A Cheating Heart by Holly Zeches

The young lovers fell in love and spent years wrapped in each others arms. The days blended together and time became rich parcels of memory. Pictures overflowed, each one a snapshot of emotion on their journeys through life. The tracks along which they traveled gradually began to lie across their brows, in furrows of yesterdays and mundane responsibilities. But the lines along their mouths told of happiness and joy. Theirs was a love unparalleled. But unbeknown to them there was a fallen tree in the road ahead and they drove unaware, staring out the window and glancing back at each other. They drove holding hands and enjoying the path they had chosen.

One day his fair maiden reeled of pain through out her body. She could not catch her breath and so they veered off their routE and traveled to the looming Hospital that blocked the sun from their eyes. As they drew nearer the building swallowed the world around them and when they entered this dark and uncompromising place of hope or death his beautiful bride found the coin was not in her favor for death was her prognosis. She was cancer stricken and hope was shy to answer. They tried to leave the hospital but its force was too great and it never fully let them escape. It was always there, always looming and stealing the air.

Upon her bed she lay, though in the comfort of her home the stagnant spirit of the hospital possessed all she touched. He could do nothing for his queen. He was her hero. He was to be her savior in all matters but he was useless. He watched helplessly as she slowly wasted away. He too was wasting away. He had lost all purpose until the day another set of doe eyes looked upon him. Her lashes batted and she smelled of desperation and sex. He looked past her to his frail and grey wife. His wife he could not save. His wife that made him feel weak though she had spent a lifetime making him feel like a hero. He knew it as the sickness, but the sickness had already killed her and the understanding they had. He was to be her Godlike hero and she was to be his damsel in distress but this was beyond a fairy tale. This was murder. He turned to the alluring doe and saw the wife he had married so long ago as he looked to this strangers color and vigor and desire. He gave into her chase and forgot the pain in the house he had built. It was no longer a home. He found himself in his lovers arms more and more, escaping his dying life and finding a refreshed one with her. He had all but abandoned the partner he had grown with, that had formed him into the man he was, the hero. That’s what she created, that was his role. But now he acted it out in a place more capable to respond appropriately. His wife traveled to the hospital her organs riddled with cancer. She was no more and her life was all but gone. Her husband kissed her one last time. She knew where he was going and she died inside. Yes she died inside many months ago but not from the cancer that ate her body away. No she died from the adulterers that ate her heart away. She was too weak to fight, too confused to know how to win and too sad to speak the words. He kissed her and he left her for the very last time. She lie on the hospital bed waiting for God to whisper her name. She laid alone tears trickling down her pale hollow face. Sniffling, lips trembling, heart breaking. She finally whispered with one of her last breaths… “Don’t go, don’t leave me. ” But he was gone. Driving off into the sunset with his new princess of light. So vibrant and radiant. Their journey was just beginning. They drove down that road but they didn’t realize that the tree that had fallen in the road was still there. No one had moved it. No, it still lay there and its name was death. The beautiful young doe should’ve had her eyes on it but she was distracted by her valiant knight and she slammed their car straight into that tree.

Time passed and death fleeted from the cancer stricken wife. Its amazing how a few organs from a car accident can replace cancer stricken ones. She didn’t know where those organs came from or where her husband had disappeared to. So she just assumed he was living a nice life with his mistress somewhere in a cozy warm paradise. She was healed of the cancer but now something even worse was eating away at her and its name was hate. She couldn’t believe he had left her. She couldn’t imagine the heart of the unfathomable beast that had taken him away from her. Some one should’ve told her where those organs that saved her life came from. Some one should’ve told her before the anger and hatred took over her mind. Well some one finally did tell her but tragically it was too late.

Stunned she left the hospital. Dazed she drove home. Possessed she entered her house and grabbed a kitchen knife and began cutting the organs out of her body that had saved her life. Yet she felt nothing but rage. She would rather die then to have those two residing together inside of her. In a cozy, warm paradise. She fell to the floor barely alive as she finally cut out her own heart and watched it beat for the very last time in her hand and whispered “You left me.” And with one last surge of rage she ripped it out and it slid across the floor never to beat for any one, no one ever more.