Empty Heart

            A wave of fog gently crashed onto the cobblestone streets of Cortland, New Hampshire. The weather had just begun to turn towards autumn and the inhabitants of the tiny town were tucked into bed. The brick road beneath a flickering streetlight subtly changed color from orange to gray and back again, over and over with no discernible pattern. It was the dead of night yet a single figure lumbered down the middle of the street. 

            The silhouette was tall but not wide. They were built like a wire hanger ripped from its functional shape. They even bent haphazardly to the left as if their profile had been snapped over someone’s knee. A slight wave at the edges of the figure revealed baggy clothing. No sound came from them, not even the echoes of their feet against the ground. 

            The figure finally lurched into the blinking light and more details became clear. He was a man. Was being the operative word as he was clearly dead. His skin glowed a sickly, greenish-white with the texture of slightly melted Play-Doh. He was mostly bald but it was unclear how much of that occurred during his life versus after his death. His clothing, which he was assumedly buried in, was caked with fresh dirt. 

            The man stared up at the lamp with unblinking eyes. It seemed as if he was trying to absorb as much radiation as he could from the quivering light. He reached into his open shirt and fingered a long, diagonal wound running along his chest. The slash was closed with the precise stitches only a trained hand could make. However, some of the stitches had broken, opening a window into the man’s hollow chest. After a few minutes, the light flickered to blackness and the dead kept walking. 

            If one were to witness the man, well they would likely run away screaming. But if they were able to keep their composure long enough to study his movement, they would see something very odd. The man’s face was a mask that showed no sign of expression, yet his body language was that of a prisoner. He trudged along as if being pushed; moving in quick increments only to slow to a crawl and then stumble forward once again. At times it also seemed like he was being pulled. His body leaned forward into a dangerously unbalanced position and moved with small, shuffling steps. As far as an average person could see, there was nothing in front of or behind him. 

            The push and pull of the dead man stopped again when he was much further down the road. He was far past the village now and surrounded by the forest’s coarse hair of pine trees. A fog soaked winded turned the man towards a drainage ditch. Even through the haze, the dead stared pointedly at one spot in front of him. The glaze on his eyes dissolved and two black pupils circled by maple rings became clear. He blinked for the first time since death. 

Another gust of wind blew the fog from the ditch and for a few moments, it was not immediately replaced by more. At the bottom of the slope was a bundle of pictures, flowers, cards, and stuffed animals. The pictures captured the luminous smile of an elementary-age girl. The man lurched forward and seemed to take in the light of her smile in the same way he took in the lamp’s energy. Most of the cards had lost all legibility to the weather, but a dry patch on one revealed a single phrase.

            “We’re Praying for You!”

            A deeply unnatural sound emanated from the man upon seeing this. A boiling broth gurgle in his throat like bile being emptied from a stomach. The sound had an indescribable tone of sadness to it. The trees were the only ones listening, however, and they showed no remorse for the depressed. The gurgling ceased and a blanket of fog was once again laid over the bundle. The man scratched at his wound again, tearing open several more stitches.

            Instead of continuing down the road, the dead slid into the ditch and climbed back out the other side, entering the looming forest. His eyes remained human as he navigated his way through the puzzle of pines. There was a new sense of purpose to the way he moved. He stood mostly straight and no longer constantly changed speeds. Something from that bundle had embedded itself into the dead matter of his brain. From a distance, one may have even mistaken him for the living. 

At times it seemed like there was a force trying to pull him away from his destination. He would suddenly jerk to the side, or his leg would become stuck mid-step. The man fought through these battles until he passed the barrier of the tree line. From then on, he was undisturbed in his quest. A strong north wind blew the smell of burning wood into his nose. It was only then that he realized he could smell again.

In front of him was a grassy valley. At the bottom of the valley was a wooden cabin with small puffs of smoke exhaling from its chimney. The man tumbled down the hill, soundlessly. He landed only a few feet from the inhabitants’ chocolate Labrador. The dog tilted its head but made no sound. It only watched as the dead attempted to get up. The creature somehow knew that he was no threat.

The man rose like a broken Jack exploding from his box in slow motion. Parts of his body that weren’t meant to hang, hung, Parts that weren’t meant to be stiff, hardened. One of his legs had become permanently straightened. He could now only move by pivoting. The dead traversed the circumference of the house in small, half-circles until he was in front of a window on the opposite side.

Cozy, orange light glistening on the glass beckoned the man forward. As he grew closer, he could see inside the room. The girl from the photos slept on the bed. A tube running from her arm led to a stalwart IV stand next to her bed. There was an arrangement of chairs facing the girl, implying frequent visitors who needed somewhere to sit as they cared for and cooed after her. A pink blanket, with a unicorn emblazoned on the front, covered the girl up to her waist. Above that she wore a gray knit shirt that covered the majority of a long, crooked scar running along her chest. 

The dead man couldn’t look away. He reached again for his wound, parallel to hers, but this time his fingers came away wet. The scarlet stick of blood was unmistakable, and it was oozing from his chest. His fingers were no longer the gray-green of death. He refocused on his reflection in the window and saw the face that had died a few weeks ago. His skin had regained its life. His lips were once again rosy. Even his thick, black hair had returned. All he was missing was a heart. That rested just past the window, under a unicorn blanket, inside the chest of the girl he almost killed.

The cavity inside his chest was flooded with molten guilt that blistered his lungs and burnt his ribs. Memories popped into his mind like firecrackers. The bachelor party, the bouncer he fought for his keys, the blinding light refracted through the windshield. After that was darkness for him, but his own memories were not the only ones drifting through his mind. 

He became a father waking up with his car in a drainage ditch, finding his little girl ten feet away with her chest caved in. He became a mother paralyzed by fear after receiving the worst call of her life in the dead of night. He became a doctor carving open a chest, his chest, to retrieve a still viable heart. He finally became the girl herself, floating in and out of consciousness for days as her body tried to kill the foreign organ behind her ribs. 

The dead man felt like Atlas holding up the grief of the world. But he was not a Titan. He collapsed under the weight and sunk into the dew-covered grass. The man knew that he was not truly alive again. There is a feeling to life that no living thing can discern because they haven’t had experiences without it. This man knew that feeling and he knew he didn’t have it. It was like being carried to bed as a child, rediscovering a memory of a late loved one, or realizing happiness in the moment and choosing to savor it. Even those were only partial definitions. In truth, even though many have tried, life is indescribable. 

The man felt his body giving way, not into the dead form he was before, but into the earth itself. He was sinking. Not to Hell or anything that easy. He was being pulled in to be used again. The idea of renewed life in many forms satisfied the man deeply in his final moments. Just like the idea that his love would remain on Earth in the heart of a young girl.