"Some people hate what'd different, it scares them to admit that maybe they could hate someone," Cadie Stone had told me the first time I met her. I understood what she meant, how could I not? I was a giant walking, talking, mutant turtle. Cadie was a nineteen year old lesbian that I had rescued from what; at the time, I believed was a mugging. She had seen me even in the dim light of the alley we were both in. Sure I could see the fear in her eyes when she saw me, but there wasn't any hate there. Over the last few months we had become friends. We understood each other. But unlike me she looked at the world with hope that one day it would accept people like me and her. I knew differently, they would never see us as equals.
"They're not so different to you and me," she had said to me once. Inwardly I had scoffed at her words, I knew she had to be wrong, I had already seen the reactions of so many people to the appearance of me and my brothers. Some with fear and others with outright hate in their eyes when they didn't even know us! Obviously she had seen something in my reaction because she had smiled.
"Haven't you ever seen something you were afraid of?" She had asked. I had shaken my head mutely.
"Riiight," she grinned at me.
"When I finally realised that I didn't like guys in that way I hated myself and other gay people. And I mean real hate, not just the passing resentment you can sometimes get. I knew that now I had found out what I was there was no going back and like so many other people I saw it as being wrong, a sin and there was no hope for me," she had said.
"But you don't hate them anymore, do you?" I had asked.
"Fuck no, it took a long time for that to happen though," she smiled my way.
"Why? I mean how come you don't hate anymore?" I asked. She winked and nudged me with one elbow.
"One day you'll find out, it's a secret,"
As I stand here now in her small apartment I could feel the anger burning in me. Someone had broken in and completely trashed the place. On the living room wall was the words 'God hates Gays'. Moving closer I realised that it wasn't paint, it was blood.
"Oh, God, Cadie...CADIE! Where are you?!" I yelled. I searched the room with my eyes, then moved to the small kitchen and from there to the bedroom. It was there that I found her, sitting on the floor, wrists tied to the bottom corners of the bedframe. Her stomach was sliced from hip to hip. For a moment I stood in mute shock, staring, then I rushed to her. Lifted her head, fingers feeling for a pulse.
"Yeah, I'm still alive," she croaked at me.
"Cadie, you need help," I said, untying her wrists.
"No, even I can tell it's to late for that. I was waiting for you," she said.
"Me? Why?" I asked.
"To tell you not to hate them," she paused briefly until we finally made eye contact.
"They deserve to die for this!" I snarled, I had never felt anger like this before.
"Maybe they do, but don't hate them. It takes to much time and effort and energy to hate and in the end you're the only one that knows about it, they don't care. The only person you're hurting is yourself."
"I can't let them-" I started.
"Let the what? Win? They haven't, everyone dies sometime, this is mine. Look at me,"
"Look at me, Donatello!" She said more sharply when I didn't. Finally I looked at her battered face.
"Do it for me, I don't want you destroying yourself, promise me, Donnie,"
"I promise," I said finally.
"Good, hate is such a waste of time, time that could be far better spent," she said. I looked up from trying to bandage her stomach. There was such an earnest look on her face I knew that what she was saying was true.
"Goodbye, Donnie, thanks for being a friend," she said. Then she died. I ran one hand down her cheek.
"Thank you for being mine, thank you for seeing me for who I was, not what I was. For not hating me..."