The Dangers of the Heart.

“They used to believe I would hold their love for them, as I am a monument of all that is love. But human beings are strange things. They seem to forget that hearts hold just as much destruction as they do life, just as lockets hold as much forgetfulness as they do memories. I am more than just flesh, I am the metal that binds my soul to the chambers of love. I am more than just blood, I am the memories that fill my veins, the ashes that long to be burnt once more. And when the ashes burn, when the metal melts, the sun will find shade in my destruction. I will blaze louder than a heartbreak, I will flame brighter than a kiss. And I will ruin them. I will ruin them all. For a heart shaped locket may seem fragile at first, but it is the heart that beats stronger than a love ever could.”

Where to begin? Ah, yes.

My name is not important. Nor is my age. I am the Heart Locket. And I am to die soon.

The world was once so beautiful, perhaps that is why it was destroyed. After all, destruction lasts longer than beauty ever will, I forget that sometimes.

But I’m getting too ahead of myself. Let’s start over.

The world was once so beautiful, it’s destiny so alluring that it was impossible to not be sucked in. Life filled the streets louder than water fills the ocean, the untethered feeling of joy swimming through the falling air, lighting streets on fire as it burnt its way into the glowing sky. We were happy, we were free. Of course, in every story, it is these moments where everything falls apart.

There are human beings, and then there is us. The Lockets. But we don’t go by that name anymore. We are human in every way except for the magic that flows through our veins and the burnt scar left on the skin of our hands.

We have different categories, and these categories define our lives for us.

Life and Love.

The Life Lockets live to help other people live. They take away their grief, their anxiety, their shame.

The Love Lockets live to help other people love. We take away their pain when love gets too hard.

Each category has a different shape, and these shapes are burnt into our skin from the moment we are created, birthing a scar into the blood of our existence. It is not done to us by anyone, they just appear. We do not know why we are chosen, just that when we are chosen there is no way to change it.

The two shapes are a Circle or a Heart.

The Circle represents the circle of life.

The Heart represents heartbreak.

I am the Heart Locket, the Love Locket, and my sole purpose in life was to erase humanity’s heartbreaks. I open my locket, drain away their pain, and let them live a life with a light heart despite the heaviness that darkens mine.

We burn with the passion of power, our blood flows with magic the same way others flow with water. Sometimes I wonder if I have any blood left in me at all, or if my body has been filled up by memories left by those who don’t wish to remember. We feel everything always, and that is as much of a gift as a burden, as too much feeling has always been the root of everyone’s problems. Well, at least it was the root of this one.

See, the Life Lockets feel too much. They have to hold onto death and accidents, birth and pain, they have to remember everything life wishes to forget as it screams into their soul for the rest of eternity. They begged for the memories to go, their lockets almost splitting in two at the weight they kept locked inside. Oceans of regret and loss spilling into their bodies the way light creeps in through the blinds, you don’t notice it at first and you think if you just keep your eyes shut you won’t have to face it; but suddenly it is there, burning into the soles of your pupils, and you cannot run from it yet you can no longer stay where you are.

And so, the Life Lockets felt too much. And everything fell apart.

They exploded, centuries of memories and feelings leaking out like rain on a winter's day, trickles of regret sneaking into those who smile, clouds of anger smoking their way into those who giggle, droplets of sadness breaking into those who do not cry, waves of death collapsing into those who felt the most alive. Their lockets disintegrated, as did everyone else.

Humanity could not handle it, the decades of long lost memories no longer hidden away now bursting into the blinding abyss that humanity imprisoned themselves in. They quivered in agony, collapsing in on themselves like the dying stars imprisoned in space. Perhaps that is why we have stars, to show that even the most beautiful creations still burn out eventually. Those who could not outrun the memories were forced to welcome them into their minds. The frightening voices that were not their own and the suffering pain that wasn’t theirs was just too much. Their bodies could not handle it, their minds could not handle it, so they broke, they crumbled and they died.

There were only a few survivors, people who had locked themselves away and stayed hidden from the corpses that flooded the streets outside. The rest of humanity was not heard from for a while, the world falling apart right beneath their feet yet no one could dare to move, for the fear of insanity was too powerful to be denied. So humanity hid away as the world crumbled apart. Until someone decided that it had been long enough, and to hide in fear of something that was no longer occurring was as stupid as fearing anything at all. So he took charge, forced people out of hiding and threatened others into hunting down the rest of the Lockets. That includes me.

The survivors still tremble. They remember the screams, echoes of misery still haunt the once crowded alleyways and ghosts still smile cruelly from behind the shadows. They mostly smile at me. It is because they know that their grins are the worst omens of all, for the blood they bled still sneaks through the cracks in their teeth, and the broken skin that lives lonely on their lips still crumble as the smile widens. I’ve learnt to look away.

All their grief says the same thing, “this wasn’t how it was supposed to be”, but that’s not true. It is supposed to be what it is supposed to be, one cannot change the current of life anymore than one could change the colour of the moon. I hear it in the shadows behind the prison cell, I hear it in the eyes of those who locked me away, I hear it in the way the stars laugh at me as they glare down on what they created. “This wasn't how it was supposed to be.” But this is how it is.

My name is not important. Nor is my age. But I do have one, a name that is, yet it appears the rest of the world forgot that when they locked me away. Instead, they created a new name, one that sunk its teeth into my soul and refused to let go despite the blood that spills out because of it. ‘Daemonium’ is the name, it means demon because that’s what they think I am. They refuse to believe that someone as dangerous as me could be as human as them. I scoff whenever the word is spit at me, saliva flying through the air like venom on the tip of a dagger, because it is so incredibly ironic. We may be different people but we are the same, even if they refuse to admit that. They can believe that I was created in hell, but the earth bred more demons than perdition ever did.

Alright, now you are all caught up, let’s continue.

They are currently setting my execution date. Grim, I know. Human beings are inherently cruel, despite their determination to lack cruelty. They believe that as long as a ‘Daemonium’ remains in their universe that the ghosts of the past will continue to haunt them. It’s quite silly honestly. The ghosts only haunt me. However, I am but a monster and my words matter as much as my life, which is to say that they don’t matter much at all.

Tomorrow is my death sentence. Tomorrow, humanity believes that I will go, that my riddance will somehow grant them the peace they long for. But they do not know me, therefore they underestimate my abilities. A Heart Locket is not weak, we do not quiver and we do not break, for our hearts are tougher than anyone else’s. The strength within us, within me, is beyond anything their soul could ever create. I am made of memories, therefore I am made of everything.

And I refuse to die in a way that won’t matter.