Garden of Eldritch Delights

That Which Does Not Kill You

That Which Does Not Kill You

It’s odd how the pain doesn’t register at first. You wake to an ill stickiness coating your arms and belly, the sheets dark and stiff, the sour stink of copper in the air. Mind blurred and eyes bleary, you wonder where your girlfriend Ashley is. Why are you awake so early on a Saturday? Has something happened? Is there something you’re supposed to do?

A neuron fires: you have a morning coffee date with Brenda. You two first met at the fencing club in college and kept discovering friends and interests in common. She became a steadfast bestie. But lately, you’ve been too busy with Ashley to keep up with anyone else.

There’s an itch between your breasts so you sleepily try to scratch it. Your cold fingers find slashed skin, the ragged hardness of your broken sternum, and the torn cavity beyond. Your sliced aorta and pulmonary vessels feel like calamari, fleshy cannelloni in congealing Bolognese.

And then, as your fingers trace the severing, that’s when the pain hits.

Agony is too small a word for what you’re feeling. You try to scream but your lungs are deflated balloons, pierced by the same angry gashes that took your heart. Collateral damage. Your lover was not exercising a surgeon’s precision last night. Nothing but bile rises from your throat.

Wordless, weeping, you throw off the sheets and stagger to your feet. You’re certain that you should be dead–the pain is so horrible you want to be dead–but you’re still moving. Still alive? You stare down at your trembling gray hands and your blood-smeared naked body in wonder. What kind of life is this? How long can you possibly go on like this?

There’s a trail of blood on the carpet leading out of the bedroom, and your only thought is that if you can just find your heart, maybe everything will be okay. Maybe the pain will stop. You follow the blood down the hall, down the stairs to the living room.

Ashley is there. So is her boyfriend Kurt. They don’t see you right away. He’s kneeling by the bookshelf, stacking her movies and hardcovers into a cardboard box. Ashley’s put on her Cornell University tank top and the old jeans she usually wears to pottery workshops. Kurt’s wearing his usual weekend outfit of track pants and a tee shirt advertising some brand of protein powder. He works at a gym supply company and has a million tees. You can’t remember if you’ve ever seen him wear anything else. He must have some nice clothes; he travels to health clubs around the country to pitch new products, and the upscale fitness centers probably expect a salesman to wear a suit. Besides, Ashley likes the kind of restaurants that don’t admit men without their ties.

Ashley met him at her gym, and she likes to go on business trips with him. They were just travel and workout buddies, at first. At least that’s what she told you. But she also told you on your second date that she doesn’t do monogamy, so Kurt was never much of a surprise.

The living room is full of moving boxes. Most are open and only half-filled, and you spot the vase of shells the two of you beach-combed in the Bahamas, the ukulele you bought her in Maui, the shot glasses from Vegas, the red scarf from Montreal. Five years of mementos. For the first time, you realize you were best together when you were far from home. But no relationship can cruise at 30,000 feet forever.

She’s pacing beside her boxes, nervously flicking a gray box cutter’s blade in and out. Click. Click. Click. Her hands are covered in dried gore all the way to her elbows. It looks like she’s wearing ragged brown opera gloves. And then you’re remembering your third date when you went to a fancy-dress ball in a downtown loft and you both got tipsy on the host’s $100 champagne and then went up to the roof to make out like a couple of schoolgirls. Her lips were so soft. You feel a reflexive pang of worry: has she cut herself? But no, she hasn’t. It’s all your blood.

That mild epiphany makes you dizzy, and you stumble on the stairs and nearly fall. The couple startles at the thumping of your unsteady feet. For a moment, they both look shocked to see you standing there. Kurt blushes uncomfortably at your nakedness and looks away, but Ashley grimaces in frustration.

“Damn it, Emily, can’t you just stay out of the way like I told you?” she snaps.

You don’t remember her telling you anything. You gesture toward the gaping hole in your chest and manage a strangled moan with the little bit of air left in your lungs.

“Well, what else was I supposed to do?” Ashley crosses her arms, still clicking the box cutter’s blade. “I told you I can’t sleep with your heart beating so goddamned loud all the time. You have the f*****g loudest stupid heart I’ve ever heard.”

You want to ask her why Kurt’s heartbeat doesn’t bother her. Maybe his broad weightlifter’s chest muffles the sound better than your skinny tomboy body does. Maybe he’s got a teeny-tiny heart in that mighty rib cage and it’s far too petite to disturb her delicate ears. More likely, his heart beats just the same as yours does. But he’s new and you aren’t, so he hasn’t gotten on her nerves yet. After all, your heartbeat didn’t seem to be a problem until your trip budget dried up.

“I’m a sensitive person. I have very acute hearing.” Ashley uncrosses her arms and points the box cutter at you. “I told you to do something about it but you didn’t.”

She’s cut the truth from your mutual history. You did do something, in fact you did many things, for months. First you tried sleeping with a pillow over your chest. Then you moved downstairs to the sofa at night. But she complained she could still hear your heart through the wooden floor, so you bought her a white noise machine for the bedroom. For a while, that seemed to satisfy her, and she often let you sleep in your own bed with her again.

On your birthday, she bought you a very sharp pocketknife, a pretty little thing with a pearly handle. The surgical steel blade was etched with the words “Quies et Pax”. You laughed, thinking the inscription was a joke. You’d have done almost anything to make her happy, but silencing your own heart was not one of them. Ashley always did like to take matters into her own hands.

“You’re a complete disaster.” She’s staring at the ragged, leaky hole she put in your chest. “You’re a monster.”

Standing there in mute torment while she harangues you isn’t getting you your heart back, is it? The blood trail leads through the living room to the kitchen and patio doors so you stagger after it, weaving along the rusty dotted line like a drunk.

“Oh, Christ, don’t go out there,” Ashley says as you fumble with the handles of the French doors. “Have some self-respect. The neighbors will see you like this.”

Trying to ignore her, you push on into the back yard. It’s a cool, sunny late September morning, and the leaves are just starting to turn yellow and orange. Your heart is out there, still beating. You can hear it but no matter where you look, you can’t see it.

Ashley seems to hear it, too, and shudders. “God damn that thing.”

You follow the sound to an old apple tree near the fence. Someone–Kurt, maybe, or Ashley if she dragged your stepladder out there–has impaled your heart on the broken stub of a small branch jutting high on the trunk. Despite all the damage it’s beating loudly, vainly pumping air, the valves clacking as if they’re mahogany castanets. Maybe it’s absorbed some of the tree into itself. It’s covered in tiny black ants that have marched across the bark. If you concentrate very hard, you can feel the sting of their bites and the itch of their crawling legs.

You reach up to try to rescue your heart, but it’s well beyond your grasp. You jump for it, but your knees buckle and you collapse onto your back at the bottom of the trunk, exhausted. All you can do is stare up at your speared, severed flesh.

“This is exactly why I can’t live with you.” Ashley stands over you, her fists on her hips. “You’re so f*****g dramatic about these things. You’re just broken.”

Tears well up in her eyes. “I can’t be around all this negativity. Good-bye.”

She turns on her heel and walks back across the yard. You continue to stare up at your clacking heart as you distantly hear them load her boxes into Kurt’s truck. The agony has faded into a dull, hollow, all-consuming ache. Your strength is gone; you can no more stand up than you could sprout wings and fly into the sun. In the periphery of your vision, you see the neighbors peek over the fence like nervous prairie dogs, then duck back down. Nobody calls out to see if you need help, or offers any. You wonder how long it will take the tiny stinging ants to devour your body.

A little after noon, you hear the fence swing open and then the grassy swish of footsteps approaching you.

“Well, shit.” It’s your friend Brenda’s voice. You remember that you were supposed to meet her for coffee.

With great effort, you raise a hand to wave at her.

Brenda comes closer and leans over you, concerned. She’s dressed casually in a light grey sweater over dark denim leggings, but she’s got on a pair of nice red leather pumps and a pretty turquoise necklace. It occurs to you that while she’s not dressed up for a date-date, she’s put thought into her ensemble. Her care might mean something more, or not. You’re just glad to see her.

“Wow,” She says. “She really tore you up, didn’t she? Is this the second time this month?”

You raise three fingers.

“Damn, girl.”

You mutely point up at your heart.

“Oh. Yeah. That would help, wouldn’t it?”

Brenda kicks off her nice shoes, pushes up her sleeves, and nimbly scales the trunk. She used to be a gymnast. Everybody needs a friend who used to be a gymnast, you think. Soon she’s back on the grass, and she takes your heart over to the garden hose to rinse off all the ants. You feel a bracing chill as the water washes over it.

She returns, and you accept your damp heart with cold, quivering hands. You awkwardly pack it into your chest and pull your flesh back together. After a couple of minutes, you feel warmth spreading back into your chilled limbs, and you can finally take a breath again.

“Thank you,” you gasp.

“De nada,” she replies.

“How did you know I’d be back here?”

“Ashley posted an i********: of the bloody box cutter. When you didn’t show at the coffee shop, I had a hunch.”

“I didn’t mean to stand you up. Sorry about that.”

“Don’t apologize. Just promise me that you won’t hook up with her again, okay?”

“Third time’s the charm.” You cross your scarred heart. “Never again.”

Have you just told a lie? What will you really do when Ashley inevitably severs Kurt and comes back to you with her soft champagne lips?

Brenda’s holding out a strong, steady, gentle hand, and so you take it and pull yourself to your feet. You meet her eyes, and find yourself surprised that in all the years you’ve known her, you never noticed the flecks of gold in her hazel irises.

Brenda blushes a little under your wondering gaze and bashfully looks away. At that moment, you know in your aching core that you’ve told no lies. You are done with Ashley. If she comes back, you won’t be home.

“So, do you want to get dressed and go get that coffee?” she asks. “I don’t mind waiting if you need to shower first.”

You smile. And remember that she only likes coffee shops because you do. “How about we hit the Barcade for pinball and whisky and breakfast burritos instead?”

Now she’s smiling, too. “Deal.”