LA8: Short story

There was a hole in his heart. He knew this, the doctors had told him it was true. The said he had done it to himself, what with all the years of stress he had put on it. That may have added to it, but he knew that there was another reason.
His heart was broken.
There was a hole in his heart, a little bullet hole. It was how the break had manifested. It had taken the doctors so long to notice it, but it had been there, growing in depression, for a long time.
It had broken when his daughter had left him. So long ago, now. She had been so beautiful, her hair gold in the summer sun, but usually a soft chocolate. Her face was flush and round and pure, not a mark to ruin her innocent perfection. She had a smile as wide as the waves of the Atlantic ocean.
She had been ten years old when she left and that smile had been more and more rare.
Her mother would have killed herself with grief if she had known. He had to be glad that she had been gone at the time. She had died only a few years before, cancer running through her veins and poisoning her DNA.
How hard to lose both a wife and a daughter.
They had gone hiking. They both loved hiking and did it as often as they could. When she was too small to walk the whole way, he would carry her on his shoulders or her mother would cradle her in her arms.
It was spring. The birds were loud and sharp, flying close to the ground in order to snatch up the bugs that were feeding on the freshly sprung flowers. They were climbing up a mountain, breathing heavily as they marched up the steep trail towards the peak.
They would have to turn around soon, as the sun had taken on an amber haze and was slowly falling from the sky. It's light was broken, trees black and strong in the way of it's hot rays.
He had said something stupid. It was meant to be a joke but it didn't come through that way. It was a stupid little thing and his daughter had taken it to heart. She was offended and she wasn't ashamed to let him know that. He'd always taught her to stand up for herself, but he'd never expected her to do it to him.
She told him that he was out of line, that she hated him, and that she couldn't wait until she eighteen, until she could move away from him.
She would have been eighteen this year.
She'd turned and ran off, back down the plummeting trail, down towards their old silver Chevrolet.
He wanted to run after her. He did. He wanted to hold her and kiss her and apologize until she believed him. He didn't. He stood still, like a dumb, mute deer, staring off after her. She didn't want to see him. She needed some time alone.
The birds were quiet.
There was a loud bang.
He was a different kind of deer. He wasn't dumb, he wasn't mute, he was fast. He leapt and bounded down the trail, towards the loud noise. His legs tripped over one another and branches caught at his face and there was a lump in his throat and he kept running. Had to keep running. Had to find his daughter.
Three men, all wearing reflective orange vests and haunted, panicked expressions, stood along the trail, looking down at a pink and brown and red lump. They had no blood in their faces, but there was blood all over their small kill.
He didn't even glance at them, he just slid to the broken child's side, scooping her up into his arms. There was a small red hole in her pink sweater, the last thing her mother had bought her, and it leaked profusely, the cashmere absorbing as much as it could. He buried his face into her hair, his eyes shut tight, tars bleeding out between his lashes. He rocked her quivering body softly, tenderly, telling her the whole time that it was okay, he was there, everything would be alright. He loved her very very much.
Eventually she stopped shivering and the tears stopped running down her round cheeks, drying to her pale flesh and her body grew cold. Still, he held her and rocked her.
One of the hunters had tried to take his baby away from him. He apologized for all three of them and asked if there was anything that they could do. He barked at them, a mad animal, keeping his baby out of their hands, clutching her even tighter against his bosom.
There was a hole in his heart. He knew this, the doctors had told him it was true. The said it would be an easy fix, he'd recover in no time. He hadn't told them that they were wrong. He didn't tell them what it really was. It was a bullet hole. His broken heart.

The blood trickled slowly down her thighs. She watched as it pooled around her cocoa skin, soaking into the shared mattress beneath. Both were riddled with scars, which stood out white and strange against her dark skin. How many times had she carved into them? No matter how many times she had cut, she had never found what she was looking for.
All she wanted was to feel. So she had taken the kitchen knife, the only knife she had, and had carved the simple clean lines into her skin until she could no longer see where they started and ended. They were a map, like capillaries, intersecting over one another.
She hadn't felt anything in a long time. Thinking back, the last time she could think of feeling something was when she was eight years old. Her family was poor and did everything they could in order to get by. She had been careless while washing the dishes and had dropped one of her grandmother's dishes.  It had shattered as it hit the floor.
She had been terrified of how her daddy would react and she tried to hide the mistake, but it hadn't worked. He found out and yelled at her, disappointed that she would be so careless. She couldn't stop crying the whole time that he shouted. He was so mad. She didn't think he would ever love her again.
Maybe the feeling was too intense. Maybe she felt everything that she ever could, all at once. Maybe it had broken something.
She thought it might have something to do with where she was. She thought that if she left she might feel again. Maybe her family was stifling her emotions. They felt so much, maybe there wasn't enough to go around.
So she left. She was thirteen when she packed her things, all of the clothes she could, some money, a camera, and a playboy, and left in the middle of the night. No one knew, her mom was asleep and her daddy was at his night job.
She'd traveled by train, by bus, even hitchhiked, a bit. Did everything in order to get to LA, all the way across the country. She knew her parents would never look for her there. It was bigger and flashier than her home town of Springfield, Virginia. So different. She thought she would feel something, just looking at the city, but she still felt nothing.
She became friends with the street kids, now being one of them. They showed her the ropes, taught her how to survive. There were certain people that you could beg and others that wouldn't give you anything, they showed her which were which. There were gangs and they showed her where their territories were, so she wouldn't get lost in there. They'd given her drugs, which she took without hesitation. She thought that they might make her feel. Some of them made her see things, others made her tired, but she still felt nothing.
They showed here which kinds of houses you could squat in, which really weren't inhabited or watched. She'd found apartments where a bunch of the street kids would pitch in to live in. That's where she was now.
She was sixteen now and had become a beautiful teen instead of the gangly mess she had been before. She knew that her life as a street kid was almost over. She could get a job now, could turn her life around, could be normal. She'd have to fake her name, of course, there'd be no point in her parents finding her now.
She put a bandage over the wound on her leg and pressed firmly against it, trying to stop the blood flow. She pulled up her tattered blue jeans and stepped towards the mirror. It had been there since the last tenants disappeared, died, moved out, whatever. It was broken, cracks running through it like white veins, and the pieces were helped together with large strips of clear tape.
She was a bit too thin from malnourishment and there were heavy bags under her eyes, showing how hard it really was to sleep on the streets. She knew she was pretty. She could get a job with her looks faster than she could with any sort of degree.
As she looked over her hazel eyes and soft brown skin, she wondered how long she still had as a street kid. She wanted to be a street kid. She didn't know how to be a bag lady or any other form of homeless person. She leaned in towards the mirror and pulled down one of her lower lids, looking at the redness and sighing.
She couldn't keep this up. Maybe she should go up. She'd end up a prostitute at this rate.
Maybe she should get help.

She was born to be a bride.
She spun around, her wedding gown twirling around her thin, pale legs, the lace and merengue adding volume to her tiny frame. White and pure, just like she was.
It had a tube top that fit just snug enough to not make her worry about it slipping down at a bad moment, but it was loose enough for her to breathe without any real issue. It came with lace gloves which matched the sash that went around her tiny waist and hanged down the back of the dress, as well as the veil. There was also a pair of flawless white pumps.
She was born to be a bride, but where was her groom? He had to be around somewhere. He was a handsome man, with thick sideburns and thick black hair. He was tall, dark, and strong, her exact opposite.
He had asked her to marry him a long time ago. She had been so mad at him when he did it. She remembered every thing about that night.
He had taken her to Two Chefs, a small, but fancy Italian restaurant. The whole time that thy ate, he held her hand, which made it extremely difficult. She had wanted him to quit it, but she didn't say anything out of politeness. Once they had finished eating, he told her that he was tired of dating her. Their relationship had grown stale, he didn't want to be with her the way he was anymore.
She was furious. Of all the things her could say, of all the ways he could break up with her, why did he have to do it this way? In a public place?
Angry and hurt, she rushed out of her seat, getting her things together to leave. She had almost gotten her coat on by the time he got on one knee, kneeling just before her. In his large strong hand was a small gray box, a huge diamond ring nestled safely inside of it.
Of course she said yes.
Three months later she was waiting to go up to the alter, her arm in her father's. He was smiling. Everyone was there. Everyone who loved and supported the both of them.
Her father opened the door, ready to present her. She was born to be a bride, that's what he'd said. That's what her mother had said. The priest was at the alter, all ready to go. The bridesmaids were gossiping on one side, trying to figure out what was going on, while the best man stood on the other, his cell phone pressed to his ear.
They were looking for the groom.
Where was the groom?
They waited half an hour. They waited a whole hour. Two, five, a day. They never heard from him.
She called him, she went to his house, she hired private investigators, she talked with the police and the press. No one knew where he had gone. He had simply vanished.
She was born to be a bride and a bride she would be. She kept everything ready, hoping he would reappear. Everything was exactly the way it had been.
Well, not exactly. She had started smoking and she drank a lot more now. All of her old friends, as well as his, had grown tired of her obsessing and had abandoned her. She wore the dress every day, just for half an hour. It made her feel whole. It was how she was supposed to be. A bride.
How long was she supposed to wait? It had been eight years, surely she couldn't be expected to believe he would reappear all of a sudden. She hoped he would. She dreamed he would.
What's the point of a bride if there is no groom?

He fell from his chair onto the itchy, tan carpet, clutching at his chest with cold, sweat drenched fingers. The hole in his heart was gaping, blood filling it and pouring out, uncontained. The television went silent, as did the clock on the wall and the birds outside the window. The only sound was his own aggravated breathing and the anything pumping of his dying heart in his ears.
It was time. He grinned as best he could through the pain. He was going to see his daughter again.

She hissed at the pain of it, putting as much pressure as she could onto the wound. The blood was coming to fast, too thick. She had cut too deep. It hurt. It actually hurt. She smiled through the pain of it, through the tears in her eyes. She could feel. She could honestly feel pain and emotions. The blood was hot and sticky, there was too much of it and it wasn't slowing down. She could feel now. She didn't want to lose that. She wanted to live, to continue feeling.

She could see the waves, like heat, coming off of her once white dress. How beautiful it had been, so white and clean, but now it was stained a pale brown and the stench of it was terrible. She stood in front of the mirror, an old maid, her mascara tears dried on her face. She looked like a worn and tattered whore with her makeup like that. She lit a cigarette, smoked it lazily, and set the empty gas can down by her feet. She inhaled until the cigarette was almost completely gone, the ash almost burning the lace of her gloves, then took one more inhale.
She dropped the still burning butt onto the front of her dress.

The firefighters got to the apartment as quickly as they could. The fire was horrible, but they were fast enough to stop it before it spread to the other apartments. A few of them went in, straight up to the eighth floor of the building to try to save the man who was supposed to live there. It was arson, obviously. They saw the man lying, facedown, burned to death, an empty gas can only inches away from him. He was a man with a hole in his heart, one that would have killed him anyway.
They searched the apartment, just to make sure it was a suicide and not that someone had faked it. They never could figure out what was going on with the wedding gown that was laid out on the bed, white pumps and lace gloves set lovingly beside it. They couldn't explain away the bloody kitchen knife either, which was hidden under the mattress next to a shattered mirror.
It was all chalked up to one of the strange mysteries that befalls big cities like LA.