The Night You Stole My Heart

I sat in front of my computer, its light dimly illuminating my small apartment. I was surfing random sites to quell my boredom, when a *ping* noise rang through the speakers, indicating a new message. I opened the email without looking to see who the sender was, curious as to whom would be awake sending emails at this hour.

The message was all in binary code. It read:

010011010111100100100000011000100110010101100001011101010111010001111 0010010110000100000011011010111100100100000011011000110111101110110011 001010010110000100000011011010111100100100000011001110110100101100110 0111010000100000011001100111001001101111011011010010000001100001011000 1001101111011101100110010100101100001000000110100001101111011101110010 0000011010000110000101100100011100110111010000100000011101000110100001 101111011101010010000001100110011000010110110001101100011001010110111 0001000000111001101101111001000000110011001100001011100100010110000 10000001101001011011100111010001101111001000000111010001101000011010 01011100110010000001100010011011000110000101100011011010110010000001 1100000110100101110100001011000010000001110100011010000110111101110101 00100000011011010111010101110011011101000010000001101110011011110111 01000010000001100110011011110111001001100111011001010111010000101100 001000000111010001101000011001010010000001101110011010010110011101101 000011101000010000001110100011010000111100100100000011010000110000101 100100001000000111001101110100011011110110110001100101011011100010000 00110110101111001001000000110100001100101011000010111001001110100001 0111000100000010000010110111001100100001000000111001101101111001000 000111011101100101001000000110011101101111001000000110001001100001011 000110110101100100000011101000110111100100000011101000110100001100101 00100000011100110111010001100001011100100111010000101110

Wondering what this odd message could mean, I looked up a binary to text converter and pasted the coded message into the box and hit "to text." When I saw what the message said, I jumped back, almost knocking my seat over backwards. My heart began to pound, and I cautiously looked back to the message to see that the sender was none other than my dead husband. I recognized the poetry style, now that I think of it. My eyes darted back and forth throughout the room, as if I were expecting him to be standing there, watching me. My mind raced back to the night he died, without my mind even consciously realizing it.

It was three months and three days earlier. Micah and I had been having issues in our marriage for quite some time, so we had gone on a date to try to patch things up. What he didn't know was that the root of the issues was my love for another man, Andrew. I had been planning on leaving Micah for him for a while, and tonight, ironic as it may seem, was the night I planned on breaking the news. At the table, Micah recited a poem to me, the same one from the email. This made it difficult for me to confess, so on the way home, I suggested that we stop in the forest to "spice things up" in a long abandoned tree-house. As Micah started to unbutton my shirt, and I his, I had taken my beautiful silver dagger from my purse, pretending to get a condom.

I smiled as I thoughtlessly and effortlessly plunged the dagger into my husband's chest, cutting his heart out. "How's this for stealing your heart, dear?" I chuckled. Micah's bloody corpse fell to the ground with a thud, and I climbed down, the heart carefully nestled in my hands, to join the lifeless corpse of my husband.

I dug the toe of my shoe into the forest floor, making a hole just large enough for the heart, burying it with unnecessary care as I smiled to myself, thinking of the deed I had committed. My work was done.

As I stared at my computer monitor in horror, I felt the chilly air wrap around me, sounding as if Micah's poem was being carried in the air. The memories of that night still haunt me, but the thing that disturbs me the most is my cold lack of remorse.

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