THE BELL JAR HEART

The mind recalls events and the heart remembers the emotion.  A memory can wander into the brain unbidden and cause pain.  I had memories – the car accident I caused that killed my best friend, my lovely Becca leaving and my brother’s losing battle with leukaemia.  My heart hurt constantly.

I took a scalpel, removed my heart and replaced it with an efficient machine I’d built that circulated my blood and kept me alive.  It connected to my brain, but didn’t process emotions, allowing me to recall events without anguish.  My past couldn’t haunt me anymore.

I kept my organic heart in a safe, preserved in a bell jar and lived a carefree life.   Irritatingly, bad things still happened.  There was the fire in the study that destroyed the specifications of my artificial heart; it was now a unique thing I couldn’t patent or recreate.  Also I thought it was now safe to take women for their love and money, then leave, but each time I did so, organic matter grew round the artificial heart, like it was trying to become real and hold memories of guilt, the feeling I feared most.  I operated on the side of the machine, removing the matter and put it in the bell jar because I couldn’t destroy what was part of me.  Then I watched the stuff glue itself to my heart, forming a black ugly mass of scar tissue.  Was this what hearts normally looked like?  Was mine in terrible pain?  It still beat, so I assumed it was OK.

I thought Miranda was another wealthy woman with whom I could play, but there was hardness in her pale eyes.  Everything I said she found amusing, even when I told her I loved her.  Still, she gave me money, without seeking attention and I wanted more.

“If you love me, you’ll tell me what’s in that safe,” she said.

“My heart,” I replied, lips twisting sarcastically.

“How convenient,” she responded.

We went drinking and she taunted me, telling some bullshit story about her dad being a safe breaker.  I don’t remember staggering back from the pub and going to bed, but I remember waking.  She was sitting astride me grinning, in one hand a scalpel; in the other the machine that had replaced my heart.

“What have you done?” I panicked, thinking I was about to die, but then I felt the beating in my chest and saw the empty bell jar.

She smiled and drove the scalpel through the pump, breaking my irreplaceable machine forever.  As I watched her do this, the connections between my organic heart and brain rewired and the tide came in.  Overwhelming feelings of pain from my past were re-enforced, by the remorse I’d repressed regarding the women I’d left destitute and broken - that black organic matter.  I could feel the tears welling up and looked at her pleadingly; “Make it stop.”

 Miranda’s voice was soothing, “But I’ve made you all better, my darling.”