Hearts

Hearts are not meant to be broken.

“Ten years.” Mark slid the postcards out across the restaurant table. “Every one on February first.” He nodded thanks to the waitress bringing his steaming hot tea.

Marge formed a line with the postcards as she examined each one. “The date doesn’t look fake, but it must be. All of them postmarked in the future? Each from a different place? I don’t recognize the photos in them. They look more faded the older they get. This last one is intense.”

Mark nodded while sipping the sweet scented tea’s smell reached his nose. “Ten years ago I thought it was a joke, then a mystery when no-one claimed to have sent it.”

The dreams started the same night?” Her own tea lay ignored. Marge felt her fingers tremble on their own as she stroked the latest card. She’d made Mark tell what was bothering him when he called her on his phone.

“Nightmares, really. I felt transported and trapped into the postcard photo. When I woke up, my whole body shook and vibrated to the same frequency as the card held in my hand. You’re the psychic. Can you explain what’s going on?

“You look half dead, Mark.You’ve got to get some rest. I’m going to go home with you and watch over you until we figure this out.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. I haven’t slept day or night for the last seventy four hours.” Mark’s head jerked, his eyes fluttered open as he forced himself to stay awake.

Marge swept the postcards together, slipped them into her purse, and escorted Mark out to her car. “Wait a second.” When Marge slipped into the driver's seat her purse floated up in mid air.

“It’s the postcards, dear. I think they’re trying to get back home,” Mark said behind a jaw cracking yawn. “The more of them there are, the stranger they get.” His hands trembled as he grasped the purse and held it tight against his chest. “Drive.”

They didn’t talk. Marge drove with unaccustomed concentration, flashes of the postcards appearance seared into her brain. Her psychic professional persona was a mix of trickery, psychological nuance, and other worldly visions she could not explain.


“Wake up. We’re here.” The apartment they faced was not Mark’s. Marge had brought him to her own second rate accommodation.

Mark almost sleepwalked to the entrance, Marge’s purse still buried against his chest. He fell full length on her sofa, instantly asleep. Marge tugged her purse out from under him, opened it, and drew out a fistful of postcards. She had to grab the most recent one as it slid out from the others, and started floating toward Mark’s snoring head.

“No, you don’t.” She caught it with her mind as well as her hand. Her psychic abilities weren’t easily kept under her control.

The postcard fought with her. It wiggled. It shivered. It seemed so alive.

“I’m here. Leave her alone.” It was Mark’s voice coming from his sleep drugged body.

“I said leave her alone. Marge? Let it go. Don’t hold on to it with either your thoughts or you hand.”

“How do you know. . .?” Marge felt the card slip from her grasp. It seemed impossible what happened next. The card drew each of the other postcards out of her purse. They snapped together, and like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle the separate images on the postcards merged above the cards into one flowing panorama shivering together.

“I’m coming.” Mark said as he rose up from the sofa. His eyes, now open, were glazed.

“They need my DNA, Marge. I won’t be back. Don’t be alarmed. Dream of me if you want to connect.” He didn’t have to reach for the postcards. They reached and beckoned him forward towards the vision floating above them.

“I don’t understand,” Marge began. Something inside kept her motionless and still. As Mark approached the floating image both he and the image faded and merged together until there was nothing but ordinary air.

The postcards settled slowly to the carpet floor. Marge bent down to retrieve them. A single red heart had taken the place of each picture on the postcards.

The last dated postcard had a different image, that of a broken heart.


Sleep was hard to come by that night. Marge tossed and turned. When Mark’s disappearance became official, she’d be the last one noted to have seen him. She’d be the primary suspect of a possible homicide.

This and so many other questions raced around in her head. “Why did it take ten years before Mark went off into the future?” Marge groaned.

Unable to sleep, she went to the small covered table where her crystal ball rested. It was usually a comfort to smooth her hands over the globe’s clear shiny surface. Tonight it felt different. Something inside wanted to come out.

“Show me,” she whispered, closing her eyes and letting her inner eye see for her. “Mark?” There he was turning towards her, beckoning silently.


The police knocked on her door three sleepless days later. “Sure. No problem. I’ll come with you to the station and make a statement. Let me get my purse.”

Marge heard the interrogation room door lock behind her. “They want to sweat out my confession,” she surmised.

The chair she sat in was purposefully uncomfortable. The air conditioning was a little too cold. Marge opened her purse, took out the postcards, and laid them in a row on the metal table. “Ten cards. You waited for me. Do your thing,” She whispered.

When the police came into the room, Marge wasn’t there. Her purse was gone. All that remained were ten postcards. Each had the same red heart on its center. Each lay inert and at rest, its mission done.