Her Heart Beats

My name is Taylor A. Terrell, and I am 15 years old.

My heart had started changing when I was 12.





There is something in my heart. 


Black and cold. 


It feeds on my existence and soul. 


It is tearing me apart little by little. 


I don't know what to do.


I'm hopeless.

---------------

Was I really going to do this? No one has ever done it and come out alive. But I had to. If I didn't, my family would be destroyed. I didn’t want to be the cause of my families’ death. I was only 12.

The government had caught my father stealing the healing stone from the Healer’s Hut. He needed the stone to heal the gash on my body. It ran from my left shoulder to my right hip. I was loosing blood fast and was going to die. No other healing medicine or technique could heal it.

My father had just healed me when they barged in. He was bent over me about to get up when the door flew open. There were two men in uniform with guns. They took a hold of my father and dragged him out. My father had dropped the healing stone when they had taken him, but someone came and retrieved it not even two seconds after my father had left.

They held a trail to determine his fate. It took five days; five excruciating days. I spent those days huddled up in a blanket at home doing nothing. Staring at the blank wall. Think of why this had to happen to my family.

I had little to do those days. My best friend, Ariel, would come and stop by every day. She would make sure I was entertained and still alive. My mother would rarely be home. She was only there to make food for my two younger sisters, and when she had to pick things up for the trial.

Bang! Crash!

The sound echoed throughout the house. It had sounded like someone was trying to break in the house. There it was again. I threw off the blankets that surrounded me, and stood up.

It was dark in the house. Every shadow made me jump. I could barley see ten feet in front of me.

There was a flash of light by my sisters’ room. I could hear the muffled footsteps of the intruder. Then I saw it. The face of the governor’s son, Matt. He was the one that broke in. Matt caught sight of me. He walked towards me and grabbed my arm.

“Come with me.” His rough voice echoed though the house. He started to pull me along making quite the ruckess.

“Shush,” I whispered, “My sisters are still sleeping.”

He nodded and rushed out of the house making less sound then before.

He pulled me along the dirt path that led to the town center. I kept tripping on rocks that got in my way, for I couldn’t see very well.

Once we got there I found out why I was brought there. They had come to the conclusion of the case.

The punishment for my father's crime was to watch me jump off the pier into the deep, dark, mysterious, dangerous waters. If I didn't jump my family would die. It was terrible to loose your oldest born child, even if it was a girl.

I was standing on that horrible pier. The one with loose boards and rotting wood. It was standing over the deep and dangerous waters of Da Lagoon. I could smell the salt water in the air, and could hear the crying of my 2 sisters and mother.

I turned around to see my family crowded in the front of the crowd looking depressed and sad. Tears coming from my whole family accept my father. He was trying not to show how much this hurt him, but I knew, I just knew him to well.

The whole town was crowded behind my family. I could not find my best friend in that mist, but I knew that she was probably crying her eyes out at home under her bed.

I shivered and turned back to face the water.

I shivered again and then truly noticed what they had dressed me in when I was still sleeping earlier that day. I was wearing a skimpy dress that came up to the middle of my thigh. The dress was made out of a thin material; almost see through, that looked exactly my skin color. The only way you knew I was not naked was the ends flapping in the air.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder.

I turned around to see Matt. He told me to jump off when he gets back on land. I nodded.He turned and started walking back to the safety of the land. I watched him go. I was filled with so much remorse and hatred I started to cry.

When he got to land his father signaled to me to jump. I nodded and smiled at my family for the last time.

I turned around for the last time and took a deep breath....

Then jumped.

I felt the wind slapping my face and body as I slid through the air to my doom. I felt the water getting closer and closer.

I hit the water in such impact that sent the air I had been trying to save out of my lungs. I tried to gasp for air but it was to late. I already felt my body slithering through the ice-cold water towards the bottom.

I shut my eyes tightly but found no difference from the darkness of the water and my closed eyelids for they were both pitch black, and both were wet and salty.

I felt something slither across my legs and up my body. I tried to see but all I saw was darkness. It wrapped itself around my head and pulled me down deeper into the dark waters of Da Lagoon.

I struggled for breath but found no possible way for air was far away up on the surface of the water. Plus, that thing was still gripping around my head.

I fell into unconsciousness but not before I heard three words.

"Her Heart Beats"