A Delicate Matter Concerning Hearts

Once, I was a thief. I stole from everyone and didn’t care. I called myself a collector as if it would make my collection any less immoral or perverted. I collected hearts. I kept them in jars, boxes, tins, or whatever else I could fit them into. The hearts sat on every surface I could find, thrumming away. My house was filled with beats like a stereo with the bass cranked, it rumbled quietly from all the hearts. I barely noticed the noise unless I left for a long time and came back to the din.  

I discovered my ability to remove hearts by accident. I was barely on the cusp of 13, my body changing each day. My breasts were growing and I was curious about it. I brushed my fingers over the new fatty flesh and found a small latch. I pulled it like any curious child and opened my chest. Inside was my heart, glowing red and pulsing brightly. I couldn’t resist touching it, caressing my own heart gently.  

I closed my hands around my heart and gave it a testing tug. It came free and I held it up to the light, the soft heartbeat fluttering in my hands. It was magnificent. I cherished the feeling of it in my hands but I knew I couldn’t leave it like this. I put my heart back in my chest. I shut the door on my breast and held my secret knowledge close, vowing not to tell anyone how to remove hearts.  

It wasn’t until a year later I saw the first change in my own heart. During my nightly ritual, I checked my chest each night before bed, pulling out my heart and holding it. There was a black spot on my left ventricle. It was small but it concerned me. I tried to pick it off but I couldn’t make it budge. My little fingernails scraped into the soft warm flesh and I felt crushing pain. I gasped. I could hurt myself when I tried to damage my heart. My child self was shocked and vowed to be more careful.  

I tried everything to make the spot go away but it was no use. The spot didn’t go away, it got bigger. I felt sick looking at it progress, a slow creeping blackness. I begged to go to the doctor, complaining of phantom pains but the doctors were no good. None of them even knew about the latch on my chest to open my ribs up. I tried and tried in vain to pull my chest open for them, but it never moved. My heart was so close to them, but they couldn’t get to it, they couldn’t fix it. They sent me home saying it must have been growing pains. I sobbed for hours, alone, my chest finally open, holding my heart.  

I was 16 when the idea came to me. 

I was with my boyfriend, lying on his bare chest, listening to his gentle heartbeat. I brushed my hands over his pecks and felt the latch. It was an impulse to pull it. I’d had three years of practice on myself, it was instinct by now.  

I feel the need to say I didn’t start the night intending to open his chest and take his heart. But when his ribs swung open and set my eyes on his glistening red heart I couldn’t resist. I had to hold it. His heart was pristine, with no black spots, no darkness like what was spreading over my heart.  

The idea was so sudden, brought on by my envy of his perfect heart. I had to have it. Now that I held it I couldn’t just put it back. What a waste of a beautiful object, to stay locked up in his chest all day. I took it, I left him there, asleep on his bed, heartless.  

He was my first victim. At school, he was dull-eyed, boring, and unmotivated. He spoke less and didn’t have half the spirit he used to. I broke up with him and began dating a different boy. Everyone said he was depressed about our breakup but I knew the truth. I had the missing piece, and I wasn’t going to give it back.  

At first, I believed the key to taking hearts was that they had to love you. I wasted so much time seducing men. Hours spend primping myself into the perfect woman. I watched shows, listened to music, worked out in the gym. I turned myself into a chameleon, blending into each man’s shadow until he believed I was the missing piece. The moment he said “I love you” I struck, pulling open his chest and taking my prize. The heart belonged to me by rights, and it would never leave me again.  

It wasn’t until I met Henry that I learned my initial thought was wrong. Love wasn’t required to take a heart; it was trust. Henry was a narcissist. He said “I love you” on the first date. We went to his apartment and as he fell asleep I was salivating. His heart was mine, and sooner than ever before. But when I found the latch I couldn’t open his chest. It was locked. I pulled and pulled but I couldn’t get it to budge. I almost gave up but I heard the strong thrum of Henry’s heart and I knew that I couldn’t leave his heart behind. Besides, I had grown to love the way the men I left husks looked on the street. Henry would join their ranks soon enough.  

Through Henry, I perfected subtle ways to check men’s trust in me. I learned how to perfectly trip and stumble into them and feel the latch. Every now and then I’d do it to a stranger and find them wide open. That was my favorite thing. Trusting strangers’ hearts were so pink they almost glowed.  

By now my own heart had lost all its redness and was a black shriveled, faintly beating husk in my chest. Every heart I stole I pressed into my chest, trying desperately to find a replacement for my dying one. Not one of them fit, all slipping out or bumping around in my hollow chest. I didn’t know how to fix myself. My collection of pristine hearts grew and my envy of each one became unbearable. Why not me? I could see how beautiful hearts were, so why did I have an ugly heart? 

My nightly ritual never changed, but my feelings toward it did. I’d brush my fingers over the latch. Gently take my heart out of my chest and hold it up to the light. Once I could have admired the thing, now I loathed it. It was a diseased, corrupt thing. Wrinkled like a raisin in the sun, and sluggishly pumping. I begged God to send me the right heart to replace this clearly defective one.  

All of that brings me to Jonas.  

Jonas wasn’t like the other men. I was sitting at the bar, watching my prey slip past. I had been watching one man getting steadily drunker. I was about to approach him when Jonas slid into the seat next to me.  

“You’re too pretty for him.” His smile beamed under the dim bar lights.  

“Does that mean you want to take me home for yourself?” I felt the flutter in my chest, the same one I equate to a Venus flytrap that’s felt a fly land on its petals.  

“Only if you want to.” He winked, then pulled me out to the dance floor.  

Jonas took me home, and there was something in his home that felt so familiar. Sleeping with Jonas felt right. Not like a predator about to get her prey. No, it felt like a woman finding the right man. I didn’t even touch his latch the first night. I was scared that it would swing open for me and I’d have to take his heart. I didn’t want Jonas to be hollow. I guess you could say it was love at first fuck.  

We continued to date. We got dinner, we drank, we kissed. I held his hand while we walked. It was all so domestic. So normal. I didn’t even think of his heart once during our happy month.  

One night I was sleeping over at Jonas’s house when I woke in the night. Something was wrong, all my senses were tingling. I opened my eyes and saw Jonas leaning over me, staring at my bare chest. His eyes were hungrily looking at my breast. My ribs were open, my dirty heart pumping for all to see.  

“What are you doing?” I pushed him off me. He was startled, backing away from me.  

I closed my chest, holding both hands over it. Suddenly I knew why Jonas’s house felt so much like my home, I could hear the thrum of hearts beating below the floor. His house was alive with the sound. Jonas was a collector like me.  

“You’re like me,” I said to him.  

Jonas nodded, speechless. We both stared at each other, processing.  

“How many?” I could hear them, beating like a steady bass line. I wondered how I ever missed it before. I was so caught up in our love, I couldn’t see the warning signs.  

“More than 300. I stopped counting after that.” Jonas said in a matter-of-fact manner. The number doesn’t matter, not really.  

“Can I see your heart?” I knew I should leave. I knew I should run, that I shouldn’t like Jonas, I shouldn’t trust him, but there was something kindred between us. I had never met another like me. That had to mean something.  

Jonas opened his chest. I gasped. His heart was ugly. It was black and shriveled, and had deep wrinkles that moved with each beat. I moved forward, my hand outstretched. I paused just before touching it, meeting Jonas’s eye. He gave a tiny nod. I brushed my fingers down his hideous heart. It was dry and hard, the opposite of the glistening red hearts I was used to. The heart had no heat emanating from it. A healthy one could warm your whole body with one touch.  

I swept my hand around it, feeling the flex of each beat in my palm. I plucked it out of his chest like a raisin from the stem. Jonas sighed, his body loosening, but it wasn’t the same as the men I stole hearts from. Jonas still had his glow, he was simply at peace.  

Jonas gasped as I slid my fingers down the front of his heart.  

“What?” I asked, confused.  

“Let me show you.” Jonas held out his hands, beckoning to hold my heart. I slowly opened my chest again, afraid he’d hurt me.  

Jonas gently reached into the hollow and removed my heart. I immediately felt years lighter. My heart had been a weight sitting in my chest that I had stopped noticing until it was gone.  

Jonas stroked his fingers over the ugly surface. I felt a chill pass through my body like Jonas had touched me everywhere at once. It was divine.  

At that moment we sealed our fate, holding each other’s hearts.  

“I love you.” Jonas looked into my eyes as he said it.  

“I love you too.” I meant it, as I looked back at him.  

I should have run. I should have turned my back, snatched my heart out of his hands, and ran as fast as I could.  

Jonas plunged my heart into his chest. It was the worst pain I’d ever felt like my chest was ripping apart. I couldn’t stop watching as my heart changed from black and shriveled to healthy. It grew fat and red, looking perfect. I was hungry to grab it and shove it back into myself. It was mine, how could he?  

Jonas looked exhilarated, laughing like a maniac. I couldn’t stay sitting with the pain growing. I could barely think. Then, as I hunched over in pain I saw it, Jonas’s heart, still in my fist.  

I plunged it into my chest cavity. It connected to veins like a magnet snapping onto metal. It felt right. I couldn’t see into the hole but I knew from the feeling that the shriveled dark heart was healing. I could feel heat returning to my long cold body, my blood pumping fast and fresh, not old and slow. I was healed, my sickness was gone.  

“It worked! It finally worked.” Jonas was breathless.  

I pushed him, feeling stronger than I had in years. “How could you? You took my heart!” 

Jonas looked hurt, “It worked though, and you have mine now. We’re even.”  

“Even? You didn’t even tell me what you wanted to do. It was excruciating, you could have killed me. Or made me hollow!”  

“Hollow?”  

“You know, what happens to people after we take their hearts. Hollow.”  

“Oh, I always called them empty.”  

“It doesn’t matter what you call them, you could have made me one!” I threw my hands into the air.   

“But I didn’t, babe it’s fine.” Jonas tried to touch me, but I jerked away. It wasn’t fine. I could feel myself, separated from me. The wrongness of losing my heart, the betrayal at Jonas’s actions.  

“It’s not fine.” I took my clothes off the floor and left the room. Each step away from him I could hear all the stolen hearts beating with mine. It made me sick. I could have been them, stuffed in some jar under the floorboards. I almost was.  

 

*** 

 

At home, I tried to sleep but I couldn’t. The sound of my collection of hearts disgusted me. I saw the faces of the men I ruined with each beat. Jonas kept calling and texting. I ignored them all.  

At 4 am I couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed a bag and filled it with as many hearts as I could find. I remembered where some of the men lived, thankfully I had written down their names on the jars.  

The first one had left his door unlocked. I walked right in and leaned over him in his bed. The room was dark and smelly. In an eerie reflection of the first time I was in it, I opened his chest. The heart snapped out of my hand and back to its place. His face flushed with color, and his breathing changed. I didn’t stay to see what else changed. I had more hearts to put back.  

Each one was easier than the next. A cascade of broken-into homes and “coincidental” meetups where I simply had to speak to them alone. Each heart sunk back into its cavity easily. Each man brightened with the return. No one remembered me stealing it, or returning it.  

It took a year to put most back. There were some hearts I had trouble getting back because their hosts had moved or changed names. It was especially hard putting back my high school boyfriend’s heart. He was my first, and it was a special heart.  

I did it though. I met him in the bathroom of our high school reunion and slipped it back in his chest while we were kissing. He cried and asked me not to leave him again. I told him he wouldn’t like what I was now.  

Jonas watched me. I would see him outside my work in the mornings or trailing me in the evenings. He didn’t get closer, but I felt him in his heart beating in my chest. I could hear my own heart calling me across the street as he watched me make dinner through the open curtains. I never let him in. He might have a piece of me, but we were different. I was righting my wrongs, returning my hearts, and Jonas couldn’t do the same. 

Over my life, I stole 472 hearts, including Jonas’s. I returned all of them, except Jonas’s, in the span of 5 years, saving diligently to fly across the world for the poor souls who I robbed while they were on vacation or visiting relatives. I was in Ireland when I put number 471 back. Now there was only one heart left, Jonas’s still beating in my chest.  

I sat on a bluff overlooking the ocean. I long debated with myself about Jonas, his heart saved me but he stole mine from me. He risked ruining me to save himself. Could I accept him for that? Was Jonas worthy of forgiveness? Was I? Surely I wasn’t worse than he was. But what if I was? All those years stolen from my victims, for what? A fool’s quest to save herself by way of ruining others.  

I was torn. I had done my penance, returning all the stolen hearts, but did I deserve forgiveness? Did Jonas? Should I ask for my heart back? What if I demanded my heart back and it withered again? I didn’t know the answer.  

Jonas crested the hill behind me and approached slowly. He had followed me here, across the ocean, just to linger 10 paces away.  

“Quit standing there,” I snapped, tired of this stupid dance. 

Jonas came forward and sat next to me. We were silent a long time, listening to the wind coming off the ocean and the sound of the waves lapping against the cliffs.  

Finally, Jonas broke the silence. “I’m sorry.” 

“I know.” I’d known he regretted it every time I saw him watching from a distance, waiting for me to close the distance. I’d known from every declined call and rejected flower bouquet left on my doorstep.  

“I gave them back too. All of them.” Jonas’s voice was light.  

“Not all of them.” I corrected him.  

“Almost all of them.”  

We lapsed back into silence. I closed my eyes and felt the sun on my face. Jonas’s heart was fluttering my chest, happy at our closeness. If I focused I could feel my own heart begging me to come closer.  

“We’re bad people. We ruined lives.” I broke the silence.  

“I know.” Jonas was quiet. “Where do we go from here?”  

“I don’t know.” I took his hand in mine. It was warm and soft. I could feel the connection between us spark to life. It felt so right. But guilt gnawed at me.  

What Jonas had done was wrong, but I’d also been wrong too. We were two broken people who’d been searching for answers in the wrong places. Maybe we could go forward together, find healing through each other.  

“I can give it back.” Jonas said, opening his chest. I saw my own heart pumping, red and alive.  

I sighed. What a sight to behold, my own heart-healthy once more.  

“Keep it,” I said, finally able to let the past go. “I forgive you.” I felt the pressure lift from my shoulders. Jonas sighed in relief.  

“Thank you.” He finally met my eye. His smile was soft, uncertain. I smiled back at him, then rested my head on his shoulder. Our hearts sang at the touch.  

We watched the sun set into the ocean, hand in hand, head on shoulder, finally at peace.