Winter envelopes the street with a coat of white, almost as if it is a warning. Everything is covered in its new blanket of cold. Soon the seasons will change and the snow will melt and the white will vanish. It looks like a faded memory now, enough to look compromised.
A lone figure walks down the street, footprints piercing its perfect coat of ice. The wind whistles a haunting tune promising despair and darkness as the figure stops at 18th Case Avenue. The door swings open without an invitation and the figure walks inside.
The streets are silent as they watch eagerly. Seconds pass and everything holds its breath. Then the door swings on its hinges and closes, and the figure reappears on the street.
The street watches at the figure leaves, as silently as it came. The only things that pierce the snow and indicate its presence are the gentle drops on the snow. Round ovals filled red echoing the footprints’ silent promise.
Never to return.
Never to be found.
***
The street is awake and the sky is awake. I am awake. I get out of bed and brush my hair out of my face. I stare in the mirror a little too long. I look at my reflection a little too long. Brown hair past the shoulders. Sunken brown eyes. Thin lips with nothing to say.
I try not to dwell on what I see. I don’t look like my parents. I don’t look like my cousins. I don’t look like anyone. It’s been the same thing for sixteen years. Never knowing who I am and where I should be.
Something happened when I was twelve. That’s all I know for certain. I remember flashes, images of what might have happened. Doctors say its amnesia. Doctors say it can’t be cured. Doctors say I can’t be cured. Doctors say a lot of things.
I want to know what happened. I want to know why I can’t fall asleep on my back. I want to know why I feel uneasy on a plane. I want to know why I cringe when people touch my back. I want to know why I’m different.
School doesn’t help either. They hide things from me. Whispers of what might have happened have echoed the same hallways for four years.
So each day is the same. I go to school and learn things but never learn what I need to know. Who am I? What am I?
YOU ARE READING
Heartstrings
ActionEveryone should be something. Heartstrings are rare. So what happens when a girl struggles to fit into the most conformed of all classifications? Celeste Ashwood finds out she's a Heartstring but doesn't fit in. Then she meets Hayes, a man with a tw...
