Short Story: Her Gift – Michele Cempaka

By Barrie | March 25th, 2007 | No Comments

It’s been a while since I posted a short story by some of the interesting and talented writers in the archipelago. I was particularly impressed with this writer as she has excellent voice.

Her gift to him was …
By Michele Cempaka

She cut out a piece and sent it to him in a small metal box with a broken latch.

Three days later it arrived at his place smelling like rancid meat that had been baking in the sun for several days. He opened the box carefully, afraid to see what he might discover.

Even before he looked inside he knew what its contents would be, and as he suspected, he found a large portion of her heart.
Its deep red hue had turned into the burned, brown color of leaves that have fallen from trees when the season changes from autumn to winter.

He picked up the jagged scrap of flesh, feeling its rough wetness between his fingers. It felt so small and light in his hand. He didn’t know what to do with. He’d told her not to send it, but she had insisted.

He looked around the room searching for a container for it, something that would keep her heart more securely sealed, unlike the metal box that she had sent it in.

He would keep her heart, for he knew it was no small gift that she had sent him. Yet, he still could not stand the sight and smell of it, and knew that he must store it away soon or he would surely become sickened by it.

Out of the corner of his eye he thought that he saw the heart move. He looked down, but found it still.

Maybe he could send it back to her? Why did she have to choose him? He walked towards the kitchen, his right hand still holding on to the heart fragment. With his left hand, he opened a cupboard and felt around until his hand touched a cylinder-shaped container.

“I’ll put it in here and then I’ll figure out what to do with it,” he said to himself.

The heart fit nicely in the container; there was even room to spare. Now all that he needed was a lid. He searched inside the cupboard again and spotted three lids.

He tried one and then the next and finally the last, but none fit the container. He looked at the other containers but quickly ascertained that these lids wouldn’t fit them either.

His head was beginning to feel light, so he sat down on a sofa nearby and stared at the hand that had just held her heart. Bits of brownish-red clumps were stuck to his palm. They looked like the bloody remnants he’d find on whole chickens that he bought from the market.

He licked a few pieces from his hand, letting them linger on his tongue before he swallowed them. They tasted salty and sweet.

*****
She had thought about it for a long time before she made the decision to do it. A gift … a gift of total love, something that would always be remembered and cherished.

She thought that this gift, the gift of her heart, would ensure everlasting love with him. She’d done this twice before, cutting away a sliver and sending it off to her lover, but both times it was refused.

Her heart was not as strong as it once was — before the time she had cut two pieces out of it — but she didn’t care. “This time,” she thought, I will send an even bigger piece and there will be no doubting the depth of my love for him.”

She took out a small paring knife from the kitchen drawer and began to slowly cut away at the scarred surface of her chest.
Very little blood spilled out as she reached inside and carefully felt around until she touched that organ known as her heart, which beat ever so softly now.

She pulled it out of the opening and began to cut away a large portion, leaving just half of her heart for herself.

“Take it, take it, take it!” she chanted in a loud singsong voice, her head rocking from side to side.

She could feel the fragment pulsating in her hand — a vibrating sensation crept up her arm. For an instant, she thought about giving him her entire heart, but she knew that this would surely kill her.

Instead, she took the piece and gently placed it inside the metal box she had found stored high up on a closet shelf.

The box had been given to her by her mother many years ago when she was still a young girl.

“Put your special things in here — things that you hold most sacred,” she’d said to her. “One day you can open the box and rediscover your treasures as though they were brand-new.”

The box had remained soothingly empty, holding the promise of treasures to come. Now her heart lay inside its red velvet interior — its color darkening into a deep maroon.

The beating slowed and then stopped. She closed the lid and put the box inside another cardboard box filled with Styrofoam pieces.

She would send it to him today, and she would wait for as long as it took for him to return to her.

A peace filled her now, spreading down from the top of her head and into her weakened heart.