The Heart Decides

By R Kane

A short character-based story from the creative mind of R Kane, ‘The Heart Decides’ is told by the main protagonist Agatha. A fictional tale of one person’s journey, to overcome a mistake compounded into other mistakes that almost wrecked her young life. After experiencing a terror filled dream, Agatha changes her life and in doing so finds her way back to a new life, to new loves and friends, and a reconciliation of sorts with her father.

This is not the normal story from this author, but a step into new territory. His style and touch are unmistakable, but the subject is, and R Kane approaches it with his own personal flair. The characters are authentic and easy to relate with. So please, take a chance, and let the story of Agatha and her rebirth show this author’s ability to entertain and inspire.

Take a chance, what do you have to lose?

• Language: English
• Publisher: R Kane
• Release date: May 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005939465

R Kane

In a word, if someone forced me to use one, would be eclectic. I don’t subscribe, follow, or otherwise allow myself to be associated with anything in particular. Sounds weird I know but I like it all because I can choose from it all. My music taste goes across the spectrum from country to punk, I eat all kinds of food from Southern to Moroccan, and I enjoy both fiction and non-fiction books. I love history and I’m insatiably curious about the future and new technology. I’m just a funny kind of guy, or so I’ve been told.

Book preview

The Heart Decides

By

R. Kane

‘Under your scars I pray,

You’re like a shooting star in the rain,

You’re everything that feels like home to me, yeah,

Under your scars, I could live inside you time after time,

If you’d only let me live inside of mine’

Godsmack – ‘Under Your Scars’

The Heart Decides

By R Kane

SmashwordsEdition | Copyright 2021 R Kane

This ebook is licensed for your enjoyment, so read and enjoy.  Please feel free to pass around and visit the author’s website for other works.

Thank you.

http://www.rkanepublications.com

I’m not sure how I got to that place, no matter how hard I have thought about it. Maybe it was destined or maybe it was an accident. I can’t say anything positive for either because I’ve never believed in fate and it sure wasn’t an accident that I ended up like I did that day, but here it goes, this tale begins…

Where is this? Where am I?

I should have heard the words, I should have heard my voice speaking out each and every syllable, but there was nothing. Only the odd sounds of my surroundings could be heard, and those were muffled and undercut, as if my head were stuffed in a blanket and surrounded by foam. It took a bit of effort, a couple of tries, but after a few minutes I was able to pick my head up off the ground and turn it from right to left. I could see that I was lying in an open field by a large river, high grass surrounding me as I lay looking around, and a large Oak tree just a few yards away that might have provided shade if there was sunshine. There wasn’t a ray though as everything around me was draped in a gray gloomy overcast and when I was able to look to the sky, I could see the clouds overhead didn’t move. Nothing moved here from what I could tell, not the grass I was laying in and not a single branch or leaf in the large Oak tree nearby. The water in the river was still as glass, not even a ripple that was so small it was barely noticeable. And then I became shockingly aware of the fact there wasn’t a single animal, insect, or person around me in the field, it was painfully empty. There wasn’t a bird or squirrel living in the Oak and not a single beetle or grasshopper in the grass. I ran my hand over the ground, and the dirt felt strange, the air I smelled was stale, and the grass didn’t snap back up when I bent it down. There was nothing living here except me. This place was dead, as if trapped in a vacuum.

Fear set in and I began to panic, fighting for each breath. I tried to stand up from my place on the ground, but I only mustered sitting on my left hip with my legs splayed out in front me. My torso was twisted at the waist and it took both arms to hold my upper body upright. I turned my head back and forth again trying to see if there was something alive, anything I had missed while lying down, yet it was all just the same. Everything around me was still gray and unmoving. I fought against the fear and forced my mind to work, to start to get the facts together. How did I get here? Someone had to have brought me here, but who? I was still wearing my worn-out clothes from the Goodwill and there was no sensation of someone having done something ‘creepy’ to me. So how did I end up here in this strange place, this dead world? Better yet how was I going to get back to my world, my reality?

You’re not going back home sweets. Oh no, your mine to play with for the rest of eternity. A voice suddenly said. It was filled with a mixture of hatred and excitement.

A sudden pain, like someone scratching their nails on a blackboard while chewing broken glass shot through my head. The pain, dear lord, the pain was so bad I tried to scream, but I still couldn’t make a sound with my voice. I looked up by the Oak tree but didn’t see anyone standing nearby. I turned back to the river, and there just a few feet out from the bank, I saw the shape of a man’s head. His face from the chin up stood out above the water while everything else remained hidden beneath the dark surface. Small tendrils of black smoke slowly wafted away from his combed hair and his teeth looked grey as he smiled broadly at me. I didn’t know who he was, but I felt my blood turn cold from the look in his eyes. The fear came back stronger and the urge to bolt away from the surrounding area jumped into my mind with a flash. I tried to pull my legs in and under myself, but I couldn’t do it. The appendages were useless, just two sticks attached to me at this point.

I have put in too much time and too much effort to just let you slip away my little butterfly. Escape is not an option, not now and not ever. The man said causing more pain to grate in my head.

Then I noticed he was slowly inching out of the water and toward me all in one movement. His clothes and hair were dry, like the water never touched either on him. He wore a black suit cut to his size, a blood red shirt, and a grey tie with a large double Windsor knot. I don’t now why his tie caught my eye or why the way his suit fit drew my attention. Maybe it was the black tendrils of smoke rising from his head and body. Whatever it was it didn’t matter because as he ascended out of the river the fear in me grew stronger and I kept trying to force my dead legs to move. I clawed at the dirt and managed to turn my back toward him as I tried to scream again for help, but nothing would come out. I stopped for a second and when I looked over at the river, he was almost clear of the water, so