Heartstrings

My immediate thought was that I needed to get rid of my dew water. It was going to take me weeks to be able to fill up the whole jug again, if not longer.

He smiled at me, still holding her heart. ‘Cœur.’ He said. ‘Seems fitting for you to be the one to catch me.’

‘Only an idiot wouldn’t.’ I replied, ‘You’re sloppy. Too arrogant in thinking that you won’t get caught ‘cause you’re smarter than everyone around you.’

I paused. This…made no sense.

‘Why? Why mum? She loved you, in her own way. She always defended you even when she knew you were wrong, even when she realised you were absolutely demonic.’

‘She only defended me because she felt like she had to. I’m like her, so if she condemned me, if she called me a monster, she would be calling herself one too, and you know that she hated being held accountable. It was always someone’s fault, never hers.’

‘Unbelievable.’ I muttered. I would have killed to have her approval, and her love, in a perfect world, one where she was capable of such feelings.

‘As for why.’ He continued, pretending not to hear me. ‘You. No, I mean it, don’t give me that look. Sure, mum was getting on my nerves, but you have been driving me crazy with your stupid water bottle and your “miracle dew water.”

‘So you decided to kill her to what, teach me a lesson?’

‘It’s funny, if you think about it. Heart finding a heart. The truth is I’m not sure why I did it. Maybe I was bored, maybe I was annoyed at both her and you, or maybe I just could. You understand right?’

‘You’re sick.’

‘Don’t act like you’re the only good member of our family. Isn’t there at least a grain of wretchedness within you as well? Something that makes you stand in our garden at the crack of dawn, with hands covered in honey, something that makes you kill moths the second they land on your fingertips, so you can eat their wings?’ He laughed at my horrified look. ‘I’ve seen you Cœur, all along I knew. I know a lot about you, if not everything. We’re the same.’

‘We’re nothing alike. I would have never done this.’

‘Get off your high horse. You’re only horrified cause I killed her, but you don’t even care that she’s dead, you just want to make sure this doesn’t affect you. But it does, you can’t escape this Cœur, not this time.’

With that, he pulled a dagger from one of his back pockets, and before I could scream or even blink, He stabbed himself. He pushed the entire blade inside his ribcage without as much as wincing, and began twisting it, to carve his chest away. Only when he was done, when his chest opened up and his heart fell out onto the grass, did he sink to his knees.

I rushed forward as he bled out. It trickled from his nostrils, mouth, ears and even eyes, from anywhere possible. He didn’t fall to the floor, but stayed kneeling, bleeding, dead.

I watched him leak, like human fountain, and the only thought I could muster was of how I would manage to clean all of this up.

I started with my mother’s rotting heart, and buried it to where it used to lay, while I thought of what to do with my brother. I knew I couldn’t make the pit bigger to make his body fit as well, a cavity that size would leave a colossal patch of uneven dirt behind, it would be impossible not to notice it.

But as I contemplated more, becoming more and more panicked with each passing second, he started melting away. I stood in my garden, mouth open in a silent scream. Bones turned to flesh, that turned to veins, that turned to blood, and the grass, instead of being stained, absorbed it.

Not a trace had remained of him, the garden was spotless. 

Save for his heart, laying before me at my feet.