Non-art book

Unworthy.

I randomly wrote this last night, so I'm showing it to you.

:)

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I stared at the card.

Stared.

Stared.

I couldn't look away. Maybe if I stare at it long enough it'll change, fate will decide to take back its choice and give another. But it didn't. No matter how much I willed it, how much I begged it to change, that blackened heart stared with beady black eyes into my soul, sucking my heart into its malevolent maw.

"So? What is it?" Her voice knocked the breath out of me, its innocence contrasting to the foreboding fate that lie in my hand. My eyes looked up from the card, meeting blue eyes accompanied by an expectant smile. The heart clip in her hair was a bright red, but was still all too reminiscent of what I knew would now happen to her.

I couldn't find the words to speak. My trembling hand gripped the card harder than it should by one of its bloodstained edges. Slowly, without a word, I put the card on the table, facing up for her to see.

Her smile faltered, but only for a second. The new expression was no longer excited but... solemn, accepting. Painfully so.

"I see," she said with a small sigh.

I choked on my words as they came out of my throat. I don't recall the last time I'd cried, but tears poked at my eyes and threatened to fall like a crack in the glass of my soul. "H-Heart... Heart, I'm so sorry..."

"Shush." Heart was calm. Why was she so calm? Why was she so calm about this? I tried to look her in the eyes, but the sad truth forced my eyes away. "It's alright, Spade. If the Master decides I am unworthy, then I am unworthy."

A sense of what I could only describe as horror crept over me as those words left her mouth. My body seemed to go into autopilot mode as I stood, shakily walking around the table with my hand dragging the purple cloth draped over it. In my right hand I held the card, that card whose heart-shaped pupils stabbed me and dragged me to the void of Purgatory's depths. Heart met me at the centerline of the table, looking up at me with that same smile. I hated that smile. Forever I've been warmed by a smile on her face, but today that smile threatened to bring me to the ground.

Heart's hand brushed a tear from my cheek, her eyes compassionate. "Hey. It's okay. It'll be alright."

My own hand gently wrapped around her wrist. I felt like I couldn't breathe. "No... I don't want to do this, Heart."

"You have to." She gazed at me sympathetically. "I'm sorry. This is how it has to be."

I wanted to drop the card, let it fall, burn it, tear it to shreds, anything to escape this. But I couldn't. It has me by a leash, and it'll hang me by it if I don't go where it pleases.

I looked into Heart's eyes painfully. She was alright with this. Willing. Because of me. I raised her that way, raised her to know the cards knew best and never to question them. It was because of me that she didn't care that she was being taken too early from this world by the Master and the Masters before them, because they knew she was not the right apprentice for me to have chosen. I'm an idiot, I knew I should've just killed her then with her mother - if her mother wasn't good, then why would she be? - but there was just something in her eyes, something about the way she stared up at me with bright curiosity and not an ounce of fear that made me feel like she was it, that she would be my apprentice and the one to resume my job when my time was done.

All of it was for nothing, now that I stand here with the worst possible card in my deck between my fingers.

"Here."

Heart took something out of her pocket - a string, with four small, red and black rocks shaped into the four suits dangling from it. She always liked to carve. I found it fascinating that she could teach herself to do so. She took my free hand and placed it into my palm.

"I was gonna save it to give to you later," Heart sighed. "But I guess there won't be a later anymore. So you can go ahead and have it."

Each piece of the necklace was flawless, I saw - the rock surfaces were smooth, not a stray crevice along the surfaces. Diamond, spade, heart, club. Each was their respective colors. Where she'd found these rocks, I didn't know, and didn't care. This was all I would have left of her.

"Are you ready?"

I'd never be ready, but I needed to get this over with. My voice shook unsteadily. "Y-yes."

Heart nodded. "Okay. Goodbye, Spade. I hope you'll find a more worthy apprentice than me out there."

I had been certain, certain that she was the one, that she was the worthy human prepared to become the next master of the cards, the next prophet of fate. But apparently, the Masters say otherwise.

And something deep inside of me hated them for it.

Heart was standing a foot or two away. I held the card, looking at that black abyss one more time before turning the front to face Heart and letting go. Immediately it began to levitate, shaking slightly as tendrils of darker than dark shadow crawled out like a giant spider hoisting its giant body through the small portal. The tendrils found Heart's ankles, snaked up her legs at a rapid speed, and did the same with her arms. It encircled her, chaining her to its malicious void. She didn't fight, only closed her eyes and braced for the pain.

I looked away before I heard her final screams echo into a black void, and the card fluttered to the ground, just as it was before.

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1026 words