When I was nineteen I...

Again i'll say that this story is not for the faint of heart. It's really no worse then anything else of its kind nowadays and these warnings are probably unnecessary, but oh well.

When I was nineteen I...

“Remember our plan o.k.?”

I crouched there, one hand pressed against the gaping wound in her thigh which did nothing to stop the blood trickling onto the metal flooring. A vague whisper at the back of my head told me that there was something I was supposed to be doing. Now of course it’s painfully obvious, call an ambulance. I needed to stop gawping like a fucking idiot and call an ambulance.

That’s not what I did though, I simply crouched by her and stuttered. My brain was an ineffectual lump of useless meat and therefore so was the rest of me. I just watched, and listened.
“Don’t let them bury me.” He voice was blank, I guess she was in shock. The knife wound itself didn’t seem to be demanding much of her attention.

Don’t let them bury me. Easy for her to say. We’d talked about it before, each and every sunny Sunday afternoon which warranted a walk through the forest where there was no one else except the squirrels, just the way we liked it.

I never want to be buried, she’d said one such day after we’d finished naming a bunch of spiders we’d found on an elm tree. I don’t want to be cremated, I don’t want to have some priest who didn’t even know me reading out meaningless words at my funeral. That’s no way to be dead.

I don’t remember her finally dying, that whole night is largely a blur, except of course for that last request, and a few other things I’d much rather forget. We were attacked of course, one minute we were walking over the bridge on the way home, cars were passing back and forth underneath us, drowning out most of the noise. The next thing I knew the person walking the other way drew a knife, stabbed her and ran. He died I’m happy to say, I heard it. The shit-ball slipped on the icy metal floor and broke his neck as he fell down the stairs. Perhaps you could call that the silver lining.

So what do you want? I asked.
I want you to cut my heart out. She said with a confidence that suggested she’d practiced this line, Then I want you to throw it into the sea.
I smiled, we were both so fucking deep back then. Unlike everyone else in existence, we had romance and noble suffering in our souls or some such teenage nonsense.
I’ll do the same for you if you die first. She reassured me, resting her arm across my shoulders as we walked.
Thanks.

I don’t remember doing so, but I guess I carried her body back home. Home being a rented room in halls. It was early in the morning, about three or four maybe. Apparently no one saw me, or if they did they either thought I was carrying my wasted girlfriend back home or was a date rapist and if that was the case then no one chose to intervene.

I was shaking badly, but it was nothing compared to the spasms my body went through when I watched Jack’s bread knife sawing into her gut. I vomited more times in that room then I ever had before. I felt utterly stupid and more ashamed than I ever thought possible, and on top of there was that small matter of my girlfriend not being alive anymore. It took me twelve hours in the end.

Removing a heart isn’t easy. As you can probably guess a bread knife isn’t the best tool for the job and rib cage meant I had to come up from underneath. I don’t really know what some of the thing I had to cut through were, and the mess I made, well, let me just say that I’m pretty sure they tore up that entire flat after what I did.

What I was finally able to pull out was barely fit to be called cat food, but that would have to do. I wrapped it up in every last one of the Sainsbury’s bags I had accumulated over time. I went to the sea front, tossed it in the water and hoped that was good enough. There was no brilliant sunrise or flock of doves or anything to let me know that I’d done the right thing. By the same token there was no sidelong glares from tourists, nor was there a crushing moment of pain to tell me that I’d done wrong. I was just so relieved to get rid of the damn thing. When I finally got home, they’d found the body.

You know, I actually apologize to her sometimes for doing it. I know it’s what she asked for but still, when you live your life knowing that society frowns upon such things as the apparent desecration of a human corpse you tend to get caught up in this frowning mentality. It doesn’t matter how much you may have tried to separate yourself from the ‘wrong’ views of the world by wearing overly long leather coats and cutting into your wrists when you’ve had a bad day, you can’t hope to cut yourself off from everything and everyone. Believe me, we tried.
My point is that it’s getting harder and harder to remember that I did this for her. I kept expecting her to appear over my bed one night and ask just what the hell I was thinking. In fact I had a recurring dream like that. Used to happen most days of the week, now it’s rarer.

They burned what was left of her. I guess that was unavoidable, but the heart was what mattered to her. She once called it the keeper of the soul. Another time she called it humanity untainted. It was something that was shielded from the filth of the world. Did she really mean that? Did she really care?

Yes. Yes she cared. Just because I turned my back on all that filth we concocted in our year together doesn’t mean that she would have. She didn’t have a chance to. The girl that died held me to a promise and I fulfilled it. At least I hope I did. Most of her threadbare heart was still lying in her chest, and what was in the sea probably got washed up on the beach and got stuffed in a wheelie bin by whoever the hell it is that cleans beaches.

Do you love me? I really hate that question. She only ever asked it once.
Yes.
How so? (Oh for the love of…)
Oh for the love of…
Come on, it’s a reasonable question.
It’s an awkward question.
Is it? She asked, pushing herself off of my ribcage with her elbows and causing me a fair amount of pain as she did so actually. Why are we together Daniel? Why are we here right now?
We got paired up for that advanced production piece, things kind of went from there.
That’s not what I mean, She said, my ribs were really starting to hurt now, Stop avoiding the question.
Rebecca, what exactly is your question? Thankfully she removed her bony elbows from my chest and placed them on either side of my neck.
Do you really love me? She asked, it wasn’t entirely the accusation it looks like, Or do you feel some cut rate emotion in its place? Something that will collapse at the first hurdle?
It’s nice to see you have such overwhelming faith in me. There was an awkward moment of silence, then bizarrely enough, she smiled.
Good enough.

So that’s that then. What’s done is done and for better or worse, at least I can’t say I didn’t try. And sometimes, not usually but sometimes, I wish I could do it again. I’m not saying I have any particular wish to see her die again, but still, some things in life are so completely separate from anything ordinary or monotonous that as sickening or twisted as it might be, you can’t help but allow it some veneration. Like I said though, I don’t feel this way very often.

The End