I’m lying on my back, I’ve spent
most of my life here, years I lived here, but things were always unpredictable
and sometimes, randomly, I’d be untied. That was rare. There’s something
different this time, a desperation in their eyes I’ve never seen before, I
don’t understand it, but I don’t care, it won’t change what will happen. My
heart will be cut out. There is never another ending, my heart is always cut
out. My heart stopped growing back years, ago, but they don’t know that,
they’re too busy to notice. For years now I’ve replaced the cut out heart with
a fake.
The first time it was cut out they
told me it was because I was strong willed, they said it would break my will and
I’d be a better child, and god would love me more. I was so young I barely
remember it. I wanted god to love me. I didn’t want to lose my heart. I lost
it, they cut it out. The pain was searing, my chest felt like a fire had been
built there. My will was broken. Like a trained monkey I now did everything without
a murmur. I was a better child, god must love me more.
The
second time it was cut out it was to tame my rebellious spirit. I didn’t know I
was rebellious, but my will was broken so I knew it should happen. After all, god
would love me more. So my heart was cut out to break my will, to tame my
rebellious spirit, to remove my lustful thoughts, to take away my disrespectful
spirit, on and on and on. Eventually, the cutting stopped hurting, and
eventually my heart stopped growing back, so I replaced it with a fake, after
all a person without a heart cannot follow god with their whole being. It was a
horrible secret I kept, I was without a heart. The secret ate at my soul and
tore at my mind, in penance I began to point out reasons to cut it out hoping that
in the cutting a new heart would form. Eventually, I lost all hope. I existed.
I had no heart, existing was all I was capable of. I was lauded as the perfect
child, the one all should be like, but they didn’t know my secret. I was
without a heart.
For
your own good we do this, they said. Because we love you. Because we want you
to be more like god. You’ll thank us when you’re an adult. All you do will be a
testament to what we did for you. I believed them, after all they were my
parents. So here I was again, tied down to the altar that was where I lived,
blood pooled beneath my body, beneath the stones that made the altar. The grass
was long dead, choked out by the blood. Sometimes I wondered how I was capable
of still bleeding, after all, I had bled so much. They’re hands were covered in
the blood. They had cut out my heart again. But they were not satisfied. I
couldn’t remember why it was being dispatched with this time. I didn’t care. On
their knees they were screaming. This was new, I idly wondered if they had
finally killed me. I could hear the screaming, I was alive. That was
disappointing.
I
started to listen to their words, they were yelling at me, possibly at god, I
couldn’t tell, the words were incomprehensible. I noticed that they were washing
something in the blood, they always did, I never noticed what is was. This time
I realized it was their souls. Like an insane person with the worse kind of OCD
they washed and rewashed their souls in my blood. Their words turned into a
repeated wail. “Why is it not clean, why am I not righteous?” They looked in my
chest to see if a heart had grown back so they could try again. Of course there
wasn’t one. Their faces bowed in their bloody hands they wept. Their souls were
tattered from the repeated washing. Convinced of their unrighteous they had
washed their souls until they were stained in blood and torn by the sheer
amount of washing. Finally, I realized this sacrifice was not for my good, this
sacrifice was so they might call themselves righteous. If I had a heart I would
have been angry, but I did not so I felt nothing.
Like
Isaac I had been sacrificed so that it might have been accounted to my parents
as righteous. For some reason this time was different this time they realized
that their sacrifice was not working. Instead of giving up in desperation they
redoubled their efforts, and sacrificed more often. Their souls became more
stained, more tattered, so they sacrificed even more.
I heard
rumors that once I reached a certain age the binds would loose of their own
accord, and I’d be free to go. I did not believe the rumors, hope was something
I had long learned to stamp out. Hope was dangerous, hope turned an ember into
a raging wild fire, hope did nothing but cause more pain. Then something
happened, my sister left. She was gone. Released from her bondage. I did not
know what to think, but trained into my bondage I hated her, she had abandoned
us. A year passed and my second sister left. Hope crept in without my knowing
it had, one day I vowed I would follow them.
Years
passed, my parents had long since stopped coming to my altar, after all they
had two new children to try to become righteous with again. But then one day my
father was gone, he was done he said, he would never be righteous, and I knew
that this was my fault, I suspected it was because I was without a heart. He
left.
My mother
continued in vain to find righteousness hidden in the hearts and blood of the
four children she had left. With her husband gone, she was that much more
unclean. One day the bindings that held me to the stone fell away, I slid off
onto the bloodied ground. My muscles were unused, I was terrified of this
newness, so I slowly crawled back to the stone. Every night, I would get off, I
would walk, my muscles became stronger with each passing day, and my hope grew.
Then with screams ringing in my ears it was shattered. I saw for the first time
what she was doing to my siblings, in anger I ran to them, I pushed her away,
her surprise at my movement was palpable, she had not realized how strong I had
become.
At
first she was angry, but then she was desperate, begging me she said she had to
do it, it was for our good, if she was not righteous then how could we ever
hope to be seen in the courts of god. For the first time I pitied her, she was
after all blindly following what she had been taught. She was as desperate for
our blood as a starved wolf is for meat. She was no human she was rabid. She
had no choice.
Night
after night I stood guard over my brothers, I cut their bindings, I taught them
how to use their minds, when numbed by the pain of losing their hearts. Something
was happening inside of me, it was a slow painful progression. It was strange,
and it was wild. Finally, I realized, my heart was growing back, but it was a
different heart, it was a wild, dangerous heart. A heart that would murder to
protect, a heart that could not and would not be cut out, a heart that was
overpowering. A heart that could not stay in this wasteland, a heart that
needed air to breathe.
I knew
that I had to leave. I fought against it, I tried to stay and protect my
brothers, but I could not. I had to leave. So I left, weeping over my brothers
altars, explaining that I could not stay knowing that they would feel abandoned.
I walked away, a new metal armored plated affixed over my heart. I left. I walked
into a new world, and I learned I that my new heart was not in need of taming,
and righteous was something we were born with not something that required
blood.
