That Rusted Heart

We all dream, as often as we can. Even though we sometimes don't like what we see. There is a dark clouded child staring at me, from up top. My name is Caleb and I am in trouble. I know this because it's not usual to come to on a pebble beach, your head thumping, lungs burning with every wheeze and heave of your chest, whilst being glared at by a child with what seems to be a storm cloud thrashing above his head. Not usual at all.

I am panicking and trying to push myself up. My lips feel salt dried shut and I push against them with my tongue to unstick them and pry them apart. My clothes are wet through and gritty, my eyes sting. With an acidic realisation this is not a dream. No pain, no feelings of dread could be imagined in the mind of a contented man in his bed. The child with the smouldering head raises his arm and points a finger at me and speaks. His voice however is disconnected from his young lips. A man of greater years reverberates in the words he now speaks. More ancient than rock, the tone of which vibrating and piercing, molecules sent spinning.

"Reach into your mouth and pull it out."

I look at him with what I can only describe as utter horror and confusion but again the same words come with clear emotionless clarity.

"Reach into your mouth and pull it out."

The dark cloud above his head is growing with a thunderous surge, black angels dancing about, I can feel my throat, spikey, scratchy, begin to close, I begin to choke. With a gurgling panic, clutching at my neck as the phlegm bubbles and thrusts, it feels as though every vein is about to spurt blood. The child’s words whirl pooling around my mind, my mouth open and drooling I reach in with a shaky hand. My fingers scramble in the saliva and I pick out something foreign. My fingertips initially fail to grip as it slips about and I swear I’m about to be sick but just then between my thumb and forefinger I grasp it. I begin to pull on it egged on by adrenaline and relief, I realise I’m pulling on a small chain. It keeps coming, I’m gagging but still it keeps coming. Through the tears that have formed in my eyes I can see a gold chain. The links are delicately small. I have to stop to take a breath the chain now long enough that it sags. My saliva swings like a bungee. I pull the chain taught and I make one final tug. The child gives a sideways grin, an all knowing smirk.

“There you see that wasn’t so hard.”

Before me lying amongst the pebbles, drenched in spittle, a golden heart. It was attached to the long delicate chain that clogged my airway moments before. The heart felt dense, leaden and entirely at odds with the delicate interwoven veins of latticed gold that constitutes its surface. A lump of beauty and yet I could see that its lustre had gone. I turned it over in my hand and saw patches of rust had begun to corrupt it. I don’t know how but as I kept studying it I felt a deep sorrow. I felt faces staring back at me, they were locked in. All pleading and sickeningly hungry, like a cargo train carriage piled high with desperate writhing bodies, all were gasping, the torn pyjamas and helpless cries, the hands reaching out, I was looking in through the locked door of the rusted heart. All of humanity entombed within.

“Have I been spared?” I cried as I looked up at the child. His cloud no longer wild but bright like a dawn rising, his face a silhouette, his whole being ethereal.

“Redemption is a hard and dark expedition” his voice was softer now. "Man has milked and suckled till there is nothing left but ragged tissue, bone and sinew. Take that what I have given you and scrape away that cancerous rust, restore its lustre, before all is overwhelmed by this disease of grief that man has gifted us and before this locket crumbles into nothingness and forever into dust.”

I stood up unsteadily, the pebbles shifted under my feet. I looked around clutching the heart shaped locket tightly. The child was walking away towards a great pale cliff that rose up like a jagged bone. I tried to call out, tried to walk after him but I was unsteady and too weak. A great sheet of rain began to pelt and darkness descended until I could no longer see the boy. Gusts of wind whipped up and over that great bluff. I squeezed my hand tightly around the only humanity that I knew for sure was left.