The Weight of Unfinished Heartbeats

There is a place where time does not flow—not forward, not backward, but sideways, like a river hesitating at the edge of a cliff. It is the pause between one breath and the next, the silence between heartbeats, where the unfinished things go.

They call it "the Hollow".

It is not death, though death lingers near. It is not life, though life echoes through it like a voice down an empty hallway. The Hollow is where the almost-weres and never-wases gather, where love letters never sent turn to dust and last words swallowed down instead of spoken hang like ghosts in the air.

And in the Hollow, there is a girl.

Her name is *Elara*, though she does not remember how long she has been here. Time does not touch the Hollow, not truly. She knows only that she arrived with a weight in her chest—a heartbeat that had been cut short, a story that had no ending.

She walks the shores of a blackened river, its waters thick with memories. Sometimes, she kneels and presses her palms to the surface, watching as images flicker beneath:

- A man with her eyes, holding a photograph and weeping. - A door left ajar, a voice calling a name that sounds almost like hers.

- A promise whispered but never kept.

She does not know if these are hers. They could belong to anyone. The Hollow collects them all.

*The Keeper of the Hollow*

One day, she meets him.

He is tall and still, his edges blurred like ink bleeding into paper. His eyes are the color of a sky just before it forgets the sun.

"You are not supposed to be here," he says. His voice is neither warm nor cold. It simply is, like the sigh of wind through dead leaves.

Elara does not flinch. "Where is here?"

"The place of things undone." He tilts his head. "Most souls pass through. You are lingering."

She looks down at her hands. They are solid, real—but when she presses a finger to her wrist, there is no pulse. "Why?"

"Because," he says, "you are waiting for something."

*The Unfinished Symphony*

The Keeper—who has no name, or perhaps too many—leads her through the Hollow. They walk through forests of half-written poems, the words dissolving before they can be read. They pass by towers built from apologies never spoken, swaying precariously in a wind that does not exist.

Elara stops before a piano, its keys yellowed with age. When she touches it, a note shivers in the air, lonely and aching.

"Whose is this?" she asks.

The Keeper watches her. "Yours. Or someone else’s. It does not matter. Unfinished art all sounds the same in the end."

She presses another key. Then another. The melody is unfamiliar, but her fingers remember.

*The Weight of Almost*

Night in the Hollow is not dark. It is the absence of light, the space between stars. Elara sits by the river, listening to the whispers of the almost-lived lives around her.

The Keeper sits beside her. "You could leave," he says. "If you let go."

"Of what?"

"Of what you’re holding onto."

She thinks of the man with her eyes. The door left open. The promise unkept.

"I don’t even know what it is," she admits.

The Keeper smiles, just barely. "That is why you are still here."

*The Last Heartbeat*

When the dawn comes—or what passes for dawn in a place without time—Elara stands at the edge of the Hollow, where the world begins to fray.

The Keeper watches her. "Will you go?"

She closes her eyes. Somewhere, in a world she barely remembers, a man sits at a graveside. A door remains unclosed. A melody hangs unfinished in the air.

But here, now, she feels it—the weight in her chest, lighter than before.

She takes a step forward.

And in the silence between heartbeats, she lets go.

*The End.*