Girl and Heart

Once upon a time there was a girl with a heart. The heart was ugly. It yelled profanities and wanted bad things. The heart was polluting the girl, and made her want bad things too. It poisoned her. One day, a person told her about a place where she could get a new heart. So she met with the Great Surgeon, and he did an operation on the old heart. Afterwards, her heart was different, new. This heart wanted to do good things. And it didn’t yell at her and make her feel bad. The girl was happy.

Later the girl moved countries. And her heart was sad. It was ripped away from all its other heart friends, and its home country. So the heart kicked and pounded and screamed loudly. It yelled, crying out for its friends. The girl heard, and shuddered in fear. This heart, apparently, was reverting back to the old one. Yelling and screaming. So quickly she grabbed a rope and gagged the heart’s mouth. Maybe if it stopped yelling it wouldn’t become ugly like the old heart.

Time passed, and the girl occasionally let the heart take the gag off its mouth, as long as it didn’t talk about that other country.

A well-meaning friend gave the girl a book about hearts and how to take care of them. The girl accepted gladly, since her heart was starting to behave strangely, flitting off and looking more at guys.

Then the girl discovered a shocking truth: “All hearts are deceitful and evil. Even if they look nice and new, they WILL rebel. You must train them or else they will go crazy and destroy you.” Wary, the girl looked at her heart. And decided that putting it in chains would be a good way to keep herself safe.

She also discovered that guys liked to steal hearts, so she built a fence around hers. That was a good thing, because it also kept the heart from going too crazy.

Frustrated, the heart started pulling at its chains, and begging to be let free. It smashed itself against the wall. All the clamour and banging gave the girl a headache. The heart looked at her, forlorn, and tried to convince her that it would be good.

So the girl let her heart out for a bit of free time, just an hour every day. But then, the heart started running after a guy. Disgusted that the heart had betrayed her, she gave it a good whipping and put it back in its enclosure. She vowed never to let it out again.

So the heart devised ways to escape. It dug under the fence. So the girl laid down a concrete floor. It chipped away at the gate. So the girl put more padlocks on. It even tried to climb the fence, so the girl created a wire roof.

Still the heart paced back and forth, whining and, when the gag was off, begging to be let off.

The girl had a genius idea. She began to limit the heart’s diet. She gave it only what it barely needed. The heart calmed down, and spent its days lying in the corner. When the heart murmured complaints, she would give it pictures of rich food, chocolate, pie, fresh fruit and curries. That made the heart drool a little, and kept it occupied. Occasionally she would give the heart ice-cream, or strawberries, or cookies.

Satisfied, now that her heart no longer made a fuss, and sat quietly in its cage, the girl settled down to her life.

But one day she went into the enclosure to give her heart its daily bread and water, but the heart didn’t even twitch. She went over to it, and saw that it was covered in festering sores. So she called up the Great Surgeon – he would know what to do.

He listened to the symptoms, then told the girl the bad news: Her heart was dying, and needed his intervention right away, or else there was no hope. Promptly, he got in the car, and drove to the girl’s place to save her heart.