Graffiti heart | Teen Ink

Graffiti heart

May 11, 2011
By TheSilverLaurel GOLD, Goole, Other
TheSilverLaurel GOLD, Goole, Other
13 articles 0 photos 70 comments

The room fills with the soft light of the sunrise as I lay, gazing into the beautiful display of colours, stretching it’s long fingers across the clear bluebell sky. I smile to myself, then frown. I have the strange feeling something bad was going to happen today. Something that was going to change my life forever.
I race downstairs, fully dressed, as Mum calls my name.
“These were just delivered for you,” she hold a bouquet out toward me.
I take the flowers from her. A breathtaking array of scarlet blossoms, brilliant white lilies and dramatic black roses. But who could have sent them?
I arrange them into a burgundy vase. I study the flora one last time before reading the card.
‘Check your school bag.’
I gawped dumbly at the scrawl. It seemed such a strange thing to write.
Curious, I pull the bag from the cupboard. Unzipping the fabric, I rummage through the books and revision sheets until I find a small card, with the image of a graffiti-style heart, like the one that had come with the bouquet.
‘Find the third heart.’
It doesn’t make sense.
“Monique!” Mum calls my name again. But this time, she doesn’t sound happy.
I find her in the kitchen. She glares at me and points to the wall. “Would you like to explain?”
I follow her gaze to find a heart, like the one on the cards, had been painted over the plaster.
“I didn’t do it!” I stammered. I turned to find I was alone.
I wandered into the hall, calling. “Mum? Mum? Mum!?”
A shrill scream echoed through the unadorned building.
I race through, frantically searching each room.
I found my mother’s body, laid across her bed, the graffiti heart slashed into the skin of her stomach, the crimson blood soaking hurriedly into her shirt.
Before a scream has the chance to pass my lips, a hand clamps over my mouth, something metallic buried between my shoulder blades.
“Scream, and I’ll shoot,” a voice hissed down my ear. The hand moved from my mouth, and skilfully fastened my hands behind my back.
I find myself being fastened, blindfolded, into the back of a car.
After what felt like hours of a roaring engine, I am dragged into the cold fresh air. The thick fabric covering my eyes slips, the scarlet light of sunset blinding me.
I look around to find myself in the last place you would ever want to be in at a time like this. The blood-red rays spill over the graves, into the freshly-dug hole at my feet.
“Get in, Monique,” a voice demanded. Then I realised how I knew the voice.
“Ben?” I turn to see him, the boy who sits next me in almost every class, thanks to the non-imaginative alphabetical boy-girl seating plans. Much to my embarrassment, he’d asked me out a week ago, in the middle of English.
As much as I like Ben, I was already seeing someone. If I hadn’t, I would have considered it. But he completely zoned out, a million miles away, as I tried to explain.
“Get in,” he snarls through his teeth. He shoves at my shoulder with the butt of his gun.
I glance down the hole. Already fitted with a coffin, the earth’s wound seems as uninviting as the barrel pressing against my chest.
“What are you doing?” my voice quivers.
He looks up at me, his puppy-dog eyes drowned in sadness. “You said no.”
I fall into the grave as the bullet tears through my chest.

I stand behind Ben he positions my bouquet of scarlet blossoms, brilliant white lilies and dramatic black roses on my nameless grave. The graffiti heart was engraved where my name should have been.
I reach towards him as he stands. My hand, pale and transparent, doesn’t materialize through his body as I expect it to.
He chuckles. “Your grave’s beside mine.”
Dumbfounded, I glance across at the mossy, weathered headstone. ‘Benjamin Rudnick.’
Ben wraps his arms around mine. Gently tucking a lily behind my ear, he whispers, his voice lost in the wind.
“Now you can’t say no.”
I bury my face in his shoulder, and all I can see in the darkness of the twilight is my ever-haunting graffiti heart.


The author's comments:
I don't know where this came from, I just made it up as I went along.

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This article has 30 comments.


on Jul. 25 2011 at 12:33 pm
TheSilverLaurel GOLD, Goole, Other
13 articles 0 photos 70 comments
thanks! :)

on Jul. 25 2011 at 12:32 pm
TheSilverLaurel GOLD, Goole, Other
13 articles 0 photos 70 comments
thanks  :)

on Jul. 25 2011 at 12:32 pm
TheSilverLaurel GOLD, Goole, Other
13 articles 0 photos 70 comments
thanks for the review, i'm working on descriptions

on Jul. 25 2011 at 12:13 am
NinjaGirl BRONZE, Valley City, North Dakota
1 article 0 photos 202 comments

Favorite Quote:
The only thing holding us back in life is our desire to stay where we are and not venture further.
~Some random person on the Internet :P

I think it maybe went a little too fast in the middle and end, but it's good, nonetheless!

on Jul. 24 2011 at 5:28 pm
Hazel-daisy GOLD, --, Other
19 articles 0 photos 324 comments

Favorite Quote:
It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else - Erna Bombeck

In three words i can sum up everything I've learned in life: it goes on -Robert Frost

Live, Love, Laugh - ______

Hope, Love, breathe <3 - Me

i really like it and surprised! i wasnt expecting this but yeah good story a bit creepy though! :)

leafy said...
on Jul. 22 2011 at 3:14 pm
leafy, City, Other
0 articles 0 photos 682 comments

Favorite Quote:
Gil: I would like you to read my novel and get your opinion. 
Ernest Hemingway: I hate it. 
Gil: You haven't even read it yet. 
Ernest Hemingway: If it's bad, I'll hate it. If it's good, then I'll be envious and hate it even more. You don't want the opinion of another writer. 

ok first, maybe a little bit more descriptions? i noticed that below you even described the characters in reply to a post, so maybe if you did that in you story it would be better, along with keep your tenses the same. and you said that you made it up as you went along, and i can kinda tell by the way the story is written. my last critical part is that it is a bit  tooooo dramatic. maybe as someone mentioned below, show some humiliation, maybe even a flashback. but that's it for the criticalness :). i still think that your story thrilling and fresh, and i like the original idea of the three hearts leading to ben. all in all, i think its pretty good, it just needs to be cleaned up a bit. keep up the nice work! 3 3/4 /5

. said...
on Jul. 22 2011 at 7:27 am
thanks! :)

on Jul. 21 2011 at 9:50 pm
Bushra Ghaniwala BRONZE, Oakbrook, Illinois
2 articles 0 photos 14 comments
WOW! Enough said.

on Jul. 21 2011 at 4:03 pm
TheSilverLaurel GOLD, Goole, Other
13 articles 0 photos 70 comments
lol. Thanks

on Jul. 21 2011 at 1:46 pm
PaRaNoRmAl627 GOLD, Mountainside, New Jersey
15 articles 0 photos 296 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Do what you want. If it's something you'll regret in the morning, sleep late."

wooooww. this was so disturbing lol. in a good wayy. your writing is beautiful. this is a greatt story :)

on Jul. 18 2011 at 9:57 am
TheSilverLaurel GOLD, Goole, Other
13 articles 0 photos 70 comments
a lot of people have commented on that, i'm working on it. Thanks :)

.Izzy. BRONZE said...
on Jul. 17 2011 at 6:12 pm
.Izzy. BRONZE, Broadview Heights, Ohio
1 article 0 photos 388 comments
Chilling-definitely my favorite kind of story. Beautiful use of descriptive words. It seems a little dramatic for a boy to kill his crush when she said no. Maybe Monique could have somehow embarrased Ben to have added to his anger? Other than that, I can tell by the writing style that you are an excellent writer. Good job!

on Jul. 17 2011 at 12:18 pm
TheSilverLaurel GOLD, Goole, Other
13 articles 0 photos 70 comments
Thanks, i'm flattered! That amazing! :)

on Jul. 17 2011 at 12:16 pm
TheSilverLaurel GOLD, Goole, Other
13 articles 0 photos 70 comments

Thanks!

I never really thought about what they'd look like. Theyre probably fifteen. maybe sixteen, that's how old most of my characters are. Monique's pretty, fairly popular but not the school queen, and Ben's probably geeky, shy, invisible.

Thanks again for the comment


on Jul. 17 2011 at 12:13 pm
TheSilverLaurel GOLD, Goole, Other
13 articles 0 photos 70 comments
thanks a lot, you don't know how much that means to me :)

on Jul. 17 2011 at 12:12 pm
TheSilverLaurel GOLD, Goole, Other
13 articles 0 photos 70 comments
thanks! :)

on Jul. 17 2011 at 12:12 pm
TheSilverLaurel GOLD, Goole, Other
13 articles 0 photos 70 comments
wow, thanks!

on Jul. 17 2011 at 12:11 pm
TheSilverLaurel GOLD, Goole, Other
13 articles 0 photos 70 comments
it is a bit, i'll work on that. Thanks for the review

on Jul. 17 2011 at 12:09 pm
TheSilverLaurel GOLD, Goole, Other
13 articles 0 photos 70 comments
thanks, i'll work on adding detail

on Jul. 16 2011 at 12:19 pm
emanmkhan SILVER, Austin, Texas
7 articles 0 photos 74 comments

Favorite Quote:
\"People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.\" Maya Angelou

Ohhhh myyy godddd!!! This is amazing!!! This has officially become one of my favorite articles. You are so creative and I especially love how you described the flowers, "A breathtaking array of scarlet blossoms, brilliant white lillies and dramatic black roses." Such good imagery too that I can see and feel everything you have written. Five stars to you!!!