One of those Urban Legends by Terveen Gill

She was protected from the beginning.

The golden child, revered for being herself, unapologetic, unafraid, her heart comparable to heavy lead.

Nothing could penetrate it. No emotion was strong or daring enough to live in its depths. There was only darkness, the kind that swallowed whole without a pause or a breath.

She grew in the shadows of defiance but was decently labelled as assertive, a girl who knew what she wanted and would go to any lengths to get it.

Her father passed before her eighteenth birthday, her mother became a memory herself, swept away from sight, confined to a room with no windows, forgotten and remembered as the girl desired.

She had been a daddy’s girl from the beginning.

And her father’s work required concentration, little interference. She followed in his footsteps, breaking the law, dodging death, punishing those who contradicted her. There was beauty in bloodshed, an irresistible aroma to it.

She wasn’t a vampire nor any type of monster, simply a girl finding her way in the world, marking her path with red yet it was impossible to find her.

They searched high and low, cities, towns, and villages, but no one spoke a word for or against her. Some swore they had never heard of her, she was a myth, one of those urban legends.

But the dead never lie, and her wrath sealed their truths in the wounds upon their bodies. But who would call her out or reveal her true identity?

Perhaps a person seeking to die in a more grotesque manner.

The girl survived, the girl thrived, the girl died, mercilessly killed, her body found near a swamp, a hole in her chest, her heart missing.

It’s to be heard that her heart lives on inside the body of her sworn enemy, a man who wished to know what it’s like to have a heart of lead.

Dense and unsympathetic.

But those are my thoughts and who really cares what a senile woman like me thinks.

I’m the mother who now pretends she never had a daughter.