Page 26 of Love Sick

I watch as Alanna walks over to her medical table and examines the tools before her. Joy is screaming hysterically, while me, I just want to close my eyes and wish for this nightmare to end.

“Help!” Joy screams over and over again.

But we’re beyond that.

“What would you do to save Jonathan?”

Alanna’s question ceases Joy’s screams. “An-anything.”

“Anything?”

“Yes! You heard me! Anything!”

What game is Alanna playing?

Alanna smirks, and the sight sends a chill through me.

I want to tell Joy to shut her mouth because there is no saving either her or Jonathan. But I can’t. All I can do is watch as Alanna tears Joy’s white blouse down the middle, exposing her chest.

Before Joy has a chance to breathe her next breath, Alanna stabs the scalpel into Joy’s chest and begins to slice downward. Joy gasps, her eyes parted wide, appearing to be in disbelief at the fact that Alanna is hacking through her flesh and muscle with a fucking scalpel.

The sound of Alanna cutting through Joy’s flesh turns my stomach and I want to be sick. But I do all I can in this circumstance—I keep eye contact with Joy as I owe her that; I was the one who decided her fate, after all.

Once Alanna reaches Joy’s navel, the scalpel clangs against the floor as she drops it, only to retrieve a small surgical hammer. She then peels away Joy’s flesh with her fingers, exposing her rib cage. This macabre sight is so surreal, I wonder if maybe I’m still wrapped in a drug-induced reverie, but my imagination would never be this creative.

Alanna begins to tap away at Joy’s ribs and my mind focuses on the rhythm, constructing a gruesome song in my head. It’s entrenched in blood and gore, but the notes grow stronger, the melody clearer. It’s becoming easier to hear the music, but what have I sacrificed to hear it again?

The squelching of blood and tissue morphs into notes, and although my wrists are bound, my fingers move against invisible keys, playing the music I hear and feel. I wonder if this is how I cope with situations I don’t want to deal with.

Music has always been my salvation, and I need redemption now more than ever.

Joy’s breathing is a rattle and I realize that’s because her chest is now an open cavity, her lungs on the outside instead of on the inside.

“The heart is the epicenter of us all. One thinks they are broken-hearted when they lose the love that made their heart worth beating. They can literally feel their heart break. It feels as though someone has reached inside of them…and ripped it from their chest.”

And that’s exactly what Alanna does.

She cracks Joy open like a walnut and reaches into her chest, removing her beating heart. This sounds implausible to most, but not for Dr. Norton.

I can heart Joy’s heart beating…

Thump…thump, thump…

And then silence as Alanna squashes it in her hands.

Joy’s eyes are still wide open, but her face is one of serenity. It’s the most puzzling thing I’ve ever seen. Was she relieved that the pain finally stopped?

The last thing she would have seen was her bloody, beating heart in Alanna’s hands. There is no peace in that. Only a fucking horror story.

Her chest cavity is one gaping, bloodied wound, but it’s not messy. There is precision to the dissection because it was done with a surgeon’s hand.

Joy is simply an empty shell now, a reflection of how I feel for condemning her fate.

So this is what we’re all made up of? Blood. Tissue. And bones.

At the end of the day, no matter our circumstances, we are all the same. And we all come with an expiration date. Some premature. Others, if fortunate enough, can experience life until they’re old and gray.

Joy, however, isn’t one of those fortunate ones.

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