“He made his bloody choice, Gideon!” I snap. “Over and over again, he made his choice, and it was never me.”

These walls and the two men inside had swallowed me whole once before,

This time, I’ve come with sharp edges, blades, and a warrior’s hardened heart, and I’ll cut myself free without a moment’s hesitation.

“You are in every line I have ever read.” Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

It was a bright, burning Tuesday in August when Caspien Deveraux broke my heart for the first time.

I think about that frequently. About what I’d want my last night on this earth to look like.

It would be us, of course. Caspien and me, someplace warm. A night spent with our limbs tangled together, nice food and wine in our full bellies as we took that other more intoxicating pleasure from each other.

A jolt hammered my chest as his eyes locked with my own. I couldn’t make out their colour from where I sat, the sunlight pouring over his shoulder, blinding me. All at once, it was the most important thing in the world. The colour of his eyes.

It was the first time I met Caspien Deveraux, and I loathed him with a passion I didn’t know I was capable of. And though I didn’t know it then, I’d soon come to love him with the very same ferocity.

It felt too complicated to understand, too stupid to even articulate, but I hated that I was the only one he didn’t act like a normal person around.

He didn’t speak like one or act like one, and when I was around him I found myself drunk on his worldliness. Intoxicated by the things he might be able to show me or teach me that no one else could.

“I suppose your stupid friend Georgia could entertain me for a little while. You know, until I’m legally allowed to fuck whomever I want.”

“Because you don’t even like her, and she’ll get hurt.”

“But I need someone to play with, Jude. And since you’ve just taken my toy away...”

The frown smoothed away a little and some light came on in his eyes, and I was drawn like a moth to it. I was responsible for putting that light there. It was a heady feeling.

Things were already changing. This hot, confusing, frightening thing that got louder and more desperate whenever I was around him had reached some critical point. One I couldn’t come back from even if I wanted to.

Telling him why I’d hated seeing that book seemed too difficult, too impossible.

So I went toward him instead, took his face in my hands, and kissed him.

My entire destruction felt possible from that kiss, and I had no desire to fight it. It was what books and song lyrics told you kisses ought to be. It was the end of childhood and the beginning of something else, and I knew I would not be the same when it was over.

My head was still full of Caspien, even with Ellie in front of me. His pretty mouth, his grey-blue eyes, his vicious sneer. There was comfort in those things. Because I knew my place in front of them. Beneath him.

Dracula in front of me. The passage that stood out was so apt that I felt a shiver run down my spine: I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.

I hated him for not answering my calls and for disappearing from my life. But most of all, I hated him, loathed him, for infecting me like he had. For slipping under my skin and into my blood and finding his way to my heart.

I knew it wasn’t his tutor, but that I wouldn’t stop until I found out. I told him that some days, I felt as though I’d never take a full deep breath again until I knew his name.

If not for him, I told myself, then Caspien would be mine.

“I just wish you hadn’t left.”

The self-satisfied look on his face melted away. Something softer and more sincere moved into his eyes.

Later, I’d come to understand that he knew how sincerity affected his features. It was why he so rarely showed it. Sincerity gave his face an almost fragile quality. Delicate and exquisite. His beauty was always striking, but when he was tender and gentle with it, he became almost painful to look at. Magnificent and terrible as an angel. Divinity made flesh.

I was sixteen, and she was my high school girlfriend, so, of course, I loved her. It took no thought or effort to love Ellie.

What I felt for Caspien was more bewildering, labyrinthine, and like a cryptic puzzle that changed and evolved every time we spoke. More adult, more serious, more frightening.

“Would you still break up with her if I asked you to?” he said right over me.

He was almost violently handsome, like some Spartan had wandered out of The Iliad and into Gideon’s library. He was good-looking in the opposite way Caspien was; where Caspien was all pale fragility and dusky pinks, Xavier was black eyes and sharp jaw. Hades and Persephone.

After, as surely as the wave always returned to the shore, my thoughts would return to Cas.

“I like being choked on someone’s dick like that,” he told me. “The bigger the better, really. I like it to feel as if I’m going to die.”

The awake hours were worse. Because in these, I was fully conscious and able to direct my thoughts where I wanted them, and I wanted them on him.

Back then, he was the beating heart inside my chest, the hopes and dreams I harboured in my soul. I existed only because he perceived me.

He didn’t need to wait for my answer. Because it was very clear, even then, that I was always going to do whatever he told me to.

I loved him. I was as certain of that as I was my own name, both universal truths. I am Jude Alcott, and I am in love with Caspien Deveraux.

“Everything you think and feel is in your eyes, you know. When you hated me, I could see it. When you didn’t, I could see that too.”

Cas had never had unconditional love.

how I perceived him changed so permanently that I saw him only for what I wanted him to be. Vulnerable and lost and in need of something only I could give him. Love. Unconditional.

Only I could love Caspien how he deserved to be loved. And so I would.

I’d love him in spite of everything he was and everything I knew he could be. No matter what he did, no matter how much he hurt me, in this I would be constant.