Page 2 of Heart Shaped Wreckage (standalone)

LANDON

Iwanted to make Myles pay for every smile he had ever given me – every sweet word he ever said.

I wanted to twist them into something dark and painful.

The trouble was they already were painful and dark – for me.

The mere thought of him broke me in two, and no matter how hard I tried to think of anything else, it was his face that haunted me.

It was a stupid face.

Stupidly handsome like he just stepped out of some Instagram ad.

I had to move on. But how was I supposed to do that when I woke up every morning still expecting to find him beside me in bed?

He wasn’t, and my heart broke once again – every morning.

Then every afternoon when we would work in my garden, my heart shattered – every dinner that he no longer shared with me made me cry.

I hurt, and I needed to make him hurt too.

I should have studied harder. A balanced witch is a witch who understands both the light and the dark.

That’s what Annelise had told me as I learned under her strict tutelage.

It had always scared me, though. Some powers and spells only caused hurt, and I had never wanted to… I had never needed to… Until now.

Now I wanted to wrap the darkness around me like a shroud and fill the air with poison and pain until everyone else felt the same way I did.

I had come unmoored from the code I had sworn to live by.

Alright, maybe I was being a tad overdramatic. I hadn’t done anything. I just wish that I could.

I had become woefully impolite, but thoughtful enough to stay inside where I didn’t need to see anyone. Myles had taken most of our friends with him except for Dandelion, my crow. He was incredibly unhelpful. All he did most of the time was stand on his branch and curse at me for being so sad.

There was also Bernadette, or Bernie, as I called her.

We had been friends for about as long as I could remember, and she, of course, chose me.

She also wasn’t the most helpful. All she wanted to do was either get me laid or bitch about the problem.

I was tired of thinking and bitching about Myles.

I just wanted to stop feeling or remembering any ounce of our happiness.

There were too many good memories.

They hurt.

But they were nothing compared to my last. I had no idea what was about to happen when he walked in on the last day of our relationship. He wanted to go to the library for a book that he had been wanting to read, and when he came back, everything seemed to have changed.

Were there warning signs?

Of course. But I chose to think of them as blips within the boundaries of our happiness.

He had become argumentative. He chose to sit by himself under the elm tree in front of our house, when I preferred the backyard.

He spoke on his phone and hung up whenever I approached.

He looked at me as if I were a stranger at times, even though his kisses were just as sweet.

His cock was just as hard as it had always been.

I… I chose to believe that it would all be ok.

He was dealing with something personal, and soon his thoughts would turn back to me.

It hadn’t been me that he had been thinking about.

It was someone else.

A witch named Willow – can you believe that? She had captured his heart, and his feelings for me had shriveled like a fruit left on the vine in the sun.

He had been honest, in the end, a few hours before walking out the door and leaving the things that meant nothing to him sitting where they were.

I came back from a meeting to discover he had packed what he wanted and had already loaded it into his car.

The dust rings where his things once sat stood out like a cancer.

He would always love me, but he was no longer in love with me.

Those words hovered in the air around me daily.

Three months of hovering and wishing. Three months of feeling lost and abandoned.

Three months of my heart being slowly and painfully torn apart, leaving only the wreckage of us in its wake.

“Fucking loser,” Dandelion danced on his branch. He was angry at me. I was too shattered to care.

“Dandelion, please stop. I know… I’m trying.”

“Then try harder. I’m bored,” He cawed loudly.

“If you want to help, then do anything besides what you’re doing,” I pleaded. I was getting exhausted from being ridiculed daily for having feelings.

“Wrong book, asshole,” Dandelion jumped from his branch and opened his wings as he glided over to the large bookcase in my small sanctuary. He pecked at a large red volume on the top shelf. “Try this.”

I walked over and climbed the wooden ladder before pulling it down. Dandelion jumped onto my shoulder and began cleaning himself under his wing.

“Stop that,” I barked without any emotion. All I could muster these days were tears and pity. “Love spells? I don’t think that this is what I want.”

“Fumbling about!” His caw made my ear ring with pain.

“Shush, you.” I took the book and placed it on my stone altar with engraved rosewood edges. I flipped through it. “I really don’t think this is going to help me unless I want to place a spell on Myles. Why would I want someone who no longer wants me? I’d still know the truth.”

“Spells for spells,” Dandelion chirped as he jumped from my shoulder onto the altar. “Myles broke you. Break Myles.”

“You dark portent,” I laughed at him. “You loved him.”

“I belong to you.”

“You belong to no one.”

“I chose you.”

“I chose you, too.”

“I hate sad.”

“I hate sad, too. But to get better, sometimes you have to go through it without aid, Dandelion. I’m trying. Give me time.”

“Humans suck.”

“Yes… I’m afraid we do.” I sighed heavily. Truer words had never been said.

I heard the doorbell ring from above. My sanctuary was in the basement, where the sunlight only penetrated where I wanted it to.

The back wall could open to the outside, and I had invested a lot to achieve this during the redesign I completed many years ago.

Moonlight was my choice, and when the skies were clear, its light shone perfectly upon my altar for many hours throughout the night.

“Bernie!” Dandelion flew from the altar and soared up the stairs. He didn’t have an omniscient eye. Bernie was the only visitor we’d had in months. All of my other so-called friends had abandoned me or chosen the devil instead.

I slowly dragged my feet up the stairs and around the corner to my small living room to find Bernadette standing in the doorway.

Her red hair, as usual, was a frizzy mess that surrounded her face like a halo.

She was not an angel, but not quite a demon.

She was something else. Something that lived in the gray.

Dandelion sat on her shoulder with his wings spread. I had not been very good company to him, and he was excited when Bernie showed up.

“You look like shit.” Her matter-of-factness was a trait I adored in her. “You have a smudge on your cheek.”

I reached up and wiped.

“Other cheek, dick breath.” Her laugh filled the room with the most joyful sound – a sound that had been absent from this place for too long.

“Pathetic,” Dandelion nuzzled into her hair.

“My poor sweet baby is being ignored.” She petted his beak.

“I’m just gonna go sulk in my lair while you two make out.” I frowned and sighed loudly.

“This has to stop, Landon. Your hair looks like a mop, and the bags under your eyes could hold my entire wardrobe. You can’t go on like this.”

I turned to look at myself in the mirror. My blondish-red hair actually looked like greasy dishwater. My blue eyes faded into the darkness that had surrounded them. They sank into my face.

“When’s the last time you ate something?

Please do not lie to me! I’d hate to curse you.

” The way she stared at me made my knees shake.

Bernie was my best friend, but she was also powerful and magically bipolar.

She wasn’t quite human, and not quite an eternal.

She walked the realms in between, but it wasn’t by her own choice.

She had been cursed centuries ago, and that curse had poorly backfired on the wizard who tried to hurt her.

Instead, he gave her powers that made her something more than she ever had been.

She still had her magical powers, but now she controlled the darkness as a daughter of Nyx.

Apparently, the old one liked to adopt wayward witches, which caused her alarm.

It was better to have them as a servant than as a foe.

Bernie was fierce and sometimes a bit mad.

I loved her.

“I know, mom…” I rolled my eyes. “I look like shit and feel even shittier.”

“Myles is the shitty one, and you’re letting him have too much power over you. He was hot, sure. He played Lacrosse and Rugby, so his body was Apollo-like. But! And this is a very big but – he was also kind of an asshole.”

“He was, but he could also be sweet and loving.”

“So can a shark.”

“He wasn’t always a…”

“A tiger is beautiful and would be great to cuddle with except for the teeth and claws. It could bite your face off.”

“Ok.” I threw my hands up in the air. It was not worth arguing with her when I knew she was right. “Point taken.”

“Go shower. This house reeks of desperation and sadness. When you come down, I will have a cocktail prepared, and we are going to talk about anything and everything besides the asshole and his little demon feet. Got it?”

I nodded. I climbed my stairs and heard Dandelion laughing hoarsely at me.

I quickly sniffed my underarms and almost retched.

I was a walking dumpster. How did I let myself get so…

Well, I knew the answer. When I loved, I loved with everything I had.

It was a fault of mine. I disappeared into him.

His favorite things became my favorite things, and if he didn’t like something I did, I swallowed it and forgot about it.

God… I was totally co-dependent and always had been.

I was a second-rate witch and apparently a third-rate human being.

Pathetic. Dandelion was right.

None of this was news to me. I had been down this road before, but I usually recovered faster than I did this time.

I really loved Myles, even if there were tons of red flags I should have noticed way before he left me.

But in my head, I wasn’t actually much of a catch myself.

He was hot, and he treated me great, most of the time.

He had his moods, of course. He could be a little nasty sometimes, but couldn’t we all?

Stop!

I had to stop trying to rationalize everything.

He was evil, and he needed to be destroyed. It would be a public service to take him off the board before he hurts someone else.

But I wasn’t God. I was just a mortal. I aged more slowly than most, but sadly, I did age. My powers would not keep death from my door. One day, I would have to stand in front of my maker and answer for the actions of my life.

What you put out into the world one day would return tenfold.

Myles would get his reckoning one day. The rules of Karma were very similar to the rules of magic.

An intertwining of different faiths that shared many similar rules.

I had seen spells backfire on the caster too many times in my young life. I was careful – too careful, probably.

I balled up my clothes and threw them in the corner pile that I had ignored for months. At this point, if I ever did get my shit together, I needed to hire a cleaner to come in. I had ignored everything. I had to move forward. I just wish someone would tell me how.

If I could forget about him, my life would be great. Who needs the friends that I didn’t choose? I’d find others. I was cute as shit, usually. I could be pretty again. I just had to stop thinking about him.

The water hit my skin, and I shuddered as I looked at the mire that had caked onto my arms from the basement.

Potion ingredients and dirt… I was gross.

I shampooed my hair and then grabbed my loofa before rubbing my skin to a pretty pink.

I was so clean I almost glowed. Of course, it took me a long time to get it all off.

My hot water heater was being forced to keep up.

Forget him… maybe that was the answer.

The real question was – could I do it?

There was a way…