What the Heart Wants

The crumbling of stone, the rustling of the wind whipping the dust of what once was, is the all the can be heard for miles. At least, that’s what most people wish to believe.

You have been quietly rummaging in this old decrepit church for hours and still haven’t found anything really worthwhile. It doesn’t help that it’s nighttime, and even with the light shining from the blood-red moon, it doesn’t help with you being inside of a building. You can’t help but remember a time when a blood moon was rare, but ever since “The Misfortune”, the moon remains its now current hue. You shake your head, hoping to shake loose those memories. You’d rather not remember that time, after all, you need to keep focused on the here and now. As you were just about to get up and leave, you see a glint come from a nearby pile of rubble.

Making your way over, you carefully remove what seem to be pieces of the old church’s ceiling, to find a golden heart-shaped locket. You sigh in defeat, you had hoped it would have been something useful. However, something is drawing you this locket, something you can’t explain.

‘Not like it’s too heavy.’ You reason to yourself, carefully taking the locket out of the rubble and slipping it into your pocket. You then fearfully realize that it’s getting too late to continue scavenging now, so you begin to make your way back to your hideout.

It used to be a "luxury" apartment complex before “The Misfortune”, but with a few well-placed blockades in stairwells to traps and a durable fire escape, you've got yourself a nicely fortified place to stay. You make your way into your safe haven, after checking and double-checking your fortifications and traps, you set down your gear and take the locket to its new home.

When this hell had enveloped the world, you began to collect objects to make a memory room of sorts. You enter into your memory room, filled with DVDs of movies from your childhood, your father's prized bowling ball, posters of bands, newspapers, baseballs, and other such things. You made this room not just for your memories, but to also remember the lives of other people and what once was. After all, there aren’t many people anymore, just remnants of times before and the nightmares that now roam the world freely. But unlike the stories they use to read to you as a kid, these nightmares hunt during the day, which unfortunately doesn’t make the night any safer.

You take out the heart-shaped locket and figure that you should open it and see if there is a picture of the owner inside for you to display. You undo the small latch and slowly open it, as a flash of light fills your mind. Your vision begins to fill flashes of imagery, racing past you without pause, as you try to make sense of them. You see a loving couple moving into their new home, love in their eyes as they make their way inside.

Then they are fighting. Yelling and screaming at each other, slowly tearing the love they had apart. Leading up to a ghastly scene of one taking it too far... a murder. The survivor's grieving slowly developing into a rage full of "It wasn't my fault!" and "They made me do it!" and "They just couldn't do as they were told!" Then a ritual, the metallic and putrid smell of blood and rot permeating your nose as you view the scene unfolding in front of you. The survivor, or murderer, drawing strange and unfamiliar symbols on the floor a dead carcass at its center. Chanting words you don't understand, then inhuman screams, then laughing that morphs into crying.

The next scene unfolds with the murderer huddling in a corner, filthy and shaking with fear staring at the middle of a room with a golden heart-shaped locket. It beings to rattle and move closer and closer to the murderer as they scream "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Please forgive me! I don't want to die!", but their pleas did not stop the locket from inching closer. What happened next was so unbearable that you wish you could have closed your eyes. So you wouldn't see the tearing of flesh, the breaking of bone, or hear the blood-curdling screams... more death. Until only a puddle of blood and the locket remained.

Then the locket later being picked up and pocketed by a corrupt cop. Who takes it home, not knowing the terrible price they would pay for their greed. From then on, the images frighteningly began to repeat in almost a similar fashion. It wanting to be found, finding a new owner, getting what it wanted which always was... death. Nothing but death and misfortune.

The last image to fill your mind before the light fades is a young man running to a familiar more whole-looking church screaming for sanctuary. Pleading for God to save him. A God that would never answer, before the locket takes its next victim as "The Misfortune" strikes the world and the church collapses. Burying the locket beneath a pile of rubble, waiting to be found. Calling out for someone to find it.

You come to your senses, your blood turning to ice, as you hold a slightly trembling locket in your hands. The locket opens fully revealing a void of nightmare and pulsating flesh, as a hand shoots out latching on to your face, sinking its fingers into your flesh. You scream in fear and pain as it tries to pull you into the locket, so you can join all the others it has collected over the years. You try to hold it at bay screaming, all the while the grip tightens and begins to pull you stronger towards itself. Out of desperation, you begin to bash your face and the hand attached against the nearby wall, hoping and begging that this thing feels pain. Though as cruel fate would have it you never noticed that your father's bowling ball, which you have foolishly left on a shelf, began to slowly roll its way towards you due to your banging on the wall. It was an instant of pain, and then nothing. At least you were lucky to be spared the agony that was to befall you.

You are spared the sound and pain of your flesh and bones being crushed. Leaving nothing but a bloody puddle on the floor, as the locket snaps itself shut and waits. It won't have to wait long. After all, the other scavengers that followed you here should be getting through your traps very soon.