Destroyed? Or dangerous?
I’ve long had the concept in my head of a broken heart being a literal, physical thing. Imagining how the hairline cracks, caused by pain and betrayal, went unnoticed at first. Picturing the fault lines getting bigger, the breaks becoming more obvious, until the final, explosive shattering into razor-sharp fragments. How long before those jagged edges turn into weapons, cutting anyone else who comes near? How fine is the line between destroyed and dangerous? Can the very act of breaking something make it more deadly? A sort of reverse kintsugi?
At first, I thought the idea might turn into song lyrics – but nothing ever seemed to flow.
A Wild Run anthology
The idea of turning it into a short story never occurred to me. Until I saw a very exciting post from author Melanie Mar about an anthology she was putting together.
Melanie’s concept is to show the unique creativity that’s intrinsic to humans. Each of us would be given the same prompt and the varied results would be a quiet testimony to our individuality. In Melanie’s words:
You can give the same prompt over and over to a machine and it will spit out the same, if not largely similar output. Give eight authors the same prompt… and watch what the human mind can do.
Our prompt? “Your MC is running through the woods. Why?”
Although I still hadn’t got my broken heart concept out of my head, even at this stage, I still hadn’t connected the dots between the two projects – and why would I? Running through the woods + broken glass hearts = not an automatic match! No, I was well and truly down the rabbit hole of thinking about starting the story with a character literally running through the woods.
That’s when inspiration struck…
There was absolutely nothing in that prompt to say my story had to begin that way. What if it ended that way? What if it middled (not a real word) that way?
An AI model would also be very likely to kick off its output with the visual had been given. What if I subverted expectations? What if this was my chance to explore exactly who the owner of the broken heart was – before she went on the run?
The Girl With The Heart Of Glass
I wrote my story almost in one take – the whole thing flowing from me like a dam had burst.
Here’s the blurb:
She’s pure glass. He’s pure evil. When she’s sent to be his queen, she only wants to be loved.
Instead, she’s paraded like a trophy and stripped of her autonomy. A chance meeting with a charismatic rebel sets a chain of events in motion that threatens to shatter her whole world.
Can she prove to everyone that glass isn’t just breakable? It’s dangerous.
As with all my stories, please be sure to check the trigger warnings before diving in. My work explores some of humanity’s darkest aspects and I want readers to make informed choices about whether my content is right for them.
That said, I’m so proud of this short story and, if you read it, I hope it resonates.
