The clouds were shifting in and out of the silhoutted sky like a flickering flame desperatly grabbing for it's last few breaths. A static's buzzing was evident from an undiscovered source, slowly coming by like the rattle of a fan, then fading, and returning. It irritated my ears. She and I walked hand in hand down the dimmed street, our footsteps making a tiny pitter-patter on the ground. Just coming back from a late night stroll. She wore a mahogany coat that was like a slide for the moonlight that reflected off ever side of it. We were only metres away from her apartment steps. She squeezed my hand very sharply, and I put a hand on her shoulder.
"What's wrong?""When you leave me, I will cut out every single part you have touched. I live only for you and when you leave me I will have no more purpose."
We stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. I looked at her through wide, frightened eyes. It made no sense. Could she be serious? We'd only been dating for a few days, and now it seems I'm being forced to make a life long commitment or succumb to the guilt of driving a young woman to suicidal maddness. I couldn't live with that.
And just in the manner she had said it, like it came with daily life. And there was no expression of humour, nothing to drive away the horrorific scenes growing in the back of my mind's eye. Only the blank expression that seemed to somehow justify her statement. An atmosphere of confusion had settled over, as though I had been lulled into a sleepless trance and trying to navigate through the opaque fog every which way.
I released my hand from her own and let it gently fall down beside me; its very own gesture of bewilderment. I must have been waiting for something, as was she, for the silence that bar between us in those few akward moments was one of the most frightful moments I had ever experienced, but compared nothing to the horror that followed this. Proceeding the silence her arm rose to chest level.
"I knew it. You'd never stay with me,"
Goosebumps.
"never..", she sighed. In the last moments of a life, they say you can see all that has passed you by, and though I tried to read her eyes for any signs of former recollection; some nostalgia perhaps.
Nothing.
Although it seemed like a dream, I saw it plain as day, how unnaturally she plunged her arm through her chest and pulled out the beating heart, still full of life and vitality, and kissed the world an ungrateful and untimely goodbye.
"You touched my heart, it has been poisoned"
My body had gone from tense to violently shaking as I stared at her laying on the sidewalk, concrete pillows. There is no way, that this was happening. And since my brain and my lungs were both screaming, both using up precious oxygen at the time, I passed out.
Awakening, lying on my bed face down in a pool of sweat, the horrific memories of her unhuman self mutilation and how it has instantly driven me to guilt. I began to shake again, worse this time and I could feel the blood rushing to my head, pulsating with every breath. My heart felt though it was growing larger as I drew more gasps, I clutched my chest.
The sweat poured down my face and seeped into my eyes, mouth. Tremors, I couldn't stop them. It was like being repedeatly shocked with electrical prongs, one wave of pain after another. I wanted to rip my heart out, violently I dug at my chest with my hands attempting to easily wrench it out of the cavity, just like she had done to herself. I wondered if it was hell I was entering; to repay for the greif I had caused her...though I barely knew her. I'll be damned if I cause the death of another. And, it stopped.
She eagerly ran up the stairs, a mahogany handbag swinging about attached to her arm, humming a pleasant tune that complimented her success. Now, around the corner of the aparment corridor and up the hall, still gleefully humming until she could hear the voice of a man at the end of the hall. Not her man's voice, an older, more gruff sounding one. He stared at her, and motioned with a gloved hand to come forwards.
"This your house?" he question to the young woman.
"No..I was coming to see a friend..he lives in there," She pointed at the door at the very end of the hall, it was slightly ajar, another man was visible from the hallway, "is something wrong officer?"
"A call was sent in early this morning from a neighbour, yelling and suspicion of fowl play had been reported. We went in about 5 hours ago to find the lad died in his sleep, he was experiencing a nightmare which triggered the attack, and it seems like impact marks above the heart."