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Our Haunted Hearts
Chapter One
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The world has become a never-ending wake full of souls mourning what used to be.
This was the last thing Emma had scribbled in her notebook full of thoughts and memories written in her hybrid handwriting. Words written in a disorganized mixture of print and cursive, flowed to make streams of conscious thought. She had opened it with pen in hand only to draw another blank before exchanging the pen for a glass of vodka.
Emma sat in the living room, staring at the blank TV screen. The remote clenched in her hand like she had every intention of turning it on. But she hadn’t. Not after three glasses of vodka. The silence had seeped into the walls, as heavy and immovable as the grief that hung in her heart.
The house, haunted by all the unspoken words, had become too quiet. The laughter that used to fill the corners of this room, the soft conversations that spilled over the kitchen table during late nights, all gone. She could still picture it in flashes. Ava curled up in the armchair. Her messy hair fell over her eyes as she spoke in excited bursts about new painting ideas. Alex sitting beside her on the couch, his arm draped lazily over Emma’s shoulders while they debated what to watch next.
That had been their last night together.
Emma couldn’t stop thinking about it. The memory played on a loop in her mind, sharp and clear like it had happened mere moments ago; not months. She still remembered the text she’d gotten the next morning from a friend of Ava’s:
Are you okay? I just heard what happened on the news. I am so sorry. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do!
The words blurred now in her memory, not knowing what had happened until her phone rang. It was the hospital informing her of the fatal car wreck involving the only two people she cared about.
After re-reading that text over and over, she hit Delete, forgetting it as another smudge on the wreckage of her life. She’d never say goodbye.
...
—
The world has become a never-ending wake full of souls mourning what used to be.
This was the last thing Emma had scribbled in her notebook full of thoughts and memories written in her hybrid handwriting. Words written in a disorganized mixture of print and cursive, flowed to make streams of conscious thought. She had opened it with pen in hand only to draw another blank before exchanging the pen for a glass of vodka.
Emma sat in the living room, staring at the blank TV screen. The remote clenched in her hand like she had every intention of turning it on. But she hadn’t. Not after three glasses of vodka. The silence had seeped into the walls, as heavy and immovable as the grief that hung in her heart.
The house, haunted by all the unspoken words, had become too quiet. The laughter that used to fill the corners of this room, the soft conversations that spilled over the kitchen table during late nights, all gone. She could still picture it in flashes. Ava curled up in the armchair. Her messy hair fell over her eyes as she spoke in excited bursts about new painting ideas. Alex sitting beside her on the couch, his arm draped lazily over Emma’s shoulders while they debated what to watch next.
That had been their last night together.
Emma couldn’t stop thinking about it. The memory played on a loop in her mind, sharp and clear like it had happened mere moments ago; not months. She still remembered the text she’d gotten the next morning from a friend of Ava’s:
Are you okay? I just heard what happened on the news. I am so sorry. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do!
The words blurred now in her memory, not knowing what had happened until her phone rang. It was the hospital informing her of the fatal car wreck involving the only two people she cared about.
After re-reading that text over and over, she hit Delete, forgetting it as another smudge on the wreckage of her life. She’d never say goodbye.
...
