Bleeding Hearts and Grey-Beige Carpet

         She’s cutting her heart out and handing it to you.
         “Take it, eat it,” she says.
         There’s a gaping hole in her chest from where she plunged the knife into her own flesh. You find you can see light coming through it, turning the skin a light pink, like a baby’s. For some reason this fascinates you more than the heart itself. Its still beating for each breath she takes, and you briefly wonder why she isn’t dead yet, what with her heart cut out and all. The hole isn’t even bleeding, though the heart itself is dripping crimson onto the grey-beige carpet.
         She tries to hand you the heart again. You are loath to take it, but she forces it into your hands, as if she can’t stand to touch it for another second. It has a slippery slimy texture, somewhat like what you imagine an eel would feel like if you ever touched it, and it’s pulse quickens as you hold it in your hands.
         “Well?” she asks.
         You don’t reply. There doesn’t seem to be much you could say. You both regard the organ silently a moment, you rather perplexed, she expectantly.          You still aren’t sure exactly what you’re supposed to do with the collection of nerves and muscles she has forced into your palms.
         “Eat it” she says. She sounds somewhat like a mother telling a child what to do with their first ice cream. As if the fact that you don’t know what to do with it is a bit unbelievable at best.
         “Why?” you ask her. The whole scene is rather incongruous. This is the middle of Everywhere Suburbia, with light filtering through the blinds and matching off-white furniture to complement the carpet.
         “Because I don’t want it anymore. I will be much better off without.” She says this in the same matter-of-fact tone she used to explain what you are to do with the heart.
         “Then bury it or something.”
         She looks at you puzzled.
         “I want you to take it for me. I want you to eat it. I want it destroyed.”
         You find yourself thinking that burning or drowning it would work just as well. The heart’s pulse has increased again, pumping blood all over your shoes as her exasperation level grows. You wonder if maybe it’s going to explode all over you, and what would happen to her if it did.
         “Don’t you see?” She asks. “I don’t want it. It’s broken anyway.”
         You squeeze the heart quickly. You’re not sure why, but it seems to be the thing to do. Its surprisingly empty for all the blood it’s pumping. In fact it feels like what you think a void would feel like if you could clasp one in your palm. A scarred black hole of sorts perhaps. You get the feeling that no one has ever filled it. Or has been given the chance to try.
         “Are you sure?” you ask. She meets your eyes and the heart stops pumping; perhaps because you squeezed it? It lays there limp like the look in her eyes, and even more unappetizing now dead than it was alive.
         “Eat it.” She says again. It’s more of a command now, and you stand there uncertainly.
         “How?”
         “Like this,” she replies. She lifts your hand to her mouth and grasps the heart with one hand. It’s started trickling blood again, a slow stream that runs down your white shirt and stains it a dark red. Her teeth flash white as she rips a piece from her own heart, chews and swallows.
         “Didn’t that hurt?” you ask. How could it not?
She smiles sadly and sighs. Its an inward smile, and you aren’t sure if its for you or for her, if she’s even heard you at all.
         “It’s mine. For me it didn’t hurt at all.” She laughs briefly, more of a snort. “I told you it was defective.”
         You stare at her, realizing that the hole in the middle of her chest has started to close. A tiny corner put back into place. As if her heart is being replaced.
         “Well?”
         You raise the heart to your lips. It has the faintly metallic smell of blood and raw meat. Your mind immediately associates it with ground beef, and for some reason this makes it easier for you to take a bite.
         The taste surprises you. It’s like nothing you have ever imagined, nothing you could ever compare to. Its honey and salty tears and bittersweet cocoa powder and every emotion you have ever felt and some you haven’t. It leaves you craving more, and you realize that you are taking her in in a way that you have never thought you could. It’s almost sensual, and yet you cant wait for the experience to end.
         She watches as you devour her heart. Tears are streaming down her face, but it doesn’t seem to be from pain. The expression is unreadable; a sort of distant look that you know from experience could mean anything. The hole in her chest continues to shrink, disappearing slowly as you chew and swallow, chew and swallow, jointly wishing both for more and to vomit up this part of her that she is rejecting and giving to you like a Christmas present you cant help but regift.
         You’re down to the last bite now, the last little quarter size bloody bit. You regard it, wondering what will happen when it’s gone.
         “Wait.” It’s a whisper, so soft you’re not sure you heard it till you look up and see her reaching out her hand. You pause with the morsel of flesh partway to your mouth and hand it to her silently, almost loath to give it up. Smeared with her blood and pain there still doesn’t seem to be anything to say.
         There’s only a minute hole left in her rib cage, seemingly smaller than the sliver she’s holding in her hand. You both regard the remnant a moment, and then she shoves it away from her and back into your palm.
         “No, eat it. This has to be done right. I don’t want it anymore. Any of it.” She turns away from you, shoulders set in that way that tells you that you could protest for hours and she would never give, but you’re almost sure she’s convincing herself instead of you. You stare at the nape of her neck, sure you’re supposed to say something now and equally sure that anything you could voice wouldn’t help. This is her ordeal, and you are only part of the gauntlet she has convinced herself she must run.
         “Eat it. Just eat it already.”
         You place the last bloody fragment in your mouth, and this time all you taste is pain. Pain so sharp, so blinding, so total that you flinch and sway on your feet. A stake through the heart couldn’t hurt as horribly as this does. And somehow you know that this was caused by you.
She turns back around, the hole in her chest now completely closed. And then you hear her laugh.
         Only when you’re out of the door and running down the street past the matching house and water-bloated front lawns, then crouching behind a car to heave choking breaths of things that wont come up, do you realize she has given you the most precious and only thing she has ever possessed. And that in your taking her in she has let herself finally be free.