Broken Fairy Tale (Short Story)

Once upon a time, there lived a girl who did not believe that she could not prevent her heart from being broken.

"It's impossible," all her friends told her, in that same sad voice that spoke of experienced heartbreaks and lonely nights spent crying themselves to sleep.

"You cannot protect your heart forever."

But the girl remained stubborn.

"I will prove you wrong," she said determinedly.

And so, she painstakingly wrapped her heart in thin strips of white cloth, before encasing it in a thick coat of metal. After the metal had cooled, she carefully placed her heart in a steel box and locked it.

"No one can possibly break it now," she thought to herself happily.

Days passed by, and the girl led a life that any normal girl could possibly lead.

She never bothered looking for a love she thought she did not need.

Then, there came a day when love found her.

At first, the girl and the boy were just friends. But slowly, it grew into something more than that, and on the day when he asked her to be his, she said yes.

She never thought he'd be the one to break her heart.

Still, protecting one's heart and learning to love someone at the same time was difficult, and the girl struggled in trying to do both at the same time.

However, you cannot learn to love someone without giving your heart up in the process, and the girl was at odds with herself.

The boy did many things for her, making her feel loved and cared for. But the girl did not know how to show her love back while still holding on to her heart.

She was afraid to show her heart to him, afraid to leave it out in the open. It made her feel vulnerable, and it was a feeling that she did not like.

Her pride swallowed her common sense, and she did not dare to display her love openly.

But it was still there, present in the way she smiled and laughed whenever the boy was around.

In the way she ruffled his hair whenever it was flat, the way she closed her eyes, committing his scent, his crooked smile to memory when she hugged him, the way she got the tingles when they held hands.

Yet, the boy never seemed to notice, or at least he did not understand the way the girl showed her love. He did not understand her.

And he did not love her enough to be willing to wait for her to slowly open up her heart.

He only kept the bad memories locked up in his own.

So, there came a day when he decided that saying good-bye was the best solution.

Even though there were probably another million and one other reasons that led to this happening, the one reason he gave, that he felt she didn't love him back, hurt the most.

"Forget me," the boy said to her, as though memories were words written in pencil that could be easily erased away.

"Forgive me," the girl whispered to herself.

Other words, other pleas, "Don't leave, please." were on her lips, but she knew it was too late. His back was already facing her; she could not see his face.

And that was when she learned the true meaning of heartbreak.

But how can it be so, she wondered, when I locked my heart up in a steel box?

She ran to check her heart in its steel box, only to discover that the box had split into two, leaving her heart bleeding on the ground, shattered into a million pieces.

Slowly, she sank to the ground in disbelief.

In trying to protect her heart, she’d only ended up breaking it even further. And it hurt just as much, if not, even more.

So the girl cried herself to sleep on the first lonely night of the following many that she'd spend, trying to fall asleep without dreaming of him.






Once upon a time, there lived a girl who did not believe in fairy tales.

She believes now, in broken, twisted ones that do not have the words happily ever after written at the ending.

The End.