Heart In Hands

Red, the color of blood. Blood, what courses through your veins, what’s vital to us as humans. It carries oxygen and nutrients throughout the body. Red, the color of your heart. Your heart, what pumps blood throughout your body. Arguably, the most important organ. Don’t worry, I’m not here to give you an anatomy lesson, I am here to tell you a story, about the dangers of putting other people's hearts in your hands…

It wasn’t always this way. The world used to be, well, a decent place to live in. Yes, there was pollution, and we had carbon emissions, but it was livable. I walked down the abandoned streets of 9th street in the East Village, Manhattan. The once-bustling area is filled with shops and cafes, now torn and desolate. I kicked over a can beneath my foot. The withered label with faded letters read, “Smile’os!” A memory flooded in, and so did a surge of guilt.

I was sitting around a table celebrating my brother's 13th birthday. Everyone was smiling, everyone except for me. It hadn’t been because I wasn’t happy, or because I didn’t like my brother, but because I knew what was coming next.

“C’mon, smile for us, won’t ya?” My dad joshed. I looked up at him with a blank expression. If only I had told him, if I hadn’t been so selfish, he would be alive.

“Please?” My younger brother pleaded. “For me?”

I glanced at him, it was painful to do, but I smiled right at him, knowing it would be the last time I ever did. A large grin erupted across his face, and he jumped up from his chair and hugged me tightly. I gently nudged him off of me. I couldn’t hug him back, not with what I was about to do.

“Arghh,” My dad yelped, clutching his chest.

“Dad?!” My younger brother shrieked, rushing to his side. “Call the police!” He yelped. I got up and entered the second room. My hand hovered over the phone, lightly tracing its shape. I could hear my brother in the other room crying over my father's groans.

“Wake up!” He sniffled, “You can't die, not now, it’s my birthday.” He said through clenched teeth. I heard him get up from the dining room as he stumbled into the kitchen, where I stood. “When are they coming?” He squealed.

“Um, I-I-I, I think about, um, fi-five minutes,” I faltered. I kept my eyes off of my dad’s lifeless body. The blood trickled down his mouth and spilled out onto the floor.

“Hey!” A voice from behind me called out. I snapped back into reality and swiftly turned around. In the distance, I could make out a figure of a man, running towards me. “What happened? I-I-, where’s my daughter?” He asked.

I stared at him, puzzled. “Where have you been the past few months sir?” I asked.

“In a coma,” He replied. I nodded as if I understood, but I hadn’t, he should’ve been dead. They all should have been dead.

“Around what time would you say you first went under?” I queried.

“May, maybe early June,” He responded.

“Just before the spill,” I muttered under my breath. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but, I think your daughter is dead…” I sighed. He took a few steps back in shock. He shook his head profusely and put his hands to his eyes.

“No. No. No. No,” he kept repeating, “This, this couldn’t, she wasn’t, she’s only six.” He vacillated. I bit my nails anxiously. The stores lined up around the street were all open. I peeled his hands from his face and motioned over to the abandoned cafe across the street. We both walked in, and he sat down at a table, his face buried into his palms. I walked into the empty kitchen and found a water bottle. “Future” water had been popular in our district, before all of this mess anyway. I grabbed the water bottle and headed to the table.

“So, what happened…?” He asked, his arms now folded. I glanced at the water bottle, then at him.

“There was an airborne virus, and everyone pretty much died after that,” I replied. He nodded, took a sip of water, then hesitated. “If it’s airborne, then why are we both still alive?” He asked, puzzled.

I clenched the edge of my seat. “Um, I-it, I hid out for a while,” I faltered, unsure of how to explain myself. I’ve got things to hide, and I was too close to falling now. I cleared my throat and sat up straighter. “Then, I came back outside, and everyone was dead” I croaked. He looked at me with a moment of suspicion and then began to sob again. I glanced back at him. As I watched him wail, I noticed something gold glimmering in his jacket.

“What’s that?” I asked, fidgeting with my nails anxiously. He wiped a few tears off of his face and sniffled.

“The last thing my little girl gave me,” he responded, smiling a little. Guilt gripped my heart once more. Was what I had done not for the benefit of us all? Was me thinking that I was saving the earth, destroying it too? I watched as he pulled out a heart-shaped necklace, not like the shape you see on Valentines day cards, no. This heart was shaped like a real human heart. It had a gold lining, and glass material, and inside, was a red substance.

“Is that...blood?” I asked, now slightly disturbed. He chuckled a bit and scooted away from him a little.

“It was the blood of all of my family members mixed together. A drop of blood for each person, I know how it sounds.” He responded. It wasn’t even halfway full, but I didn’t want to know how far back it went. I just smiled and nodded. For a second, I felt bad about lying to him with the lie of a virus. No, they were the true virus, and the water is the cure. Suddenly, he began to gag and cough. He was lurching forward and convulsing.

“Please….” He managed, struggling for air. “Help...me.” I got up from the table and took the necklace from his hands.

“I already have,” I consoled. He suddenly stopped moving, and he lay dead on the floor. Any culpability that lay dormant in me rose, and memories rushed through my head.

My dad had been on the floor in a pool of blood, my brother now beside him. I rushed to the windows, as people flooded the streets to escape the virus, but they were dropping dead like flies, and eventually, everyone in the street was a bloody corpse.

I grounded myself into reality and looked back down at the man that had been alive and well only a few moments ago. I knew that what I was doing would help us in the end, the world was ending anyway, and I was just the catalyst. This whole project was the catalyst. I remembered months ago when a strange man had messaged me with a proposal. It was one and a millionth chance that I would be chosen, but I was. A new world, a whole new reality, where the hands of humans hadn’t decimated the world’s beauty and resources. A new era.

I walked back out of the cafe and saw him. The man who promised freedom, and the future. The CEO of Future Forging.

“And you’re sure they're all dead?” He asked, checking his device. I nodded, fidgeting with the locket in my hand. He glanced down at my hands and squinted. “What’s that?” He asked.

“A piece of the past,” I muttered. He nodded and we walked off into the horizon, where the new time dawned. He had carefully selected people from all over the world, a person from each state in a country, to eliminate the others. In the promise of a place in his newly fabricated world. Where there would be no race, or class, or the mistakes of the human past to follow us. I paused for a second and surveyed the destruction I caused at my hands. He noticed my gaze and grasped my wrist.

“What is it?” He asked.

I sighed and clutched the glass heart in my hand.

“These people,” I began, “They gave me their heart, and I took it right out of their hands.” I sighed and looked back at the necklace. “Now their blood is in mine.” I looked at him, and we both turned back around. The heart pumps blood throughout the body. It’s a vital organ. I helped supply and advertise the water, and pumped it throughout my community. I did what I had to, even if anyone else considers it...heartless.