Satellite Heart

It was five years ago, in the middle of summer that I saw her for the first time. It was like something had broken into the tight confines of my body and stolen my heart, because with her beauty and her grace I was smitten.

She looked like something that had been sent down from the heavens; like an angel that had fallen onto the earth to test my monstrosity. Wisps of white-blonde hair framed her porcelain skin, and large crystalline-blue eyes blinked at me through darkened lashes. Tendrils of silky hair covered her eyes, begging to be brushed away with the gentlest of fingers.

And then she blushed, and it was like everything shattered around me. The glass windows, the walls that surrounded my heart and the blocks that distanced me from reality. It all broke, and I was left staring at her with thousands of pieces of broken glass that had narrowly missed splintering my heart. Deep down I knew that I was a monster of the darkest forms, a beast in its very formations, but she was like an angel and she was looking at me as though she couldn’t see the darkness that claimed my body. She was looking at me like I couldn’t break her, like she was seeing the world through I different lens to what I was and I longed to share it with her.

Angelique. Her name was Angelique, and the second I heard it I knew that it was a sign. It was a sign that I had to snap up this creature of the heavens and protect her from all of the bad in the world.

But I was bad. I was so, so bad, and my insanity in that moment had caused me to believe that she could be mine.



I was twelve years old when I found my mother’s body lying motionless on the floor, surrounded by scarlet blood that seemed to claim every inch of the room. Her brown eyes were wide open but muggy, and her mouth was parted slightly, dribbles of blood trickling down her chin. My dad was in the corner, his chest heaving with every ragged breath he took, a gun in his hands and his eyes dark and crazed as he examined the blood.

I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to climb through the blood and take her lifeless face in my hands, and kiss it until she woke up and came back to life. I wanted to scream at my dad, and I wanted to cry more than I wanted to be alive. I was consumed by madness; I wanted to grab the gun from his hands and bury the silver bullet into my own withering heart.

My dad walked over to me, his eyes slightly clouded as he stared at me. “I had to do it, buddy,” he grunted, flecks of blood splattered all over his clothes and his hands shaking around the gun. I flinched away, my face pale and distraught as I forced myself to look away from my mother’s body. “She was mad. She was a fucking loon.” But he was madder. I wanted to say that but my mouth was trembling so much that I could barely breathe. “You have to get rid of people like that, you hear me?”

I knew that my mother wasn’t normal and that she had problems, but it wasn’t until that moment that I realized that that was enough of a reason to die. That insanity was not only sufferable for you, but also those around you, and they would rather have you die at their hands than deal with it.

An hour later the police arrived on the scene and my dad was being taken away, his body trembling as he looked back at me with crazed brown eyes. “I was doing her a favor, Tyler,” he promised, his eyes begging for resolution. “I’d do the same for you.”

But he didn’t. There were no gunmen to shoot me down, and I was too smitten to do it myself.



It was two months after we had professed our love that I handed her the gun and asked her to kill me. I think that that was the first time she really knew that there was something wrong with me, and that I wasn’t just unusual and troubled. To quote my father, I was a fucking loon and as she took the gun with trembling hands I think she realized that.

I’d done a good job at hiding it from her. There were times when I whispered to voices that weren’t there and there were times when I was away from my body, but each time I would force myself to be away from her so that she couldn’t see that side of me. My heart was shameful of its own blackness, and although I was aware that she would never be mine it selfishly gripped onto anything that would keep her by my side.

She had taken the gun with shaking fingers, her ivory skin contrasting against the black and bloodied metal of the gun. Tears were dribbling down her cheeks, and her mouth was parted slightly, her tongue darting out to lick at her ruby lips. Her eyes were wide open, staring at me through clouds of tears and confusion. “Tyler… no,” she whispered, backing away from me with the weapon in her hands. “Why are you doing this? You know I could never do that.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks and strangled sobs were leaving her lips, and for the first time she was looking at me as though I was a monster.

I was out of my body again. I was in the corner of the room, just a spirit looking down at my body and shouting at it to take it all back and to stop her tears. I had no control over my actions and no control over my words, and the thought was hopelessly terrifying and was enough to make my head spin.

“You’re making her cry.” It was a deep voice coming from my left, and I watched as my body snapped its eyes in that direction. It was the voice of my father, ringing in my ears like a mantra as I struggled to move. “She’s going to do it now. She’ll shoot you and it will all be over.”

There were tears streaming down my body’s cheeks, and I watched in fear as she took a step forward, the gun poised in her trembling hands. I was shouting but my body’s mouth did not open; I screamed but not a sound came out. I could feel my father beside me, and when I looked to the left I could see his deep brown eyes looking at me, half crazed and half embedded with excitement.

I was insanity in that moment. In that moment I was the furthest from reality and was walking towards the arms of the Devil himself. I couldn’t feel anything; not the beating of my heart nor the sweating of my palms. I could only watch in maddened awe as she stepped towards my body, the gun pointed towards my chest.

The moment her hands touched mine I was back and I could feel everything hit me like a speeding train. The gun was placed in my open palms, her hands shaking as she closed her fingers around mine. “No,” she whispered, a stray tear dropping onto my hand. “I love you, Tyler, whether you love yourself or not. I d-don’t know why you want to die, but I do know that I want you to be alive with me.”

I wanted to die because I was insane. I needed to die, because that’s what you did to people like me. You killed them before they could hurt someone else.

She took me in her arms, burying her head into the crook of my neck and sobbing against me. My dad was gone and I was back down on earth, feeling and experiencing the throttling love that burned my heart. I was a damned, selfish man, but I couldn’t hurt her, even if it meant staying alive.

I would hurt her in the end, though. It was the first of many times that I would make my angel cry.