Heart in Hand

Heart in Hand

The sharp twigs and jagged rocks tore at her feet despite the dense coverage that the damp leaves provided. Her once swift pace had diminished to a sluggish jaunt. Blood caked her dirty brown hair and covered her pallid face. Her wide eyes were strained and bloodshot, her lips and skin dry, cracked, and bleeding. Large bruises and shallow lacerations lined her arms and legs. Something soft and wet was clutched tightly in her hand.

She paused, wavered, and fell to the hard earth. She feebly rose to her feet. Her surroundings all looked the same. Endless miles of towering pines nestled in the darkness. The light had been sent to bed hours ago. She kept her slow pace as she climbed up the steep hill. The large arms of the pines scraped and cut into her exposed skin. Her breath was quick; coming out in shallow rasps.

The stench of death began to fill the moist air. The ground had turned into mush and with each step she would sink down into the repugnant waste. A soft high pitched hum reverberated in the air around her. It seeped into her bones and cavernous mind, lulling her, pulling her.

She now came to a long jagged rock wall towering high above her against the saturnine sky. She walked disconsolate till she reached a small gap in the wall. She was too small to fit, yet she forced her way through, she had too it made her. The rocks carved deep gashes into her back and chest as she forced her body through to the other side where it wanted her.

Her body was slowly dying and she found herself wishing for it; wishing for the pain and the sounds and the smell to end. She fell to the hard earth on the other side. The earth was warm, black, and gritty. It felt like sandpaper as she rotated her body trying to view her surroundings. Before her stood infinite black mountains as far as her eyes could see, below her forms writhed in a maddening frenzy. This is where it had brought her; this is where it had wanted her to go.

Memories came back to her in a flood. Memories that she wished would have stayed away. Memories of the things she had done and the lives she had taken. She quickly turned back towards the wall only to find that it was no longer there. All that stood in front of her were more of the sinister black mountains. She now knew where she was, she was in hell.

She now looked to her clutched hand, now knowing what she would find. Within her grasped was the heart that she thought had cared deeply for her; the heart that she had taken and then taken her own live for. She wept softly, not for the owner of the heart, but for her own. She had dammed the heart for the things it had done to her, yet now she would be the one to eternally pay. She let go of the heart she once held so dear and continued on to meet her fate.