MicroHorror

Blood. It was all around me. It was on my pillow, my sheets, and my hands. I licked my lips and tasted its bitterness. Still I heard it. The beating heart. Surely we had killed him? We had pierced his heart with the same knife he put to my throat! Yet as I lay there in the darkness, his heart beat under my bed. The beating became louder. How could no one hear it? It rang in my ears. Before I knew it, my voice was piercing the night. Edgar, we killed him! We killed him! It was us! Take mercy on our souls! Seconds later, I awoke in my own bed drenched in a cold sweat. Nightmares. Part of my daily routine. Only this time, I had Edgar Allan Poe to thank.

Before I met Mr. Poe, English and I had been together for quite some time. We always did have a morbid relationship with one another. He would walk me down darkened hallways as I held his hand. We sat in graveyards at night and watched the bats fly swiftly across the moon. Together we experienced death, despair, torture, and pain. We watched lives end, and others begin. But soon, just like any other love story, English wasn’t enough for me. He was too broad. I needed someone more specific. Someone more consistent. I needed to move on. It was at that point in my life that I met Edgar Allan Poe.

Lust. His grotesque imagination matched mine perfectly. At a young age, I became consumed with Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, The Tell-Tale Heart. The theme of the protagonist’s insanity captured my attention immediately. Poe’s rendition of the beating heart bled inside my head. The symbolism of the dead man’s heart, compared to the guilt in our character’s soul, drew me to pay closer attention to the structure and style of our author. I could not believe that someone could create such a believable scene merely with words. I soon found myself reading The Raven, and The Cask of Amontillado. The suspense in his stories and the poetic flow in his words slowly began to captivate me. I was falling in love all over again, but it wasn’t like when I fell in love with English. There was no roller coaster of light and dark. No middle ground of happiness and pain. With Poe, it was just horror. Exactly what my life needed.

English couldn’t handle my relationship with Poe. I had left too quickly. He was still in love. So much in love that it turned to hate. Hate for the woman that had broken his heart. That’s why I have the nightmares.

English broke into my room late at night and placed the knife to my throat. Tiny droplets of blood rolled down my neck. Before I knew what was happening, Poe and I had him pinned to the ground with the knife in his throat. It all happened so quickly. Till this night, the beating of his heart still rings in my ears. I looked at Poe and realized at that moment that I was married to horror.