The Hearteners

It has always been the one thing I could never lose no matter how hard I tried. To remove myself from this world completely I had to shed my skin and mourn myself while destroying every physical embodiment of me that has ever existed. But this, this final piece was the hardest to let go of, the most impossible to wish away. Finally, I dropped the last piece of myself and all those I’ve ever loved into the stream with a stifled damning cry.

Years had passed since then and by now I’d had tried to rid myself of the locket nearly a hundred times…but it always came back. It became like a tracker; I was afraid that by keeping it they might have found a way to locate me and take me down for good or that someone would discover me with it and alert the Bodies at the Guard. In the last year though, it became more likely that my attempts to absolve myself of the locket time and time again would simply be used a way to locate me. This was why months ago I tried to become a bit craftier, surely the locket wouldn’t miraculously make its way back to me after dropping it from an airplane minutes before skydiving off the death trap or after attaching it to a slumbering raccoon that ended up nearly tearing the top section of my ear off. I even have a scar to prove it, a jagged line cutting from where my forward helix piercing should have been to where an orbital conch piercing would be located if I’d only had the time to finish my piercing conquests along with all my others…like the list of tattoos I wanted to get when I finally turned 18. That was now two months away but there were no tattoo parlors open anymore and even if there were I wouldn’t dare tread out of seclusion for longer than was absolutely necessary.

I’ve been moving up through the East coast of what was formerly known as the US, now known as the Terra Lands, for the past three years. I never dared to stop for more than a couple days lest someone spot me and report me to the Bodies. They have existed for as long as my grandmother could recall but they used to hide as I now had to. The Bodies were exactly that, nothing but a physical presence devoid of a heart or soul, but somewhere along the way they discovered how to turn normal people like me, now called Hearteners, into nothing but another Body. No one knows how they do it, there wasn’t enough time to unleash their secret before the war between their kind and ours ended with our failure. Ended with us being brought into camps and slowly turned into one of them. I saw my grandmother get dragged away, moments after she hid me in the well on her cottages’ property. My mother died when I was five and my dad…well he was fighting in the war and now I can only assume he’s been turned into one of them. As I hid a few feet down the well, my fingernails bloodying from my efforts to avoid plummeting to my death, I could hear my grandmothers’ roars. She was never a quiet woman that would go softly and without a fight. Despite not being able to see her, I knew in those moments that she had mustered everything she had within her to escape them…and she did, but only long enough to end it all.

I carry my grandmother’s strength with me now as I move along the Eastern side, I can’t help but glance down at the locket that I want to destroy, and cast aside, clutch so tightly it permanently marks my palm, and sob to. My grandmother’s heart shaped locket, a reminder not only of her, but of who we are and the strength she gave me. It’s a bit literal but she had it since she was a girl, and she gave it to me as soon as I turned eight, the age she determined I was ready to understand the state of our world and the impending doom she believed would eventually find its way to us. In the three years out here, this locket has been my only companion, my only saving grace, and reminder of what needs to be done. If only I had the key to unlock the damn thing, then maybe I could make my grandmother proud, and yes as cheesy as it sounds, save our messed-up world.

Before she closed me in the well to take on the next chapter on my own, she shared that it was the answer. I had thought she meant it was the way I would get through this next time in my life, the key to how I could survive, metaphorically speaking…she tended to do that a lot. Like this locket being what would keep my family close to me even when I was alone, but ever since I visited pop pops grave, I’ve known it is something else. That was when I gave up on letting go of it, even though I was still bone chillingly scared every second that it would be my undoing. On his grave were the etched-out words, The Heart is Always the Key. I used to love looking at the words and remember him. The words were so something he would say in life, he was the most sentimental sweetheart you’d ever meet. But he was also very literal, and I guess even in death he’s sticking to it with the help of my grandmother’s history, locket, and her direction of what to put on his remembrance stone.

Once I realized the heart locket was truly my saving grace and apparently everyone else’s, well…the rest should almost be history, but of course the damn thing is also the bane of my existence so uhhh yeah it doesn’t open, no matter what I try. At this point, I’ve circled back around to anywhere that could provide me with another clue, my gram’s house, her and my pop pop’s hometown, our favorite tree, anything, absolutely anything. Which is why I’ve made my way back to his gravestone today. It’s just a gravestone, nothing more to it, but maybe just maybe there’s something I missed, just like I had pretty much my whole young adult life with the words that were etched on the stone. I know I’ve been taking too many risks going in circles but if it’s all up to me, what else am I supposed to do?

As I step across the gated threshold of the graveyard today, I feel a rush of iciness, the same feeling I get nearly every time I come here, up until the moment I reach my pop pop’s stone. It’s nearly dusk now, every year the world seems to get infinitely darker, and when I place myself in front of his gravestone the feeling doesn’t dissipate, and the darkness almost seems to close in. Somehow, I know at my very core they’ve finally found me…one of the last few Hearteners and the one that can end it all, and I’ve made too many mistakes to change anything. My grandmother’s death, the war, including my dad’s last efforts of fighting to save us all were for nothing. I can see the Bodies closing in, moving seemingly in sync with one another. I close my eyes to say my final goodbyes and apologies to whatever is out there listening and to all those I could not save. When I open my eyes again, they’ve finally reached me, and as my vision focuses, it is not just any Body that stares me down with the most cynical look on its inhuman face. It is my father that stands in front of me.

My insides turn to liquid, a mixture of relief and terror, a well of tears ruining my vision once more. But as I blink the tears away, I peer at him behind my lidded lashes to discover that behind the cynicism, is a single minuscule spark of recognition, and maybe even of love, reminding me that it’s the man that swung me up into his arms below our sycamore tree. At least, it’s his body and dare I consider his soul, his heart buried so deep within. His face hardens and he moves to grab at my throat, whether to choke the life out of me, or immobilize me enough that I cannot fight like my grandmother, I do not know. But he was the one that taught me how to fight before he went off to war. I know how he moves; I know his strengths and his weakness. And the fact that he refuses to acknowledge who I am to him or at the very least the fact that he knows my own strengths and weaknesses, including the slight tendency I have to favor my right knee since the car accident we were in when I was five. The one that killed my mother and left my leg disturbingly twisted. Well, this all gives me the upper hand, but it also threatens to destroy me from the inside out. I must acknowledge him as a known and worthy opponent, rather than as my adoring and strong father, at least for now.

His back began giving him trouble a couple years before he had to leave so he is always careful with turns and twists. I move in a way that forces him to do so as much as possible before I knee him in the ribs that have been broken many times over. I hear a sickening crunch and know that we’ll have to add another break to that list, but it does the trick, and he doubles over in pain. I throw him a couple hard punches to the head, and he falls completely. I look up ready to dispatch the next willing victim only to realize the other Bodies have remained a good twenty feet back, as if they knew this was personal. My dad is still down, having trouble righting himself and getting his breath back, the broken rib may have punctured a lung…my bad. But he looks up at me with that spark again and its all I need to get through this before he goes unconscious.

The Bodies move as one towards me and I rush toward my pop pop’s stone, ripping the heart locket from around my neck. I tear apart the overgrown weeds surrounding it, desperately trying to find something, words, maybe a hidden key, anything to make these last moments worth all the trouble, all the agonizing pain we’ve all endured in more ways than one. They’re only a couple steps away when I’m scraping at the dirt and see an etching in the shape of a heart, and of course it is the shape of my heart locket, with the same intricately beautiful design. I move to match the locket up with the gravestone when I feel a pair of hands grab me and tear me back. I flip and dispatch a dagger, aiming for the Body’s eye socket since they have no heart. I hit my mark and with the distraction I kick and punch and tear through the others that have gotten close to me and dart back to the stone. I align my family locket to the etched heart, and it locks into place as I feel a stabbing pain coming from my lower back that radiates from my spinal column to the tip of my toes, everything below the waist goes numb at the same time that the world erupts into blinding, never-ending light.

And I know it’s over…for the Bodies nearby, including my father, for me, but most importantly for every Heartener that’s still out there hiding and hoping.