The Heart of Loneliness (A Short Story)

Up on the hill stands a solitary house. The only one for miles around, it looks down upon the web of houses below in its quiet loneliness. The skies are forever grey upon the hill, swirling and pulsing to unseen music. The house itself is quite unremarkable, save for the prescence, the sensation you feel whenever you draw close to it. Its bittersweet taste is caught in the wind, blowing down to the frightened people below, who scurry into their homes like mice to their burrows. No-one knows nor dare discover the truth - all that they're sure of is that within that house lies the heart of all loneliness. The heart of all loneliness, then, takes the form of a young girl. Her age impossible to predict, one minute she appears a comely woman of eighteen or nineteen summers, at others a mere child of seven. Her raven black hair at all times falls to her feet and marks a trail in the thickening dust behind her, mapping a labyrinth traced from years of untapped memory. Her limbs are long and thin like the branches of a willow, white and poignant in their starvation. Her dress is a simple sheath of dirtied white, torn and frayed from countless years of use. But it is her eyes that stop the heart and still the tongue. The eyes seem larger than that of a human girl, and rounder too. The lashes thick and sockets shaded dark with the sleeplessness of immortality, though beautiful go unnoticed once the eye itself is caught. For within glistens a world that beggars human belief. In only a passing glance, unlikely as a passing glance would be in such a place, the victim is caught, captivated and spellbound by these simple eyes that twist the mind and reaches beyond the limits of sanity. Because, she IS insanity. I suppose if she were to have a name Insanity would be a fitting one. She is the unliving possibilities of an artificial reality - our reality, and the meaningless desicions made by each and every one of us on a daily basis. And, most importantly, the truths that run before, behind and beyond our lies. The worlds and dimensions and countless little thoughts connected by nothing to everything. She is all that we deny and fear, held within a weary once-mortal soul. And all she wants, is a friend. Like a child who plays with a beloved toy so much it breaks, any brave soul that dare enter is crushed beneath the weight of all he has ever known turning to ash. She sits and watches, as yet another ally fails to make it through the mirror to her side. If her eyes could hold tears, she would have none left to weep. But human nature is not fit to carry the truth, and not one of the few courageous souls could swim the current, but fell into it instead, leaving behind beautiful corpses for the girl to wave goodbye. Still her mind searches, and I wake from my sleep as her lullaby voice calls my name. I wake, my head clearer than it has ever been to my memory, and my feet walk the labyrinth that leads to her door. Because all she wants, is a friend.