A shadowy figure, veiled in black garments, slowly made its way through the cemetery. The engulfing darkness seemed omnipresent, and the crescent moon’s light was obscured by storm clouds, stealthily making their way to choke it out completely. It was deathly cold, a cold that completely penetrated the shadowy figure’s soul.

Abruptly the figure stopped, turned, and unveiled itself. A beam of the moon shone down upon its face for a brief second, revealing the face of a young girl with long, tangled hair, wildly blowing in the violent wind.

The girl was staring hauntingly at the many old gravestones nearby. She lifted a hand up, revealing a pearly white arm underneath her tattered sleeve, and then uttered something under her breath. Without another sound, she ceremoniously sidestepped until reaching the fifth gravestone, and ominously lowered herself in front of the cold, engraved stone, until her body was fully embracing the dirt.

There she laid for what seemed like hours—just laid there, face down, shaking silently. But she never uttered another word. You wouldn’t have known she was there, unless you looked very closely into the darkness and realized something was moving. Her small, fragile body trembled in sheer agony.

Suddenly, she got onto her knees, reached her hand into the crease of her garments, and pulled out a hand shovel. She began digging into the soft earth of the grave, vigorously, with inhuman strength, until her breathing became laborious. Frantically, she put the shovel away and desperately started scraping with her hands.

Her mind wandered for a moment, as her hands flung the dirt to the side, moving in a rhythmic motion—until she hit something, calling her back to the present. Her searching eyes made out the edges as she traced them with her fingers, outlining the shape of a heart. Quickly, she brushed away the mucky humus, and cautiously raised it up.

She stared at it for a moment, and then, taking out a key from her pocket, she solemnly opened it. Cre-e-e-k, the cover went, and an eerie, outlandish hiss escaped it, as if it was exhaling from a long, deep breath. Before her eyes got a chance to glimpse its content, the girl moaned and dropped the box.

The girl turned away as the box rolled and fully opened on the ground. A rotten, weakly pulsating, bleeding object rolled slowly from the heart-shaped box, and black smoke issued forth from it. It reeked beyond belief. The object stopped rolling and rested a few feet away from the girl and its grave—only now it was not a single object, but an object torn in two.

The girl groaned and started to sob uncontrollably, while the broken object smoldered in the darkness. She finally had a bout of courage and forced herself to turn to look at what she had dug up. Her dark eyes caught a glimpse of the hated, broken object, and she gasped and started to choke violently. She couldn’t stand it. Why had she come back again?

Through her sobs, words from her mouth managed to tumble out towards the broken object: “It was all his fault! He did this to you, not me. It wasn’t my fault. Please forgive me for letting this happen.”

The broken object remained there, smoldering—smoking—reeking. It did not answer. It made no attempt to answer. It was just a broken object, nothing that could talk, or move on its own accord, except for the little life it showed by its almost undetectable pulses. Though now the girl heard a voice—a voice inside her head, from her heart, saying, “You silly, pathetic girl. You should’ve known he would do this to me. Why do you keep coming back to my grave? You should’ve known this would happen. You felt it when he would ridicule you, lie to you, be unfaithful to you—you could feel me cracking, breaking, and straining under the pressure. Why do you come back to grieve at my grave? You’re the one who helped put me into this unrest, you stupid girl.”

The girl started to shriek, her hands reaching for the broken object, as if she was begging it to reconsider—as if she was pleading for it to fully come back to life. But nothing happened. The broken object still looked as if it was burning in the pits of Hell—that image penetrated into her soul and made her shudder with horror.

“I’m sorry,” the girl said, “so sorry…” She struggled to recover the broken object with her filthy hands, and upon reaching it, she slowly, carefully cradled the pieces, her hands cupped. She cradled them near where they should’ve been in the first place—a place where they used to be whole. She shed her tears upon the broken halves, splashing softly but sizzling instantly into the surrounding mist, one by one.

It was no use trying to heal this fractured heart. She had tried ever so hard since the first day, but nothing she did made a difference. And it only got worse every day; every day her heart got filthier, more hateful, more cut up.

A year ago it was to the day when she had finally decided to bury her heart in the graveyard of her dreams, and with each day passing ever since she tried to put it back together. No tears or pleadings worked, nor did other patches she tried to sew on. It would not let go of the hurt.

“Please,” the girl pleaded, while she cuddled her broken heart, “there must be something I could do—”

“No,” it growled in her head, “I am forever scarred. Someday you will have to wake up to that reality and accept defeat.” It made an attempt to make her release it by burning her hands, but alas, she only bit her lip until it drew blood. “Put me back—it’s no use.”

“I—” the girl stammered, “I only want to heal you!” Her voice slowly grew louder, as if she was gaining confidence in her words. “Isn’t that what you want? To be healed?”

The voice hesitated, then paused in a moment of hopeful contemplation, but her heart yet again hardened. “You cannot heal me,” it stated firmly, coldly.

She stared down at the contorted halves of organ pulsating in her hands, and grimaced. She hated and yet loved this stubborn object, her heart—it was a part of herself, after all. She hated it when it made her feel this way—when it made her feel so dirty and selfish—but she loved all the memories of it when she had given it to… him.

But she would not think of those memories. Not now, not after what had happened. It brought back pain that she couldn’t describe in words—a pain that lead her to blame him for every bad decision since, for everything wrong happening in her life.

That pain was almost but not yet completely gone from her system… all except for the most important part: her heart; her emotions. She could not convince it to let go. Her thoughts were clear—it knew her heart should let go, to be free—but doing it was another thing. It was either she did not have enough will power, or her heart was far too hardened to be changed. Or perhaps she simply enjoyed being depressed.

No, she thought, shaking her head, I do not enjoy this maddening feeling, this deep and dreadful state of self-loathing.

Suddenly, she screamed as she felt physical pain, bringing her back to her nightmare. It felt as if her upper arms were being electrocuted by a wave of electricity from wires her arms were ensnared in. She looked down, and much to her dismay, her heart was sending red shock waves up her arms.

“Stop!” she screamed. “Please, I’ll put you down, just stop!”

She heard a soft chuckle as she immediately plopped the two blobs of muscle on the damp ground. Unless her mind was playing more tricks on her, the two pieces of her heart started rolling towards the hole by the gravestone, and silently dropped down into the darkness, vanishing completely from her sight.

The girl just stared at the hole, wishing she could sink into the ground with them. She sighed a sigh of defeat, slumped, and thought, Again I’ve failed. Will it ever end? Will my heart ever be convinced?

Sprawling face down on the dirt, she again crawled closer to the hole, very slowly, moving inches at a time. She stopped occasionally to rest, her fatigue nearly overwhelming. But she would not give into she did, she might not be able to get back to her heart, to her inner self—she had to keep vigilant in this abysmal world of death and darkness until she fixed herself from the inside. She yearned to be happy and free, and only until she accomplished that would she rise again from the ashes to see the sun and feel the warmth of it.

A little bit… more… she thought, fighting to keep her eyelids open. She groped her hand forward, pulling at the grass with her long fingers in an attempt to pull herself forward. The blades only snapped, allowing her a handful of grass and dirt. She stifled a yawn, and immediately scolded herself by banging her head to the ground. Must… stay… awake… were the words she kept pounding in her mind, right along with the beat of the distant sound of her pulsating heart only a few feet away.

Just a few feet… she thought. With her last spurt of energy, she lifted herself with her arms and flung her body right in front of the hole, with her left hand outreached. The very tips of her long fingernails came within inches of the hole, when suddenly the side of her head hit the sharp side of a corroded gravestone. Blood spurted out, and before she could utter a sound, she surrendered her conscious in defeat. Slumped, her white groping hand dangled right over the edge of her heart’s hiding place…