Heather's Heart

A gory little tale about not letting go.

Photo by Fallon Michael on Unsplash

**Quick trigger warning for suicide right at the top.**

Heather had been dead for a week. Gone. Slit her wrists because I was going to college and she couldn’t go with me. That’s not what the note said, but I knew. Now she was buried in Oaky Shadeling Hills or something “soothing” like that. Underground. Where the dead people go. But the thing about Heather was that she usually ended up regretting her temper tantrums. None of us were really surprised when she showed up on the porch for Sunday dinner. She stood there in her dirt and decay stained pink dress and her doom heavy brows while we argued about whether or not to let her in. Dad and I were solidly against it. Revenants never show up and make shit better. Plus she stank and was carrying a plastic bag filled with meaty lumps drowning in yellow fluid and blood.

But Mom and David won the argument. Heather never did take rejection well, they reasoned, and turning her away might hurt her feelings. You don’t want to hurt your undead sister’s feelings. Do you? Also it was raining and Mom started to cry when the funeral home make-up started to run in thick black streaks down her face. So we let her in. I have no idea how she made it home because her eyes were sewed shut. She navigated the house just fine, too. They say when you lose one sense the others are heightened to compensate, but when you die I guess the only sense you have left is how to creep out the living. I hoped she wouldn’t ask for a bear hug from me like she’d always done before.

Mom set a place at the table for her and fussed about how to help her open her mouth to eat and talk. I for one wanted very badly to not hear her talk. But I was overruled. David pointed out that if she didn’t speak, we’d never figure out how to help her find peace and cross over for good or something. Red rover, red rover, send Heather back over. Heather just sat there, her eyes and mouth closed, serene and waxy and potent. David had helped Mom prepare the body at the funeral home and, because David is a weird little kid, he chatted up the mortician. I thought those guys were supposed to be bad luck. Or smell bad. David said he didn’t smell bad at all. He also said that we probably couldn't get her eyes open since they put spiked contacts over them to keep the lids shut. She didn’t seem to need sight anyway. We pried her lips apart with a greased up butter knife since glue was apparently what they used for that now days. When Dad clipped her jaws apart with wire cutters the lower one kind of swung open and she raised her hands to massage it. A grating grunt rattled in her throat.

Mom asked her if she wanted string beans. Heather shook her head and reached down to the floor. She swung the foul plastic bag up, letting it hit the table with a juicy splat. Heather opened her mouth to speak, but just grunted again. It reminded me a lot of a pig. Mom asked me to help her open the bag. No. No I was not doing that. She could go fuck herself. I was done taking care of Heather. That’s all I’d ever done, mind my sister. Look out for Heather. Do this for Heather. Give that to Heather. Invite Heather. It’s the reason I only applied to school on the opposite coast from the one we lived on. To get away from Heather. She was dead now. I was done. This horrible interlude would end tonight when we shoved her over the other side and smashed the portal generator or whatever it was that opened the door there so she couldn’t come back. She got the bag open just fine on her own anyway.

As Heather reached inside, David said they remove and embalm organs separately and sometimes put them in a bag in the casket. She pulled a few half rotting, plump organs out of the bag and dropped them on her plate. Some kind of bloody goo dribbled all over the table. Mom stifled a scream and Dad threw his napkin on the down while reminding Heather of her table manners. I gagged, more because of the smell than the sight. She finally found her heart and slid the rest of the slick offal off her plate and onto the floor. David asked her what they were for. She grunt-snorted and grabbed her knife and fork with surprising dexterity for someone recently embalmed. I said so, too. Mom always said I should encourage her more. Maybe I could have picked a better moment.

She ate with an enthusiasm she’d never had in life. She’d always been so frail. I hated her for it. Tiny little Heather that everyone wants to take care of, but no one ever does. No one but me.

“Geez, Heather, go easy. Your stomach might literally explode. Unless it’s in the bag, too.” I thought about pulling the plate away from her, but she paused her devouring and looked in my direction. Her eyes were still closed, black mascara streaked her cheeks and her jaw hung slack. Blood dribbled down her chin. She lifted the fork from the plate and raised it, pointing it at me, and holding it steady for thirty long seconds before lowering it.

“Hnnhg,” she grunted.

“Yeah, I missed you, too.” I didn’t, but once you die everything is spin. The Mom and David took the opportunity to pepper her with apologies and lamentations. Heather smiled as she chewed and once made the three-fingered “I love you” hand signal. Mom and David cried. Dad looked pissed. He hated anything going against the natural order of things. I just hated anything going against the natural order of me moving on with my life. Which Heather did. She always sucked up all the love and turned it in to dark cloud that rained black eyeliner. She was human sinkhole, was what I was thinking when she finished half of the heart and I realized I felt sick. I tried to drink some water but I couldn’t lift the glass. The room was getting blurry, too. I tried to tell Mom, but she shushed me, “darling, our little Heather’s back.” Mom looked like she was floating.

Heather grunted and snorted as she shoved the last few bites down her throat. I tried to tell her she sounded like a pig, but I couldn’t get my mouth to work. As she finished each bite I felt like my own heart was slowing down. I couldn’t keep my head up. I shoved my plate out of the way and laid my head on the table. I could barely breathe. No one seemed to notice. They gushed over Heather. She smiled at me as she held up the last bite. That huge smile she had that Mom said was a blessing to see. I knew what it meant. She put the fork to her lips, everything went black. Then white as Heather pulled me over to the other side. Red rover, red rover….

“You were going to go without me, but I couldn’t go without you,” she whispered.