“heartbeat”

"Your everyday heart. Clumsy toy, muscle and meat, blood for a reason. But there's something deeper inside. You know that already," he said, raising a glass of wine to porcelain-doll lips, "don't you?"

I only managed to nod, and I thought back to that gesture, awkward and human, as I licked my new body clean, peeling the caul from it with my teeth.

I'd gone with him to his hotel room, expecting him to want sex, and I was surprised when he held up the knife, the edge of it catching the glint from the city sparkling outside our hotel room. Unsure whether to believe him when he explained himself. When he explained my self.

But I listened to his words, soft air brought forth from the rising and falling of his perfect chest, and somewhere inside, my secret heart caught the rhythm of his voice and echoed it, quickening and pounding so I could hear it for the first time.

“Just a few heartbeats, a fistful of days. One month, no more. A secret heart's an infant nestled in the womb of the body, but it can't bear the shock of its birth. Do you understand?”

I did. I didn't need to tell him. He knew, as surely as he'd heard me pounding inside old plain flesh from across the room, over mindless conversation and clinking of crystal glasses. We pulsed the same, he and I.

“I can be perfect?” I let myself touch him. “Like you?”

He shrugged. “Maybe better. Maybe you won't have the appearance of flesh at all; maybe your heart will give birth to something else, raw silk and gossamer for skin, spun glass for bones.”

“How can I know?” I asked. He smiled and put the knife in my hands, my rough and uneven hands, and I found myself hating them.

He lifted a delicate finger, gently touched my breastbone, showed me where to cut. I put the knife inside my skin; it felt like nothing I'd ever known, and I gasped with the sudden sensation. He helped me when I couldn't continue, opening my ribcage like a lover's legs with his hands.

Soon I was in his hands, strong and fragile, not clumsy muscle and meat at all, and he carefully placed me on the floor and watched as I blossomed into something else. With my new eyes I watched my new body learn its shape in the mirrored ceiling.

I stood, and looked out at the night, seeing it for the first time. “Well?” he asked. “Was it worth it? Trading your fading months and years for bright and burning days and weeks?”

I looked out at the nearly full moon, knowing I would never see it show this shape again. “Well worth it,” I gasped, letting something more ethereal than air slip through my lips.

He'd be dead by morning, I knew, and there was much left I had to learn. I slipped into my old clothes, disliking the rough feel and the smell of sweat and blood, but they would do for now.

We stepped out of the room, and down into the city below, looking for its secret heart.