Beating Hearts
The horrible sight of my mother dying in front of my eyes haunted me at all times.
The cool fall night is eerily silent as I walk through the desperate night searching for the anonymous number who texted me days ago.
Your days are numbered.
Who was this number? I had no idea but I had to see if it held the truth of my mother’s death because after the words were sent a picture of my mother’s autopsy was given to me.
Cut open, her heart was left on the side in the fluorescent light.
I walk and come to the place where the message told me to go. Deep in the forest, a place where a huge boulder resides under an old willow tree.
The rock reads in scarlet lettering: I’m glad you made it.
A crow flutters its wings in the night as it moans an awful cry. Then I look and see a dark shadow. The figure comes into the pale moonlight.
It is a huge man one who is shrouded in all black with a white mask smiling. It disturbs my soul.
“Hello,” he says. “I say, I didn’t expect you to come. But yet… Here you are.” He amuses himself as he laughs wickedly.
“Who are you?” I demand.
“I’m the one who haunts your dreams and fills your mind with dark nightmares. I am the man who killed your mother!”
“Nonsense! My mother got killed by a drunk driver. Who are you,” I scream vying for an answer.
“Is that what they told you? A car crash?” His voice trembles in my eardrums.
“Your mother was a cruel woman. Insane in her own terrible right!”
“Tell me who you are, coward!”
“Oh, little girl, your life has been nothing but sorrow.”
“I’m not a little girl, you creep! Tell me!”
“You shall get what is coming to you.” He throws a rock at my feet but then suddenly I see it is an old ragged shriveled heart. I stumble back onto the cold ground as I look up.
The large man runs at me grabbing my neck. He chokes me.
I can’t breathe. He is relentless. His evil mask of misery stares striking fear into my soul. I struggle but then stab him with my pocket knife.
He screams in agony as I run for it. But he is fast and catches up to me.
Falling on the floor he tackles me to the ground as I try to wiggle free but he’s so strong. His massive hands grab my hair pulling my head back.
“No one will hear you scream!” he boasts. “You want to know who I am? Then remember what you told your little kid brother? Huh? Do you?”
I try to remember far back in my blurry childhood what he is trying to convey. I realize what Kyle said to me all those years ago.
“Don’t forget me, Sara. Don’t forget that I have a heart too. Don’t leave me. Please, don’t leave me. I have a heart too,” he says crying in my head.
“I have a heart too, Sara.”
“I don’t get it,” I say horrified. “How do you know that?”
“Because Sara, I’m that little boy,” he says throwing my head down on the ground. He lets me go free as I squirm to the nearest tree and turn around ready. The tall, mean, and strong man removes his mask, and his red glassy eyes are streaked with tears.
“I have a heart too,” he says. “I thought you had a heart as well. But after all these years I know you’re just like everyone else. Heartless.”
“I remember, Kyle, but Mom said you were dying-”
“I was! I was and you LEFT me. You left me to die in that hospital!”
“She was crazy, Kyle.”
“She was and that’s why I killed her! I ran her over with my car, it was ME!”
“Kyle, please, let’s talk about this. I was only a kid.”
“But I thought you would have tried to find me. Tried to look for your baby brother!”
“I thought you were dead.”
“It doesn’t matter because now I found you. And I’m going to kill you because I did have a heart once, Sara. But it was broken and ripped in pieces and left to rot long ago!”
“No, no, Kyle. Please, let me help you!”
“I don’t want your help! I don’t need your help! All I want is justice. All I see is red!” His eyes inject me with fury and malice into my own. He puts his hands around my throat.
But then a shot rings out in the forest and in his forehead, a bullet hole is seen. Crimson blood runs down his face as he falls over. I push him off of me.
Then quickly with dread I get to my feet and turn.
My old friend Cheryl with a gun in her hand. “So you didn’t say anything about family relations.” She smiles.
I smile back and look down at my miserable brother who lost his heart long ago and beat its last on this awful night.
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