Page 3

BLEEDING HEART

Isolde

The street is dark as I venture down the empty, abandoned sidewalk, as if not even the souls of the dead want to linger any longer. Boots crunch in the snow underneath me, the cold night air is a heart-aching balm against my frozen skin, wrapping around me suffocatingly.

Skin tingling with unease, I hurry to my apartment a few blocks from the main square of Vexglade.

Yet, that eerie sensation of being watched still lingers, even hours later. It seeps deep into my marrow like a feverish anxiety stealing my breath.

The very walls of the alleyway are pressing into me, coming ever closer.

The nape of my neck prickles with awareness, but there’s no one in the alleyway.

I know I’m just paranoid because of how late and dark it is—a woman alone at night is never a good idea.

The deaths Casper told me about send shivers wracking over my body, how the victim was killed in a place much like this.

Just like my parents.

Bile travels up my throat until I’m forced to swallow it back, blinking away the tears pushing behind my eyelids. Memories wanting to resurface. Corpses filtering through. Lifeless eyes staring up at me. Cruel laughter.

I sigh in relief when I spot my apartment building ahead. The night is eerie, with not even the moonlight daring to reveal itself. There’s a sense of something long forgotten lingering in the air—a darkness that only seems to fester with every step I take.

Then, I hear it. Light footsteps behind me.

The snow crunches beneath my feet. Only, the sound doesn’t match my own pace. I dare stop for a second, but the sound instantly vanishes.

No one is there .

A look around my shoulder shows the truth—I’m all alone in an empty alleyway, in the middle of the night. No one would hear my cries or my screams for help.

I continue walking, clutching the grocery bag harder. The sounds of footsteps behind me resume, and I take a shuddering breath. Someone is behind me, but I can’t see anyone.

I never was a fan of the modern world; this apartment was the oldest one I could find once I moved after my parents’ deaths. The money they left behind was enough to last me a while, and I’m still merely making a living doing tarot reading online.

Reaching the apartment port, I enter the passcode just as I catch a glance over my shoulder.

A shadow lingers behind the corner, staring at me with its eerie eyes.

It’s gone in the next second, and I don’t know what to believe.

Quickly entering and closing the door behind me, I’m met with the hallway of my apartment house.

Stairs to the left reach the floors above, holding two apartments each, whereas mine is the only one on the first floor.

Hurrying inside my apartment and quickly locking the door behind me, the safety of my home does nothing to ease my nerves.

I flick on the light in my apartment, and the dim light fills the two-room space. One bedroom and one kitchen.

The sudden ding of my phone has my heart flying out of my chest, a gasp escaping me. I grab the phone with trembling fingers, reading the message on there.

CASPER

I’m sorry for earlier. I’m just so wound up from work and this murder…

Annoyance seeps through me as I read his message, knowing he doesn’t truly feel empathy. There’s nothing inside me as I think of him and me anymore—no butterflies that were there before. Nothing to indicate I still love him in the same way I did at first.

Did I ever truly love him?

He entered my life a few months after my parents’ deaths with his charming smiles and protective nature, after their demise—the people who I thought would stay with me forever.

The day they left, they took my heart with them.

I do not think it has ever been fully restored, and therefore, I cannot give it to Casper.

I’m not his to love. I never was.

And somehow, that doesn’t hurt at all. We’re both using each other for our own benefit, even when he claims to love me. That manipulative bastard.

I turn off my phone, not bothering to reply, holding it tight in my grip before I enter the kitchen that is big enough to host the living room as well; a small velvet couch pressed up against the wall with a small coffee table before it, where I usually eat my meals.

Loading off the grocery bag from the gas station on the counter—the only place open this late—I heave out a breath. Exhaustion wears heavy on me, and I’m so tired. Both emotionally and physically.

Something in the corner of my eyes flickers, and a frown mars my brows as I stare at the flickering candle on my kitchen counter, sure I blew them all out when I left earlier.

With tentative steps, I instantly approach the candle to blow it out. It has burned for a while, evident in the way stearine has gathered on the wooden surface. The clock on the wall reveals it is way past midnight, and I initially groan right the moment my eyes catch something else.

I almost missed it at first—a small black box right inside my door, as if it had slipped through the letterbox unnoticed. A ribbon of silk wraps around it, feeling like a bad omen, making me not want to open it. The number ‘ 6’ is painted on the box.

Curiosity gets the better of me as I approach it, lifting it up with trembling hands, nearly dropping it in the process. Carefully, I unwrap the silk, letting the top fall to the floor.

The inside has me dropping the entire box onto the floor. An item slips out onto the floor.

A dark-blue hair bow.

In the color of blue, with dried spots of blood.

No, no, no. This cannot be happening.

I cry out, stumbling backwards as I hit my tailbone on the kitchen counter, wincing.

I recognize that hair bow, I remember how that blood got there. Swallowing harshly, I’m suddenly plunged back into my past.

A calm lullaby fills my eardrum as she sings to me gently, huskily, her voice a soothing balm caressing my skin. Her hands are brushing through the tangles in my hair, right the moment the door opens, and he comes barging in.

“My god! You startled me,” she giggles, turning around to face he who entered.

I take a moment to meet his gaze in the mirror’s reflection, only realizing too late that there are specks of blood across his face.

“What did you do?” she asks, and I stare at them both, unable to comprehend anything.

He ignores her, enters the room, and walks up to me, his hands grabbing my hair bow and tying it to my hair. He doesn’t utter a word, but his eyes speak the words of a thousand anguished souls.

“Klaus! Call an ambulance,” the voice of my mother filters through to my room, causing my eyebrows to raise. Her voice sounds panicked.

I glance down at his knuckles, bruised and bloodied. “What did you do?” I whisper this time, and he sears my gaze in the reflection, specks of blood now dusting my blue hair bow.

“He got what he deserved,” was his only reply before leaving the room.

Later, I learned he had hurt one of my father’s friends for speaking about me inappropriately. The memory shudders through me now, my heart pounding so violently it feels like it might break free from my ribcage.

Terror mounts inside me as I stare at the hair bow again, forcing myself to pick it up.

Its texture, soft and smooth like silk on one side, cold and metallic on the other, is all too familiar.

The same smudged blood stares back at me, and the past crashes into the present with a force I can’t withstand.

This isn’t possible.

My breath comes in shallow gulps. The room tilts with it as my knees buckle, and I grab onto the counter for support. The memory of that night is too vivid, clinging to me like a ghost haunting its long-forgotten house.

How did this find its way back to me?

More importantly, why?