CHARLIE HEART

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: YOU'RE DOING IT WROING

YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG

         I am swimming, naked in the lake. No one is around. Everything is quiet and I have this little pond all to myself. I dive deep down and then come shooting out of the water like a dolphin, down again, up again. Down, up, down, up. I notice I can breathe under water. This new discovery really excites me. I swim down and down and down and down. It’s so beautiful under the lake. There are fishes and eels and colors, oh, wow the colors.
         What is that? Is that a giant record player? Yes, yes it is. But I have never seen one so big before. It’s the size of a ship. A sunken pirate ship!
         I Swim over to the player’s arm and do some loops around it. Then I notice a crack in the box, leading into the core. There is a bright shining light beaming out from inside. This frightens me, but the curiously I feel in my chest makes me squeeze on through.
         GOLD! There is gold everywhere. Wow, I think. I run my fingers through the hunks of shiny malleable rocks. There are diamonds, Rubies, and Peals too. This is not a record player, this is a massive treasure box.
         I swim from corner to corner, soaking up all the little amazing goodies. Then something catches my eye. What is that? Is that a finge... Yes, it’s a finger tip. Someone’s finger was sticking out of a pile of silver coins. I panic and start digging. What if they can’t breathe under water like I can. What if I can’t save them, am I too late?
         I scoop and toss a handful away from a white pail face. I jolt with alarm. Is that...?
         Ginger!
         I tear her from the treasure and force her up and through the crack. Her body, stiff, cold and motionless, she feels like a rock with limbs. Suddenly I can’t breathe anymore, what is happening? Why can’t I breathe?
         I push and push and shove and stroke and push some more till we reach the top. My lungs gape open and suck the oxygen in like vacuums.
         I lay her on the beach and attempt a form of CPR I learned from watching those late night spanish medical soaps. Nothing.
         “What are you doing? That’s my body.”
         I spin around and fall on my back. Ginger was standing on the beach looking at me like I had just stolen her car.
         “Ginger?”
         “What are you doing?” She demanded.
         “I’m saving your life.” I say quickly.
         She shakes her head and says, “Well, you’re doing it wrong.”
         I shake my head. It is starting to ache again, throbbing from extreme stress, I guess. My chest and back are burning now too.
         She walks over and kneels down beside us. She points to my heart.
         She says “Take it out.”
         “Take what out?”
         “You know, take it out.”
         I look down, my shirt is covered with a red liquid; blood? I rip open my shirt. There is a hole there, a gaping wide red hole. I think to myself, I’ve never seen this hole before, who put it there?
         She says, “Give me it.”
         I reach in my chest and grab my pumping red, veiny, sticky, cold heart. As she takes it she has to pull and snap some of the veins and arteries that were still attached. This gives me the goose bumps.
         She smiles. Takes a knife out of the dead Ginger’s mouth and start stabbing away at the organ. She stabs it and I can feel it. My whole body jumps every time the blade punctures it. Blood squirts her in the face, on her teeth, and she smiles even bigger.
         When it’s over she gives it back and says, thank you.
         “Your welcome, we should do this again sometime.”