Page 3 of Heart Shaped Wreckage (standalone)

HEATH

Leath is not the worst place in the world to get lost. It’s a small village in Massachusetts, about thirty minutes from the coast and only a short drive from the New Hampshire border.

It’s quaint and has delicious seafood. The crab and lobster are always amazing, and I love crustaceans.

It’s the one meat I can eat as a human and not feel bad about.

Who am I? That is a very loaded question that could shake the foundation of humanity if they knew the truth.

I pulled the newly bought diary that I acquired to record much of my life from the shelf.

There needed to be a record of those of us who walked between worlds.

If I didn’t do it – who would? I put pen to paper and sighed heavily as the past flooded through me.

I walk through my life hiding who I am. I’ve been many things.

Some of them are older than civilization.

Once I was beautiful. I glowed with majesty and soared through the heavens, the cosmos, until I made a decision that changed everything.

I followed Lucifer, and I fell. My wings burned as I plummeted to the ground.

A never-ending fall that took away all of my grace and beauty.

I was left shriveled and horrid. My beautiful skin had changed into a furry monster.

I stared at my brothers and sisters, once the most beautiful beings in the universe, all had become monstrous and terrifying.

Horns jutted out of their bodies and faces. Some wore the skin of reptiles.

We were lost and horrified. Some stayed on the Earth, and others followed Lucifer once again into the pits of Hell, where we had been banished.

I stayed. I roamed the barren plains. I saw the birth of the animal kind and humans.

I watched curiously and discovered the wolf – an animal who looked so much like me.

I wandered and eventually discovered hunger and other emotions I had never experienced when I was one of the chosen.

Pain, sadness, loneliness, anger – but unlike some of my brothers and sisters, I kept my compassion and love.

They kept me grounded as I sadly remembered who I once was.

I despaired of the past and feared the future.

I slowly became tired as the essence of God slowly leached from my soul, destroying the connection we had always shared.

I slept in caves, and sometimes slept for eons as the world turned without me.

I’d awake and find myself changed once again.

The monster had grown, and my original form shriveled until there was nothing left of the past.

Every deep sleep brought on another change.

With every sleep, I lost more of who I was until I became a wild thing among other wild things.

Humanity flourished. They left their caves and began to build and cultivate the land. I paid little attention to them. They were there to satisfy my hunger – nothing else. They were nothing more than animals to me. But soon, their thatched roofs gave way to cities, and stone buildings were erected.

It was at this time that one of my fallen family found me as I preyed upon the weak. Their weapons had little effect upon me, and I satisfied my needs with their flesh. I was lost. I had become the monster I saw in myself and had lost all hope. The beast had won.

Lamass found me. She had been one of my family when we soared in the skies.

She brought me back into the world and showed me that I was still imbued with a small part of my godly essence.

I could shift form – from beast to man. It hurt, and I screamed with the pain as my body broke and knit itself back together.

Fur became flesh, and my claws and teeth withdrew.

I stared at my human hands – made in the image of the angels, the flesh of the chosen.

I laughed madly as she embraced me and took me away from the cave where I hid.

The bones of my victims were piled high in the corner.

I tried not to think about them. Once I would have been their shepherd, now I had become one of their fears.

A story told to warn their people of the beast that preyed in the hills.

Lamass took me far. At night, we shifted into our animal forms, and during the day, we walked beside the tribes, discovering a kindred spirit in humanity.

We came across a vast desert and into a place she called Babylon.

The stone walls reached almost to the heavens, and there I found a home and a purpose.

With Lamass as my guide, the people began to worship us.

It was a powerful feeling, and one I did not take lightly.

They called us the Lamassa, helpful spirits who answered prayers with their magical abilities.

Temples were erected to us over time, and unbeknownst to them, we lived side by side in our human guises.

At night, the animal within us took over, and we were worshipped for our strength and power.

Magic… The godly element that I thought had been lost forever was still partly mine to control. I was weak, but with Lamass’s help, I became stronger than I had been since my fall from grace.

I doted upon humanity, no longer feeding and satiating myself with their flesh and blood.

Now, as I remembered myself, I wanted to care for them in whatever way they would let me.

They were not the wild men I had thought.

These people had helped create society and family in a way that I had only thought the angelic had.

They truly were mirrors of us, even those who had fallen and lost themselves in chaos, if we could but remember.

For many years, we resided in Babylon and other cities in what was known as Mesopotamia.

My magic grew, and I discovered that I could hear the thoughts that the humans had.

I bestowed gifts upon them and healed those that I could when they asked.

I reveled in my faux godliness and, for a short time, began to believe it.

What was time to ones such as ourselves?

We would live for eternity, or so we thought.

We saw the writing on the wall as humanity became even greedier and began wars that would end civilization. Our angelic brothers and sisters, those who had not left God’s side, found us and drove us out from one of their chosen cities. It was the last time I ever saw the Heavenly Horde.

Babylon fell, and with it, dark times began for humanity.

But they rebounded, and so did we. No longer gods, but rich mortals who lived lavishly and befriended others like ourselves.

The few who had clawed their way back from destruction and still walked the Earth.

They told us chilling tales of others who had given up and had faded into the ether of nothingness.

What happened to the wretched souls of those who would never know heaven?

Did Satan reclaim them for his own? Were they forced into his servitude?

He had destroyed us all with his sweet words and heavenly battle. We heard tales of those who went to Hell with him and how they had lost all of their divine abilities but had gained new ones.

Demon. We had heard the word before. Now we understood who they truly were.

Our fallen family – their souls and bodies twisted by Hell’s fumes forever.

They had changed in ways that we hadn’t.

Our souls were still a part of us, but theirs had hardened in Hell.

They had lost the essence completely, and we still held onto, at least, a part of ours.

Their magic was dark and full of hate. Ours was still powered by our former angelic being. We could heal. They caused only pain and suffering.

But our knowledge of the world expanded.

Our conceit of who we were strengthened as we walked the world, drank its wine, and ate its food.

For a thousand years, we lived amongst the humans.

Then tragedy struck. We began to fade as our essences could no longer connect to the heavenly realm.

With every magical touch, we grew older.

We were terrified.

We slowly died.

Then we were reborn, but not as what we were, or even what we had become.

We became something else. Spirits unmoored and untethered to anything – God or Devil.

Lamass was the first to discover that she could possess a human body.

I was ashamed of even wanting to follow her down that path.

Taking away someone’s identity seemed to be the worst thing that we could do.

God had given free will, and who were we to take it from them?

But she lived and thrived in her human casing. The normal lifespan of a human in those days was less than fifty years. Most were lucky to reach forty before they died. She lived for hundreds of years, and we watched her from the realm of nothingness that we had become.

We grew jealous.

We wanted to live and walk the Earth once more.

With her guidance, I took my first victim in the moments before he died.

His body was too weak for longevity, but I inhabited his casing for a decade before withdrawing myself from him and searching for another.

Bodiless, my soul could travel the ether and find what it was I was looking for.

A strong body, young with a weak and decaying soul.

It took what felt like forever before I found Darrius alone in a sick bed with no one to care for him.

I slid into him and could barely feel his presence.

He had withdrawn, and I slowly stretched his weary legs and climbed from his deathbed, a new man.

I have worn many humans in my lifetime and lived many lives.

I still stay in touch with my brothers and sisters.

Technology has made it easier for us. We have had time to stash away our livelihoods.

Our riches and the treasures of our past stay safeguarded and secure in the vaults we created many millennia ago.

Finally, a hundred years ago, I found Heath.

He was not a normal human, and this intrigued me.

He was a magical being, a shifter – a werewolf.

I found a kinship with him even before I merged my soul into his body.

He made space quickly and, like all the others before him, eventually slipped away to join our father in Heaven.

Now I am he, and his body is mine. It is strong and powerful, and within him, my beast has sprung alive again, even if my magic has faded.

My tale goes ever onward, and Heath from Leath is a happy part of the small magical community that hides right beneath humanity's nose.

I wish I could say more about how the mages, witches, and shifters sprouted into being, but that is lost to me.

They always have been, as far as they know.

I have often wondered if my kind had anything to do with it.

The shifters, especially. It feels like home when Heath and I shift into our animal form and run wildly through the woods.

Only my brothers and sisters know me for who I truly am.

Magnus of the Heavenly Horde.

Lost soul after the fall.

Wanderer and faux god.

Skinwalker.

I persevere, but the loneliness of never knowing love beyond its mortal messiness haunts me. How can you love when you know you will never end, and everyone else will?

I close my diary—a project I began because I had a story that I wanted to remember. Time is meaningless and confusing when you’re as old as I. Thoughts, feelings, and timelines shift as I walk ever onward.

I wrote so I would never forget.

I wrote for the hope of one day sharing with someone who I wanted to know the truth about me. Magic and the world and people it had created gave me hope. One day, I might find someone worthy of walking the world with me.

One day, perhaps I would know love.