The Man With An Alien Heart

t was just a normal day in a peaceful place called semi-retirement. Except for this day, I had a routine medical check for swollen feet due to some Predolin, I was taking for PMR. The doctor wanted to rule out any other possible causes before settling on it merely being a side effect of the steroids.

I had a full-body cat scan to check my vital organs and bones for any sign of inflammation or a tumor. It came up clean, thank the lord. Next, it was an echograph of my heart to make sure that that was all ok.

I was asked to take off my top and lie down on my left side on a trolley. Within a minute the young female machine operator was scanning my chest across my left breast. Suddenly she stopped.

An older-looking doctor came in and took her place. After two minutes he too stopped and stood up to leave the room saying he wanted to see me later. On we went with the rest of the test and after forty minutes of scanning I was asked to get up and get dressed. I was then told to go and see the doctor in his office. As we entered the room I could see from his face that all was not well.

“Ok,” says the Doc all matter-of-factly. “When exactly did you have the heart transplant?” And I’m like, “What? What the hell are you talking about Doc, I ain’t never had any transplant in all my born days”

“Oh yes you have Steve, and you wanna know the strangest thing? I don’t see any signs of any major surgery. No scars, no old stitches, nothing. And there’s more. Can I ask how old you are?”

“You got it there on my papers Doc.” I said tersely.”

“Ok, let me have a look……so, you were born in…….” he said as he rifled through various papers looking for my date of birth.

“Doc, I’m sixty-six years old, what the hell is wrong with you?” I exclaimed impatiently.”

“Steve, I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me. I am looking at a sixty-six-year-old man with the heart of a twenty-year-old! What’s more, there is clear evidence that it is not the heart you were born with! In fact, I have never in fifty years of heart surgery seen anything quite like it. I am not even sure if that heart that is beating inside your chest is even of this world! Steve, your heart has some extra arterial branches that don't belong. Do you get me, Steve? Do you get me, for heaven's sake? And I am having whole lotta trouble comprehending it Steve. I mean, shit Steve, are you even of this world?”

“Hey Doc, I was born in Detroit sixty-six years ago, ok? My pop was a line worker at the Ford car factory. My mom was a midwife at the local hospital downtown. Are you crazy Doc, are you kidding me? What in the hell are you on Doc? How old are you, 'cause you know what? It’s time you had a break Doc, like a really long break for the rest of your life!”

“Ok Steve, here’s what we’ll do. I wanna run some more tests to see if I can figure this all out. There has to be a rational explanation for what I’m looking at here. Let me see when we can get you in for some further investigation. I don’t know, maybe it’s some weird diet your mom fed you when you were a kid in diapers or something, I just don’t know. What I do know, is that I have never ever in all my born days seen anything quite like it.”

“You know what Doc, I’m out of here you crazy old coot. I am just a regular guy enjoying my retirement after fifty years of hard work, roping and sheeting forty tons of cabbages or god knows what and driving it from state to state on a multi-drop nobody else in the company would touch with a barge pole. Half a century driving from state to state, man and boy, sweating and busting my guts for a few dollars an hour, and now all I wanna do is go fishing and read a good book.

Do you know what they say about fishing Doc? It legitimizes doing nothing, sweet FA. And that Doc is exactly what I am gonna do, nothing. And I ain’t gonna let no quack like you, some well past his use-by-date poop expert, stop me from spending the rest of my days doing sweet nothing except cast a line and sit back and read War and Peace to my heart’s content. I’m out of here. See ya never, loser. You’re weird man, I mean really, really strange. You wanna know what I think Doc, you are not of this world!”

And with that, I got up and left the hospital never to go back ever again. And you wanna hear something that really is strange? That was eighty-four years ago! That’s right, I am 150 years old, give or take a month or two either way. Of course, I have aged some, but I don’t look a day over seventy, or so Laura the next-door neighbor with a whippet called Dandy tells me.

I moved here to nowhere in particular soon after I stormed out of that hospital, for my own safety. See, I figured that that Doctor was not going to let things lie. I could see he wanted to go out with a bang. Get himself written up about in some such medical journal, hey maybe with a little luck get himself a Congressional Medal of Honour or Nobel Prize for medical discovery or something like that. And before you know it, I reckon there would have been all sorts of government agents on my tail wanting to haul me off to some secret compound in the desert, like Area 52, so they could poke and prod me to their heart’s content in their laboratory to discover the secrets of an alien heart.

As I write, I’m sitting out on my Japanese veranda overlooking the most beautiful garden you ever saw in all your life. A step down onto a tidy little lawn, just a few steps from my very own pond where I keep some Koi carp.

My view is right up close to an amazing arrangement of small to medium-sized trees with a splendid array of colors, green, gold, and salmon pink. Rising up behind is a small patch of pale blue sky with a passing fluff of cloud or two.

Standing behind me, watching over me is my lovely oriental wife. She’s twenty years younger than me and doesn’t look a day over fifty. I guess that must be the Japanese diet, that or she’s from another world far from the orbit of the earth.

I met Kyoko quite by chance when I was sixty-one years old. I say we met by chance, but these days I am not so sure. She was born on the day that I hit twenty, way, way back in seventy-four. I think about that sometimes. And I think about it with good reason. See, her birthday happened to coincide with an event I will never ever forget.

Whilst Kyoko was busy being born, I was hitch-hiking, en-route to a place called Hawkshead in the Lake District of England. I was on my way to camp for the weekend with my brother Arnie and a friend Alan and his younger brother, David. They had left the day before without me as I had to stay behind and work the Saturday morning as a motor mechanic at a local repair shop.

About ten p.m. I set off and got lucky with catching a lift all the way up the motorway to the exit for Lake Windermere. From there I caught a lift to a place called Newby Bridge at the bottom end of the lake.

All I had to do was walk ten miles north on a little-used twisting country road and with a little luck, I’d be in Hawkshead by the break of dawn, just in time for a sizzling sausage and bacon on toast campfire breakfast. With that delicious thought in mind, I set to.

The walk up that old road was something of a spooky one I can tell you. Bats, mosquitoes and at one point a small group of pairs of eyes staring at me right up ahead. I stopped dead in my tracks right in the middle of the road. In the all-enveloping darkness, I was trying to make out exactly what those eyes belonged to. I got the impression that who or whatever those intriguingly shaped eyes pertained to, was as curious about me as I was about them. I just stood my ground for about two or three minutes when suddenly the eyes just disappeared. I let another minute or two pass before setting off once again.

A short time after setting off I began to hear noises behind me, rhythmically keeping step with my own regular footsteps. When I stopped, they stopped. When I set forward again, so did they. I was being followed for sure. But by who or what I didn’t know. I looked behind into the darkness and couldn’t see a thing, just the soft glint of cat's eyes down the middle of the road reflecting the moonlight. I decided to just walk and try to be calm about it, it could have been nothing more harmful than a stray animal for all I knew.

Within an hour I could see a light-up head. It looked like it was beginning to dawn already, which surprised me as it was still only two-thirty in the morning. The light was spread across my entire vista. There was a brilliance about it that was so strangely inviting I felt compelled to keep walking towards it.

Eventually, I got about a hundred yards from a break in the dense foliage up ahead and stopped. I let my bag drop to the road beside me and stood with my transfixed gaze concentrated on the center of where the light was emanating from. Whatever it was, it certainly was not dawn, I figured that much out. I cannot remember how long I stood like that, maybe five minutes, maybe half an hour. Time just seemed to stop still. After a while, I began to gingerly step forward into the light.

Bright as that light was, it wasn’t as blinding or hot as I had expected. In fact, it was really quite cool. There was what looked like an early morning mist which reached up to my knees as I inched ever forward to the center. There the mist gradually dissipated to the extent that I could see the rough ground. Looking down, something suddenly caught my eye.

Surrounded by a little moss and some loose pebbles and stones I saw two bright glistening rocks, about the size of a couple of tennis balls. I got down on my haunches and was absolutely mesmerized by these roughly hewn round objects giving off a luminosity I found impossible to describe.

Right next to the two rocks I suddenly saw a much smaller rock that hadn’t been there a few seconds ago. Where it came from I do not know. I lifted my head and looked all around, but I saw nothing nor nobody else around. What the hell? I thought to myself. Have I just seen a small rock being born?

I reached down to touch the larger of the three rocks, which I called Poppa Rock, and as I stretched my arm downward I could see on my cheap watch that it was exactly five past three in the morning. As my fingertips gently touched the surface of Poppa Rock, I felt a great force of energy totally course through my every sinew. It felt electrifying. And for some reason, I could not pull my hand away.

I felt a strong burning sensation in my chest that went right deep inside and caught my breath. I felt like I was in some sort of hold I could not get out of. I was trapped in a field of extreme energy that seemed to have taken possession of my whole body and mind. Then, as suddenly as it had taken hold of me, it let me go and I fell back on my ass.

As I sat on that rough patch I looked around and suddenly saw off in the distance, about 100 yards away, a couple of diminutive figures. How long they had been there I didn’t know. The male appeared to be a little taller than the female. I couldn’t make out much detail due to the mist and the distance, but they had what I can only describe as ovoid features and a languid look to their build.

Next to the female was what looked like a newly born lamb stood stock still. No skitting about as you normally expect to see a young lamb, it was so still it could have been a stuffed toy. Huddled together like a scene from the bible, they didn’t make me feel at all threatened.

For about a minute or so the couple just didn’t move a muscle. Then, in unison, they both put their hands out in front of themselves, joined them together as if in prayer, and tilted their heads forward a little. It seemed to be some sort of greeting. Then they put their heads back again to their normal position. The male seemed to move his gaze towards the small group of rocks and gave a gentle nod of his head as if to say, it’s ok, take them, they’re yours.

For whatever reason, I quickly grabbed hold of the smaller, baby-sized rock and stumbled to my feet. I backed away about six feet or so then I turned and ran as fast as I could to get away from there. I quickly grabbed my backpack and headed on up the road, constantly looking behind me to see if anything or anybody was following. There was nothing and nobody there to be seen.

I must have walked about two miles before I let up a little and decided to have a rest on a little drystone wall at the side of the road. My mind was still spinning from what had happened back there. I was trying to make some sense of it all when I heard something behind me.

On the other side of the wall, about twenty feet below was a shady glen. And as I stared down into that soft spot I saw a mature deer with a doe. They were right next to a babbling brook just chewing on something in the short grass. Suddenly the adult deer seemed to detect my presence and looked up at me. She just stared at me for about two or three minutes before dipping her head and getting back to her business of feeding.

I don’t know if it was the amazing natural beauty of the scene below me or what had happened with the brilliant light back down the road, but I suddenly found myself crying. As the tears rolled down my cheeks a thought entered my head, there is a god and this morning I met him in all his awesome glory. After a break of about half an hour, I collected my thoughts as well as my bag and once again set off for Hawkshead.

In just over an hour, I finally reached my destination and made my way to the local campsite to hook up with my brother and his friends. I never said a word about what had happened earlier, he would only make fun of me anyway.

As I sat down on the ground to get stuck into that much-anticipated sausage and bacon on toast breakfast, I surreptitiously brushed my hand across my pocket to make sure I still had that smaller, baby rock. It was safe for now. Later I would find an even better place for it. In fact, I kept that rock safe and sound for the rest of my life. Even as I write I have that little gem of rock no more than ten feet away from me.

At one time I showed the little rock to a geologist friend of mine and he and I went to his lab back at his house. He put the rock under a microscope and asked me where I got it from. I said I just found it in a field on a camping trip. He said he’d never seen anything like it. In fact, he said it was not a rock from this planet. “ This, young man,” he said, “…..has traveled one hell of a cosmic distance. Do you mind if I take it to our lab at work over at NASA? We’ve got some amazing analytical tools there we could run it past and see just how far it has come. Looks like it’s had an incredible journey through time and space.” I declined his offer fearing I would never see it again and hurriedly made good my escape from his envious eyes. After that, I just cut contact with him.

For many years I kept that little rock hidden safely away. Whenever I moved home that was the very first thing I made sure I had safely tucked in my pocket. Wherever I went, the rock went with me.

Eventually, I settled in the south of Spain where I spent the best part of twenty-five years. By this time I had been married and divorced twice over. After the second divorce, I made the decision to just live the rest of my life alone.

I had all the female company and intellectual stimulus I needed with a few close neighbors, Tree, Agnes, Britni, and Geetika, who all kinda looked out for me. A bit further down the street lived the Doc as we used to call him. We all looked up to the Doc as he knew stuff we mere mortals could only dream of. Across the other side of town, there was Earnie.

Earnie is one of those good ole boys who paints pictures and writes the stories of his salad days back in the East. I like Earnie, keeps himself to himself, I call that being smart. The less you tell folks the less ammunition you have given them to hurt you later on when they turn. But you can tell Earnie anything you like and not a word of it will slip past his lips. But even Earnie doesn’t know my real age.

However, I did once let slip a little to Earnie about the story of the rock. He looked at me in silence and sagely nodded once or twice as I gave an abridged version of the events. In the end, he simply said “ Is that it? You finished with that amazing tale?”

“I guess so,” I said softly.

“Ok, so maybe one day you’ll write that up into a story, huh? In the meantime, I gotta feed my cats, if it’s all the same to you. Go on, scat, get out of here and live your best life.” And that was the end of that conversation.

One morning sometime after this, I went over to the local bar where I religiously had my breakfast. This day I was busy enjoying my Safelite and toasted millet with Pata Negra Jamon and virgin olive oil when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Maribell asking me in Spanish if I could help her out with a customer who didn’t speak any Spanish. “Sure Maribell,” I said as I turned to look down the bar. Therewith the most beautiful smile I had ever seen in my life was the prettiest Japanese girl you could ever set eyes upon. From that moment on I was well and truly hooked.

After two years of dating, Kyoko and I got married. And at this point, I feel like I ought to say “And we lived happily ever after.” Which in all honesty we are doing. However, there is an added dimension to this story.

One day I was helping Kyoko to tidy around the house a little and I was putting stuff away in the top drawer of her dresser. My fingers touched upon two wrapped, round objects. I was going to open them up when suddenly Kyoko saw me and ran across to the dresser. “STOP! What are you doing?”

“I was curious about these two round objects,” I said defensively. Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry darling. It’s just that………”

“Just what?” she snapped.

“Wait here,” I said and I went to my office.

Within thirty seconds I was back holding my baby rock in my right hand. I showed her the rock and she looked astounded. We went and sat on the sofa and she opened her two objects up. All three rocks were uncannily identical.

“Where did you find them?” I asked her.

“I found them together in an old antique shop in the north of England. They were very, very cheap. Apparently, a local farmer had found them in a field where he grazed his sheep. He and his wife were very old, they say that he was 150 years old when he finally passed away. When his grandchildren did a house clearance they found them on top of an old bedroom dresser. They just assumed that they were perhaps just a couple of paperweights and put them in a basket of odds and sods to be sold for very little at that antique shop.

The strangest thing is, as a child, I was often very poorly. But ever since I bought these I have never had a day’s illness, not one!”

“Can I ask you something, do know what time you were born?”

“Sure, my mum never ever let me forget that one. She said I should have had the sense of decency to be born at a more convenient time. It was five past three in the morning. Why?”

“Heck, this is one hell of a story darling. I bet my friend Stuart could tell it as nobody else could even begin to try. Ok, I got an idea, come on over here.” I said. And with that, I stepped over to an old wine cabinet we had on the back wall of our lounge.

I set all three rocks in a line on top of a beautifully embroidered runner across the mahogany top. Almost immediately all three rocks began to glow and illuminate our house and home. In fact, it would be fair to say those lil ole rocks have lit up our entire lives ever since.

As for my mysterious heart transplant, I can only guess that when I touched that small rock there was some sort of transfer of energy that stopped my heart from aging, along with the rest of me. Whatever it was, I feel good for another 150 years and look forward to many more decades of blissful happiness.

The Doc? Well, he did, as I fully expected he would, which was to try to make something of it in the medical press. However, he just got laughed at and was dismissed as a deluded crank. Last I heard he spent the rest of his days trying to locate me, all to no avail thankfully. I presume he is now long since deceased, god rest his soul.